doesn't seem so. I think the key is probably here >perturbed by a seemingly random pattern ie. it doesn't really seem like a random pattern. It looks more lik

doesn't seem so. I think the key is probably here >perturbed by a seemingly random pattern ie. it doesn't really seem like a random pattern. It looks more like a match pattern taken from the mid-layers of a visual NN, the pattern of edges and vertexes which "lights up" more frequently when a cat image is presented to the NN. That would explain why an NN (even another one as they all converge on processing edges and vertexes) would mistake that image of vase for cat - in the altered image of vase those "cat" pattern edges and vertexes are present, just at the attenuated 2 levels amplitude, and the first layers of NN (usually converged to Gabors and Gaussian pulling like in the biological visuals cortex) would still detect those edges and will send it to the mid layers where it will "light up" similar "cat" patterns (it would be very illustrative if the authors provided the mixed-in image subjected to edge detection - that should clearly show a mix of original vase image edges and the added "cat" pattern ones). That also explains why people would point to such an image as more cat-like - the first layers and even the first-mid layers in our visual cortex are very similar to what the first and the mid layers of a well-trained NN converge to, and those our layers would similarly detect and "light up" to those mixed-in cat pattern edges and vertexes - we are just better at signal/noise, ie. clearly recognizing the vase and thus suppressing the "noise" of those cat patterns triggered in our visual cortex, so we wouldn't misclassify the image as a cat, yet we do feel something cat-like. Would be interesting to give that test to the people under hallucinogens, i.e. when the visual cortex mid-layers signals are subjected to much less frontal processing and the "noise" rises to the level of "signal".