The research scientist Janelle Shane spends her downtime entertaining the internet with the silly and strange output of neural networks, the computer programs that teach themselves to understand data sets by strengthening or weakening connections between layers of artificial neurons. Recently, she did this to spectacular effect with a data set of fan-submitted Halloween costumes.
Now, Shane has turned her eye towards naming fish. With a dataset of 37,265 fish names provided by the fish biologist Colin Gross (drawn from something called fishbase), the neural net had its material.
There are many gems here, from “Little weakfish” to “Pacific squeaker”. A few of our favorites are below:
Vermillion assfin
Dangle shark
Horny humbug
Hawaiian doctorfish
Cuban armoured cat
Short-nosed leatherjacket
Horse-eye grunt
Highfin stonebasher
To see the rest, and some charming drawings by Max Graenit, head over to Shane’s blog post.
Source: Janelle Shane
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