Shapes in the clouds and Artificial Intelligence

Two weeks back, I had gone to Arunachal Pradesh to visit the famous Tawang monastery . It was a week long trip and involved a lot of travel through the numerous hills of the Himalayas. The roads were not very good, but we forgot about the wobbly ups and down as we looked through the window of our SUV. It was absolutely mesmerizing. Thick cover of huge green trees, streams of crystal clear water gurgling beside the winding mountain roads, yellow, red, orange blossoms all over and white clouds in the clear blue sky .  The mountain weather is treacherous.  It can be bright and sunny and the next moment,  black clouds or white mist can cover you up. 

During road trips, I always tend to indulge in cloud spotting.  I see faces, shapes of mountains, rivers, dinasaurs, penguins, horses,   or incidents from the past. Sometimes I explain these images to the people travelling with me and all of us amused and entertained . The scientific name is Pareidolia - which means the tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the observer. In fact, emoticons, which are the norm these days in social media is also a form of pareidolia. 

They say that it is a type of illusion of the brain. But somehow, I do find connections . Strange things do happen, even if we cannot explain it always . For example, in the late nineteen fifties, Friedrich Jorgensen, a Swedish opera singer bought a tape player to record his voice. When he played the recording, he heard strange noises- something like whispers that sounded like supernatural messages. After a few years, he recorded birdsong. This time, he heard the voice of his deceased mother in the background whispering to him: “Fried, my little Fried, can you hear me? It’s Mammy.” Later he did research on EVP ( Electronic Voice phenomenon) and spent his life communicating with the spirits.  One of the world's greatest scientist and inventor, Thomas Edison created a "ghost machine" to communicate with the dead! 

In 1994, Diane Duyser from Florida experience another paranormal encounter. After biting into a slice of toast and placing it back down on the plate, she noticed the face of the Virgin Mary in it.

In 1978, a woman from New Mexico had a similar experience. Her tortilla’s blackened spots resembled Jesus’s face. 

Many scientific minds profess that these illusions are the human brain seeking patterns and rules and if it cannot find a pattern , then it invents one so that we see the face of Virgin Mary on a toast or  a familiar face in the clouds. It is called "Clustering illusion" , where our brain try to recognize a pattern. 

But now with the buzz of Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning all around us, are we not trying to do the same thing ? The basic principle pf machine learning and deep learning is that the machine is fed with loads and loads and loads of big data so that an algorithm can be evolved. This algorithm always looks for a pattern on which they can base their decision for the next course of action. If we are trying to mimic the human brain , then will the machines also be prone to these illusions ? In that case, what will the sceptics say ? Will they accept the logic and the reasoning of the machines more than those of the human beings ? 

Interesting times are ahead. We have to wait and watch .

Let me end this post with another uncanny and bizzare event which is very difficult to explain by human brain but maybe after a few years machines with Artificial Intelligence will be of some help.

James Dean was killed in a terrible car accident in September 1955 while driving his Porsche. After the accident, things started happening that couldn’t be explained and the car itself was declared extremely unlucky. When the car was being towed away from the accident, it was taken to a garage. While at the garage, the engine fell out of the car, crushing the legs of the mechanic working on the car. The engine was sold to a doctor who put it in his race car. The doctor was then killed in a race accident. The garage that the Porsche was repaired in ended up being destroyed by a fire. As if that wasn’t enough, the Porsche was on display at a museum. While on display, it fell off the mount and broke the hip of a teenager there to view the car. After this incident, the car was being towed to Oregon, where it fell off the tow bar and crashed through the front of the shop it was parked in front of. All of these things added up seem like a lot of terrible coincidences. But in 1959, the car was sitting on steel supports where it was found broken into 11 pieces !!