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IBM Working on Brain-Rivaling Computer
Obdurate writes "The first supercomputers to approach and even surpass the processing power
of the human brain are to be built by IBM, under a $184M contract
announced by the US Government yesterday.
ASCI Purple and Blue Gene/L will be the fastest and most powerful machines built,
with a combined capacity equal to the 500 best of todays computers."
how do they measure the processing power of the human brain?
How often does it think about sex?
Can this thing telecommute? It could hold several jobs since most people only use a fraction of their brain at work. I wonder if it can do its own taxes.
In fact he's a bit thick.
Now we can have computers that screw things up at a rate that rivals our own! Because seriously, we needed the competition.
Actually, that won't be that difficult to do if they are comparing this computer with the "brain power" some of the doe-doe's I went to high school with
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
I once had an exercise in a business math class where half had calculators and the other had nothing. Calculator users *had* to use the calculator. The teacher then asked simple arithmetic questions - 2x2, 3 minus 1, etc. Of course, the people without calculators could answer first.
The fastest computer in the world will always be limited to how quickly data may be fed to it. One way or another, a human will have to direct this operation - if only for safety and security considerations.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
We will have such chips implanted into our brains in order to reason even quicker, then we will develop newer chip that will help design newer computers that will miniaturize themselves as new implants that will help us... :)
etc.
How far are we from learning kung fu from an optical disk ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Now whose brain are we using as a benchmark? Anna Nicole Smith or Marilyn Vos Savant?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Is it just me or doesn't the governement already have enough ultra-mega computers built for them? I mean, what do they do with the old 1.4 terrabit systems? Use them as Unreal 2003 servers?
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there's variability in human brains. I wonder whose brain it will rival. We don't need to spend $100,000,000,000 to wind up with an electronic version of Pat Robertson or Rush Limbaugh.
Perhaps now we will get the Answer to Life, Universe, Everything!
And it damn better not be 42!
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The human brain does more than simple processing. Think about it, the ability to do calculations, etc., is tied into the most ancient (reptilian) part of the brain.
Now, if they could make a computer that could experience emotions (or could explain what women really want :-)), that would be a true accomplishment.
Thou Shalt Not Make a Machine in the image of the mind of Man.
Somehow, I think that might be good advice.
The processing power of a honeybee's brain in terms of the power needed for it to perform flight as it does, and find honey, and return to the hive, etc., has been estimated at 60 teraflops. The idea that 6 times as much processing power = the human brain seems reasonably foolish. I think ultimately, the problem is that people tend to think of brains as giant calculating machines, when they're not -- there's a great deal of hardwired logic controlling things like breathing and reflexes, that aren't so much mediated by calculation, as they are by simple input output "black-box" sort of processes. This is another reason attempting to equate a brain to a giant computer seems foolish.
Kargis Strong, MD
I think I read somewhere that brain fires bursts of neurotransmitters in the range of 40 Hz. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, you're conciousness is running on a processor that's slower than the chip in your GBA or your Palm Pilot.
I think that what most people don't get is that the brain is not that powerful a computer... It's just very, very good at what it's supposed to do.
Think of it this way. Instead of a computer and mobo combination, consider the brain as dozens and dozens of embedded micro-controllers that talk to eachother via a protocol. Each one is very specific. We have one that handles getting audio signals, one that handles getting video signals... and then completely different controllers for recognizing voice, music, speech, text, and images. There is one overlying controller-- the frontal lobe-- but most of what is does is pattern matching and random number generation. It's the combination or all these working together, not the raw ability of the brain to process information, that makes the magic of 'conciousness'.
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Will it cuss whenever it gets a core dump? Will it cry when its favorite sysadmin leaves for a new job? Will it get horny when a cute little beowulf cluster comes sashaying by? Will it eventually get totally stupid and become a manager?
My place in the universe is still very much assured it would seem.
And does it crash when exposed to porn?
What this means is that the hardware has gotten to a point where it can do tons of new stuff. It's the software that's lacking behind. With this much processing power, human like voice and image recognition, and at least the thought process of an insect should be theoretically possible, if only we had the s/w to do it.
The ball's on our court now.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Are we talking about the brain as we use it, or the brain, at it's full potential?
They're the same thing. The brain used the way we use it is the brain.
The idea of a brain that could do a lot more than we ever used it for, by very simple means, is an evolutionary impossibility - it could never have evolved. The idea is absurd.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
It's not anything remotely like a human brain. They're making some rough analogy between storage size, processing speed, and the number and nature of neurons in the human skull. This is just a really really really fast/big version of existing machines.
