Decoding Enigma Using A Neural Network

August 11, 2017 by Steven Dufresne 21 Comments

[Sam Greydanus] created a neural network that can encode and decode messages just as Enigma did. For those who don’t know, the Enigma machine was most famously used by the Germans during World War II to encrypt and decrypt messages. Give the neural network some encrypted text, called the ciphertext, along with the three-letter key that was used to encrypt the text, and the network predicts what the original text, or plaintext, was with around 96-97% accuracy.

The type of neural network he used was a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM ) network, a type of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) that we talked about in our article covering many of the different types of neural networks developed over the years. RNNs are Turing-complete, meaning they can approximate any function. [Sam] noticed the irony in this, namely that Alan Turing both came up with the concept of Turing-completeness as well as played a big part in breaking the Enigma used in World War II.

How did [Sam] do it?

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Neural Nets In The Browser: Why Not?

August 4, 2017 by Al Williams 16 Comments

We keep seeing more and more Tensor Flow neural network projects. We also keep seeing more and more things running in the browser. You don’t have to be Mr. Spock to see this one coming. TensorFire runs neural networks in the browser and claims that WebGL allows it to run as quickly as it would on the user’s desktop computer. The main page is a demo that stylizes images, but if you want more detail you’ll probably want to visit the project page, instead. You might also enjoy the video from one of the creators, [Kevin Kwok], below.

TensorFire has two parts: a low-level language for writing massively parallel WebGL shaders that operate on 4D tensors and a high-level library for importing models from Keras or TensorFlow. The authors claim it will work on any GPU and–in some cases–will be actually faster than running native TensorFlow.

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A Neural Network Can Now Be Your Writing Assistant

July 14, 2017 by Cameron Coward 15 Comments

Writing is a difficult job; though, as a primarily word-based site, we may be a little biased here at Hackaday. Not only does a writer have to know the basics, like what a semicolon is and when to use one, they also need to build sentences that convey information in a manner that is pleasant to read. As many commenters like to point out, even we struggle with this on occasion (lauded and scholarly as we are).

Wouldn’t it be better if we could let our computers do the heavy lifting for us? After all, a monkey with infinite time will eventually write Shakespeare and all that. Surely, a computer can be programmed to do all that fancy word assembly while we sit back and enjoy some coffee. Well, that’s what [Robin Sloan] set out to do with a recurrent neural network-powered writing assistant.

Alright, so it doesn’t actually write completely on its own. Instead, [Robin’s] software takes advantage of [JC Johnson’s] torch-rnn project, and integrates it into Atom to autocomplete sentences. [Robin] trained his neural network on hundreds of old issues of the sci-fi magazines Galaxy and IF Magazine, which are available at the Internet Archive. Once the server and corresponding Atom package are installed, a writer can simply push the Tab key and the sentence will be completed.

The results are interesting. [Robin] himself says “it’s like writing with a deranged but very well-read parrot on your shoulder.” While it’s not likely to be used as a serious writing tool anytime soon, the potential is certainly intriguing. When trained on relevant source material, the integration into software like Atom could be very useful. If a neural network can compose music, surely it can write some silly tech articles.

[thanks to Tim Trzepacz for the tip!]

Typewriter image: LjL (Public domain).

Wrap Your Mind Around Neural Networks

May 22, 2017 by Will Sweatman 18 Comments

Artificial Intelligence is playing an ever increasing role in the lives of civilized nations, though most citizens probably don’t realize it. It’s now commonplace to speak with a computer when calling a business. Facebook is becoming scary accurate at recognizing faces in uploaded photos. Physical interaction with smart phones is becoming a thing of the past… with Apple’s Siri and Google Speech, it’s slowly but surely becoming easier to simply talk to your phone and tell it what to do than typing or touching an icon. Try this if you haven’t before — if you have an Android phone, say “OK Google”, followed by “Lumos”. It’s magic!

Advertisements for products we’re interested in pop up on our social media accounts as if something is reading our minds. Truth is, something is reading our minds… though it’s hard to pin down exactly what that something is. An advertisement might pop up for something that we want, even though we never realized we wanted it until we see it. This is not coincidental, but stems from an AI algorithm.

At the heart of many of these AI applications lies a process known as Deep Learning. There has been a lot of talk about Deep Learning lately, not only here on Hackaday, but all over the interwebs. And like most things related to AI, it can be a bit complicated and difficult to understand without a strong background in computer science.

If you’re familiar with my quantum theory articles, you’ll know that I like to take complicated subjects, strip away the complication the best I can and explain it in a way that anyone can understand. It is the goal of this article to apply a similar approach to this idea of Deep Learning. If neural networks make you cross-eyed and machine learning gives you nightmares, read on. You’ll see that “Deep Learning” sounds like a daunting subject, but is really just a $20 term used to describe something whose underpinnings are relatively simple.

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AI Generates Color Palettes; Has Remarkably Good Taste

May 4, 2017 by Lewin Day 27 Comments

Color palettes are key to any sort of visual or graphic design. A designer has to identify a handful of key colours to make a design work, making calls on what’s eye catching or what sets the mood appropriately. One of the problems is that it relies heavily on subjective judgement, rather than any known mathematical formula. There are rules one can apply, but rules can also be artistically broken, so it’s never a simple task. To this end, [Jack Qiao] created colormind.io, a tool that uses neural nets to generate color palettes.

It’s a fun tool – there’s a selection of palettes generated from popular media and sunset photos, as well as the option to generate custom palettes yourself. Colours can be locked so you can iterate around those you like, finding others that match well. The results are impressive – the tool is able to generate palettes that seem to blend rather well. We were unable to force it to generate anything truly garish despite a few attempts!

The blog explains the software behind the curtain. After first experimenting with a type of neural net known as an LSTM, [Jack] found the results too bland. The network was afraid to be wrong, so would choose values very much “in the middle”, leading to muted palettes of browns and greys. After switching to a less accuracy-focused network known as a GAN, the results were better – [Jack] says the network now generates what it believes to be “plausible” palettes. The code has been uploaded to GitHub if you’d like to play around with it yourself.

Check out this primer on neural nets if you’d like to learn more. We’d like to know – how do you pick a palette when starting a project? Let us know in the comments.

Neural Networks: You’ve Got It So Easy

April 24, 2017 by Steven Dufresne 25 Comments

Neural networks are all the rage right now with increasing numbers of hackers, students, researchers, and businesses getting involved. The last resurgence was in the 80s and 90s, when there was little or no World Wide Web and few neural network tools. The current resurgence started around 2006. From a hacker’s perspective, what tools and other resources were available back then, what’s available now, and what should we expect for the future? For myself, a GPU on the Raspberry Pi would be nice.

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Introduction To TensorFlow

April 11, 2017 by Steven Dufresne 26 Comments

I had great fun writing neural network software in the 90s, and I have been anxious to try creating some using TensorFlow.

Google’s machine intelligence framework is the new hotness right now. And when TensorFlow became installable on the Raspberry Pi, working with it became very easy to do. In a short time I made a neural network that counts in binary. So I thought I’d pass on what I’ve learned so far. Hopefully this makes it easier for anyone else who wants to try it, or for anyone who just wants some insight into neural networks.

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