Technology

MIT Created An Algorithm Called The ‘Nightmare Machine’ That Uses A.I. To Create Horrific Images

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Shutterstock / MIT

The somewhat scary rise of lumbering robots that will surely one day hold humanity under their boot have been covered at great length on Uproxx.com, but those robots will be puppy dogs if their artificial intelligence doesn’t turn evil. Unfortunately for the human race, MIT has developed an algorithm to change normal images into nightmarish scenes that will hopefully never influence a machine’s outlook on its human overlords.

MIT’s “Nightmare Machine” has been created by a small group of people at MIT with two categories in mind: Haunted Places and Haunted Faces. The results aren’t necessarily “scary” (depending on how you can handle horror) but they are certainly unsettling. The images actually seem a lot like the ones illustrated in the classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which were created by the 100% human Stephen Gammell. 

Here are some examples of the images. Keep in mind these were all normal pictures of people before they were put through the algorithm.

Changing an image is a far cry from actually developing an actual nightmare scenario, but the real horror comes from the fact that this computer program knows what is unsettling to the human brain. That alone is probably the scariest part of this first step towards our robot masters keeping us in their thrall.

Now can someone tell me why I think the “Slaughterhouse effect” so damn freaky?

(Via Business Insider)