Again, for those who haven't read Douglas Hofstadter's excellent books GEB and MMT - being human-like is a *really* tough thing for a computer, and we haven't even begun to figure out the basics of it on paper. Maybe in 100 years we'll understand the problem better, but I'll place my bets now that when we do we'll finally realize it's futile to try to mimic it.
11*43+456^2
Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14am.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
As powerful as a human brain, but:
> will lack the consciousness,
> intellect and capacity for thought of a brain,
> but will be equivalent in calculating
> speed and power.
Um, consciousness, intellect, and capacity for thought are what make the human brain powerful.
As far as floating-point operations (Flops), I found that a 1980's SR-50 calculator was much faster than my human brain.
They are better off measuring the power against animal brains, but don't get too high up into the primates, because I bet this computer couldn't figure out how to use the box and the stick to get the bananas down from the ceiling.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
ASCI Purple
I can't wait until a few years from now when we're treated to talking about ASCI Mauve, ASCI Burnt Sienna, and ASCI Periwinkle....
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
Are we talking about the brain as we use it, or the brain, at it's full potential?
I don't think IBM know... Seems like some silly marketing ploy like Intel's "The Pentium III makes Internet faster".
I mean... Does even anyone know how quick the brain is at it's "full potential"? Do we even have a unit in which we measure brain "quickness"? I don't think brains go well with FLOP's. As someone in another thread said: "with easy numbers I can do 1 - 2 FLOP's". Still, we can do stuff we haven't even come close to with today's technology.
I wonder if there's a science that research the possibilities to adapt human behavior and thinking to computers? That's usually the major flaw with today's robots, etc. We have pretty much unimaginable power in the super computers of today, but the computer "minds" we've produced so far are still at a laughable stone age level. Why? Do we *still* need more power to make a computer be able to follow a natural conversation (without pre-made replies)? Or do we simply not have the theory to approach the problem and we're essentially just standing there saying "duh?" at the problem of having a computer to truly *know* grammatics and form sentences on its own?
Sure, we have neural networks, and that might be a nice *foundation* for simulating human minds, but how to do it in practice? How to write the actual code? Again, are there even a science for this?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
While the human brain is usually not very good at such linear calculations, hence the popularity of a calculator, its true power lies in it's massively parallel processing.
/. expression, the brain functions very similar to a beowolf cluster. We can design computers (very expensive ones, though) that can simulate many of the simpler activities that humans are capable of (such as complex pattern recognition, primitive conversation skills, and rule-based systems of cause and effect,) but to do all of these at once is still well on the horizion.
To tie in an ever popular
-Space for rent
You can build a computer that can simulate the entire solar system, but without greater advances in AI you'll never really get near the power of a brain. And unfortunatly AI is progressing much slower than most people probably think. Not for lack of trying but for the complexity of the problem.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Truth is stranger than fiction.
I nf oMarijuanaUse-ADHD-DrS.html
SPEC brain scans are actually quite commonly usely used to understand brain activity. Here's a study that shows how it's used:
http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu/forum_2/ADHDF/
Anyone else notice that? Power4 is the current generation, and holds the 9th spot on the top-500 list with only 1280 processors!
I'm sure IBM is working hard on a new interconnect for this beast. Anyone know about the next-generation SP switch?
The press release also mentions that Purple will consist of "196 seperate computers" -- which works out to 64-processors per computer. Way to go IBM: the current Power4 systems are only to 32-way!
This is the fortune shown at the bottom of my slashdot page. I'm sure it'll be funny when we see what the Brain-Rivaling Computer can do in public :).
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
Can't help thinking that there is more useful applications software for the brain.
Virtually serving coffee
The Raw processing power of the brain is very high, but its actual effectiveness and speed is crap. The reason is the IO speeds, the network interface (spine) has poor throughput and requires lots of individual channels rather than being able to operate as a simple bus, this means loads of wasted space when a channel isn't doing anything.
/dev/random would be pretty useless, and yet the software in humans means that this is a greatest advantage.
The external interfaces are even worse, these make the brain totally useless for many tasks that computers can process in seconds. As an example try raytracing a rendering a scene using crayons and doing the maths in your head.
So the human brain totally and utterly is secondary to the computer already.
Apart from the fact that humans can be inspired. The solution may take a computer 100 years to attack by brute force and it will get there... but a smart person will do it in minutes because "its obvious".
