As They Lay Dying; May 1995; Scientific American Magazine; by Yam; 2 Page(s)

Not too many personal computers are known to hallucinate. But the one belonging to Steven Thaler has been doing so, off and on, for the past couple of years. The physicist, at McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis, has been exploring what happens as an artificial neural network breaks down. But rather than allowing the network to peter out into oblivion, Thaler has a second network observe the last gasps of its dying sibling. Some of those near-death experiences, it turns out, are novel solutions to the problem the net was designed to solve. Thaler says he has found a kind of creativity machine that can function more quickly and efficiently than traditional computer programs can.

An artificial neural network is software written to mimic the function and organization of biological neurons. The system consists of units (representing neurons) connected by links (standing in for dendrites and axons). Like the brain, an artificial network can learn: the programmer presents it with training patterns, which it learns by adjusting the strengths, or weights, of the links. Many researchers use these networks to model brain function and, by destroying part of the net, to mimic disorders such as dyslexia.