10 LOOKING UNDER THE HOOD OF DEEP NEURAL NETWORKS

On June 10, 2015, a strange and mysterious image showed up on the internet, posted anonymously on the website Imgur.com. At first glance, the picture looked like one or two squirrels relaxing on a ledge. But the resemblance ended there: as you looked more closely, you could make out bizarre detail—and objects—at every scale. The image on the internet was psychedelic, like a fractal, with a dog's snout on the squirrel's face, a mystical pagoda here, a human torso there, and a bird-giraffe creature over there, seamlessly embedded into the fine detail of the image. Uncanny eyes peered out from every nook and cranny. Looking at this image felt like looking for objects in clouds, except that it wasn't your imagination. Or was it? You had to look again to see.