Computers already outstrip us in terms of processing, but while they are just grown up calculators they miss the essence of human processing. A computer hardwired to mutate everything via
It will be generations before computers will have reached a stage they can start doing the obvious. The limited processing of the brain has produced the people on the Jerry Springer show and Isaac Newton, it ain't the hardware, its the software that counts.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
That's not the entire brain, that's individual neurons.
;-)
Don't think of the brain as one really wide silicon wafer running at 40hz. If you absolutely have to try and make the comparison, though, think of the brain as a couple billion little tiny CPU's, each running at 40hz.
In that sense, your first statement is misleading. It's like implying that a beowulf cluster of 100 P100's is slower than a PIII-733 on the basis that the individual processors in the cluster run at a slower clock rate. And don't even get me in to the megahertz misconception
IBM starts work on computer to rival the human brain
This could revolutionalize the saying "grab a brain".
By the way, whose brain are they using for comparison?
will lack the consciousness, intellect and capacity for thought of a brain
Consciousness and intellect aren't too relevant it would seem. How many imperfect systems are in place today that pigeon hole people's financial situations, inconvenience us, etc..? The common explanation is "I can't do anything about it... that's how the system works".
This computer will do all that.. just faster.
So a computer with the processing capacity of a human brain is to be put to work by the government? Does the US government have any actual experience in managing something as powerful as a human brain? How long before the computer realizes it could do much better in the private sector?
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/11/19/ 021119hnasicpurple.xml
Feast upon my linkage!
From the article:
ASCI Purple will be built using 12,544 IBM Power5 microprocessors, the same chips that are used in Apple PCs and Nintendo games systems.
So it's basically a Beowulf cluster of GameCubes?
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
Is a chainsaw, so you can get medieval on it when it gains consciousness and tries to take over the world.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
The world is full of semi-autonomous computing systems. Your example from "math class" is a total non-sequitur.
From the article:
£184 Million
Will the brain be intelligent to know that £184,000,000 isn't $184,000,000 (US)??
FYI: The US amount is almost $300,000,000 ($292,408,889.38 to be exact).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
That's about $330 Million not $184 Million depending on exchange. The article says it's £184 Million which is considerably more.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
Lots of interesting things about this:
First, the real issue is not hardware or CPU cycles -- it is software. Tired of Seti@home? Let's build a distributed processing network that has as many CPU cycle equivalents as the human brain! Oh yeah, that's already been done. Ok, so why doesn't it "think" yet? Oh yeah...software.
The issue is how to integrate storage, processing, "RAM", etc. into a software package that can emulate a human brain's method of thinking (which may be a very bad, krufty method of developing consciousness -- why would anyone use meat for processors? What a kludgy hack!).
(OT: what if "thinking" software is _not_ GPL'ed? That could be really frightening. So could security issues for "thinking" machines.)
Second, the next issue is why should we compare digital thinking machines to biological ones? Maybe it is the only benchmark we can think of, but given the truly awkward way in which light-sensitive cells were adapted for inclusion a biological thinking machine (see Francis Crick's "Astonishing Hypothesis"), why can't a much more efficient independent decision making machine be developed from digital equipment (not DEC, btw) actually designed for the purpose?
The human brain/computer comparison is really a red herring. The only reason to create a human-like digital thinking machine/emulator (and you thought WINE was hard to use...) might be to pursue immortality. I think the more likely reason is that it would be the ultimate species-wide circle jerk. Humanity getting off on creating humanity. Bleh. Let's set our sights a little higher.
guac-foo
Lots of petrified grits
...that this contract is made public right after we get our doors blown off by a japanese supercomputer in the top 500....
Probably the only way that we will get computers to truly compare to living though processes is by installing some form of wetware. Perhaps 10 years from now, each PC will come with its own little glass jar complete with wired-up spongey brain.
The main issues I see with current electronic mediums is instructions-per-time capability, capacity, bandwidth, and heat.
While computers have been able to beat 90% of humans at math for over a decade, they are still very limited in the realms of action-recognition-response. New machines can recognise, for example, what in a room is human (to some extent) and take a picture. However, they don't recognise particular humans - except at rather precise angles - and last time I heard they even had this annoying tendency to ignore people of darker skin tones as part of the background.
Of course, much of this is a failing of humans ourselves and not the machines, as we are the ones that program the software and thus set its limitations.
