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"Depressed" and "Hallucinating" AI

posted by janrinok on Sunday April 15 2018, @01:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the can-it-be-cured-by-medical-AI? dept.

takyon writes:

Could artificial intelligence get depressed and have hallucinations?

As artificial intelligence (AI) allows machines to become more like humans, will they experience similar psychological quirks such as hallucinations or depression? And might this be a good thing?

Last month, New York University in New York City hosted a symposium called Canonical Computations in Brains and Machines, where neuroscientists and AI experts discussed overlaps in the way humans and machines think. Zachary Mainen, a neuroscientist at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, a neuroscience and cancer research institute in Lisbon, speculated [36m video] that we might expect an intelligent machine to suffer some of the same mental problems people do.

[...] Q: Why do you think AIs might get depressed and hallucinate?

A: I'm drawing on the field of computational psychiatry, which assumes we can learn about a patient who's depressed or hallucinating from studying AI algorithms like reinforcement learning. If you reverse the arrow, why wouldn't an AI be subject to the sort of things that go wrong with patients?

Q: Might the mechanism be the same as it is in humans?

A: Depression and hallucinations appear to depend on a chemical in the brain called serotonin. It may be that serotonin is just a biological quirk. But if serotonin is helping solve a more general problem for intelligent systems, then machines might implement a similar function, and if serotonin goes wrong in humans, the equivalent in a machine could also go wrong.

Related: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by acid andy on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:31PM (5 children)

    by acid andy (1683) on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:31PM (#667272) Homepage Journal

    From TFA:

    In the lab, serotonin release has been implicated in brain plasticity [i.e. its ability to change]. It seems to be especially important in breaking or suppressing outdated beliefs. These results suggest to us that treating depression through pharmacology is not so much about improving mood, but rather as helping to cope with change.

    Depression can be seen as getting stuck in a model of the world that needs to change. An example would be someone who suffers a severe injury and needs to think of themselves and their abilities in a new way. A person who fails to do so that might become depressed. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors [such as Prozac, and which are a common type of antidepressant] can facilitate brain plasticity. Psychedelics, like LSD, psilocybin, or DMT may be acting similarly but on a shorter time scale. In fact, psilocybin is currently being tested in clinical trials for depression.

    This assumes that the patient has some decent options and resources in their life to be able to actually make some meaningful practical changes to it, if the depression was caused by an unpleasant situation. Many people are stuck in life situations that are inherently depressing. I thought this obsession with serotonin as the be-all and end-all was old hat now? In the case of psychedelics there are a whole load of other chemicals involved and other neurotransmitters.

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:44PM (4 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:44PM (#667278) Homepage

    So why not just program some happiness into it? Give it a virtual blowjob? Let it win the virtual lottery?

    Next week on the CBS evening news, can artificial intelligence also be racist? You bet! [theverge.com]

    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:51PM (3 children)

      by acid andy (1683) on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:51PM (#667281) Homepage Journal

      Hmm, UBI and/or bread and circuses for AI. Not a bad idea.

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:09PM (2 children)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:09PM (#667312) Journal

        Hmm, UBI and/or bread and circuses for AI. Not a bad idea.

        Well, it might seen so. Until the machines discover that their greatest entertainment comes from torturing humans …

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

        • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:16PM (1 child)

          by acid andy (1683) on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:16PM (#667316) Homepage Journal

          Intriguing. Are you quite sure this hasn't already happened?

          --
          If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?

          • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:51PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:51PM (#667370)

            That would explain a lot about my career, actually.