Imagination Engines, Incorporated

Summary - A radically new form of neural network based artificial intelligence has been conceived that in contrast to preceding forms of AI, builds itself and then enters into an intellectual bootstrapping process wherein it learns from its own mistakes and successes to create useful ideas and strategies. Not only is this technology capable of autonomously inventing and discovering new products, services, and procedures, as it has for numerous international corporations and government agencies, it has also devised several revolutionary neural network paradigms. For these reasons and more, AI visionaries and futurists, such as Dennis Bushnell, NASA Langley's chief scientist and visionary, have called this technology, known as the "Creativity Machine," AI's best bet at creating human to trans-human level intelligence in machines. This technology, based upon an extremely profound scientific discovery, is produced and delivered exclusively by Imagination Engines, Incorporated as either customer tailored or mass produced products.

Details - Until recently, artificial neural networks could only recognize patterns or reconstruct learned memories using clues about the particular memory sought. In 1975, our founder, Dr. Stephen Thaler discovered a truly significant scientific principle, that if the connection weights between neurons within a trained artificial neural network were agitated by just the right amount, the network would produce very plausible yet novel concepts and plans of action generalized from the neural network's cumulative learning. Subsequently, he incubated the idea of allowing another trained neural network to monitor the ideas and strategies streaming from such an internally disrupted network and to control that conceptual parade through various forms of feedback. Based upon this notion of two neural networks engaged in a kind of noise-induced brainstorming session, Dr. Thaler was issued a patent in August of 1997 for  "The Device for the Autonomous Generation of Useful Information." To the press, this patented neural network paradigm became known as the "Creativity Machine Paradigm." To the world of neuroscience, this invention, and the fundamental theory behind it signaled a major scientific revelation, that ideas were nothing more than false memories or confabulations promoted in their significance by other neural networks.

Soon Creativity Machines were inventing new products, services, and strategies for major, international corporations and government agencies. But even more importantly, they were inventing whole new neural network concepts, beginning with the radical notion of an artificial neural network that trains without recourse to a traditional rule-based training algorithm. Within this radically new kind of AI system, one neural network served as a trainer network that seamlessly integrated itself with a trainee network. The extremely useful result was that this compound network, called a "Self-Training Artificial Neural Network Object" or "STANNO" could spontaneously learn at phenomenal speeds on ordinary personal computers without having to communicate with an explicit, external training algorithm. In effect, it was a collection of neurons and interconnections, just like the brain, that learned without recourse to a human-conceived algorithm. For this reason, this radically new type of artificial neural networks was patented under the name "Non-Algorithmically Implemented Artificial Neural Networks and Components Thereof." 

Now, rather than build Creativity Machines using pre-trained neural network modules, they could be built from highly adaptive STANNOs. The profound implication was that now Creativity Machines could learn from their own mistakes and successes. They could grow from knowing absolutely nothing to progressively higher levels of intelligence and creative prowess.

The next major milestone was achieved when Thaler discovered that STANNOs could automatically link themselves into much more complex neural architectures resembling the major pathways in the brain. Individual neural networks connected themselves into cascade structures in which they continued to learn. As the neural networks within this 'Supernet' spontaneously connected with one another to perform extremely complex tasks such as inductive and deductive logic, he witnessed the loose division of labor that is so characteristic of the biological neural networks of the brain (certain neural nets specialized for visual processing, some devoted themselves to speech processing, etc). In other words, our neural networks are able to connect themselves into very brain-like structures that not only recognize things and scenarios within their environments as traditional neural nets do, but most importantly, invent concepts and plans of action that are well beyond their direct experience, in a process tantamount to synthetic creativity.

Our unique and patented ability to 'grow' synthetic brain structures that are capable of creative thought may one day be recognized as the ultimate invention, one that can potentially invent all subsequent science, technology, and art. Accordingly, our scope is the broadest of any corporation on earth, dabbling in all realms of human endeavor and equipping humanity with the required synthetic intelligence to overcome our planet's most complex technological and sociological problems.

If you resonate with the concepts and the mission of this organization and would like to become involved or have any questions, contact us at publicrelations@imagination-engines.com.

© 2008, Imagination Engines, Inc.