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Researchers from Sussex University Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science have applied a modified version of Google's DeepDream algorithm to panoramic video:
The researchers used a modified version of Deep Dream to process a panoramic video of the university campus. Then they showed it to 12 volunteers, finding that the visual hallucinations were similar to those brought on by psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms.
The volunteers were asked questions like whether they felt a loss of control or a loss of their sense of self, and whether they saw patterns and colours. Their answers matched up closely with the results of a 2013 study [open, DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2063-13.2013] [DX] into the experience of taking psilocybin.
In a second experiment, 22 participants were asked whether they felt any sense of temporal distortion, or a warped sense of time. In this case the responses were similar to those recorded after watching control videos.
That would seem to suggest the researchers' machine can replicate some, but not all, the effects of being high on psychedelic drugs. However, only a few volunteers have been tested so far, and they were a different group to those quizzed on psilocybin back in 2013.
This is just the beginning for the technology – the system is very flexible and can be tweaked in all kinds of ways. In the future, participants could even get to adjust the parameters of the experience themselves.
With better hardware, the algorithms could be run in real time and applied to an augmented reality view instead of a pre-recorded panoramic video.
Also at Newsweek.
A Deep-Dream Virtual Reality Platform for Studying Altered Perceptual Phenomenology (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-16316-2) (DX)
Related: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Study Suggests Psilocybin "Resets" the Brains of Depressed People
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @05:36PM
I disagree with you on the consumer aspect.
True puritanical people would not like you to get good feelings out of buying a $75k sports car or half a million or more on a house -- they don't want you to feel good through material possessions or *any* experiences not permitted by what they believe is proper.
They do not care if you are spending $75k to replicate a high, or $75k on the actual source to maintain that high over time -- none of it is acceptable unless it's a behavior they do themselves, or worse, believe that others should be doing despite the actual activity being an inconvenience to leadership to actually have to do along with the little people.
Anyway, the pharmaceutical industry is against these natural highs and means of repair. I mean, it wasn't the distribution of opium poppy pods that caused all of those addictions -- it was a synthetic that drew profits. Unless they manage to get rid of the high on a synthetic (often, the highs are removed due to 'abuse potential', never mind legally addicting synthetic opiods that might not get you high but do get you hooked--and then look down upon those addicted as if it was a moral failure when it was really a marketing success)... well they can't have an OBVIOUS abuse potential on their hands.
Addiction is a moral failure as stated. providing sin products to get high is just not going to return on shareholder value consistently enough and also without clear risk (people will get high--no matter the moral failures), but keeping people addicted does keep the quarterly profit statements up.