So, in truth, a brain-in-a-jar may not be such an outlandish solution for computers in the future. Already we're mixing some organics and electronics, perhaps the next step takes it a bit further. Computers are great for scientific purposes, but with just a bunch of chips and silicon, they don't really "learn" all that well, and that's a big point of separation
And no... I'm not even going to try going into whether we should.
..contract announced by the US Government yesterday. This computer will be delivered just in time for the national debates of the 2004 election, subbing in for George Bush.
Live web cams
Dear IBM,
I couldn't help but notice that you were hard at work developing a computer to rival the human brain to the tune of $184,000,000.
It just so happens that I have a human brain and I would be quite happy to let you use it for a tidy sum that is far below the aformentioned $184M.
Please give me a call at your earliest convenience to work out the details.
Thanks,
Jason
----[%snip]----
My
Limekiller
It's not the power, it's the logic.
An uber-computer with stupid software is still a stupid computer.
slashdot!=valid HTML
My brain devotes no time at all to Nukes or Oil.........thinks...........so I must have more spare cycles to use on protine folding then.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
its called the child playing wall ball syndome
Although the "rated" processor cycle of a human brain may be measured in Hz... the overall number-crunching and algorithm pattern matching power of 4 billion years of refinement utterly out-class any computer well be making for years to come.
Case in point.. A child playing wall ball makes more physics calculations in one minute of game than a whole team of physicists could map out in months.... he calculates his own mass, his own speed, the angles and exact acceleration of his arms, the weight and distribution of balence between his feet, all while tracking the movements and possible movements of a ball with its own mass and porportions and an opponent. We could count layers upon layers of others things this kid is doing without thought, breathing, processing and responding to components inside his body such as adreneline, and a host of other things... but what it really comes down to is a child's Brain subconsciously is far more powerfull than any comp on the planet.
The comparison of raw number crunching super-clusters to a human who is nearly autonomus, learns independantly and can adapt to many situations in the blink of an eye (where a comp would take considerable reprogramming to adjust to new tasks) is falacy at best.
It has been predicted that AI will reach the emotional awareness of a teenager around 2050
--Enter The Sig
--
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
You underestimate your abilities by far - ever seen robots playing soccer? To hit a slowly rolling ball needs several MFLOPS, and every 2-year-old can easily do this. If you compare the the abilities of the robots to those of the average soccer player, you will see how easily the human brain can outperform a computer. On the other hand: Every time I listen to the interviews after a soccer match, I doubt if the statement above is true.
While most of the commentary here is related to the significance of a machine with the "processing power" of a human brain, it is notable that the engineers are not trying to emulate the human brain, nor are they doing any AI work at all. This is a brute force calculating job all the way around.
Also notable is the fact that this special purpose maching is a nuclear bomb compared to the human brain's match in terms of doing the job it is being built for. With performance differences like this between general purpose and special purpose computers, why would anyone seek to build a general purpose machine that would just want to drink, fuck, and live in a trailer?
guac-foo.
Lots of petrified grits
We can make mechanical hearts so the tin man is taken care of. All that's left is to give the cowardly lion a lot of booze and suddenly Dorothy is off to see the wizard by herself.
--Joey
Imagine a bewul... --sssllllaaaaappppp!!!!
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
"But Brain, why would you want to be on Pop Stars: The Rivals?"
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
Neurons in adults: 2x10E9 to 5x10E9
Synapses in adults: 10E14, a few thousand per neuron
Neuron firings per second: max 2 Khz
The biggest challenge in comparing brain to supercomputer is the massive connectivity of brain, with 2000-5000 synapses per neuron.
The total processing speed of ASCII Purple sounds about right for number of neurons in brain times the maximum number of pulses per second per neuron.
Given there are 10E14 synapses, each one with at least a byte of synpatic weight associated with it, it would need memory of at least around a petabyte of memory, although synpase memory change speeds are probably not faster than tape, and I know of plenty of installations with a petabyte on tape.
But here is the kicker: Will those 100 teraflops be flops that can use thousands of inputs? Probably not. So I'd argue that to truly be as powerful as the human brain, you would need 100 petaflops of 1-2 input flops, with at least a petabyte tape system.
In fairness this speaking problem appears to be a family trait, at least for #41 and #43 (how does Jeb talk?). There was a (sort of) tongue-in-cheek article in TNR years ago entitled "Is President Bush Brain-Damaged?" and interviewing others about his various malapropisms. The consensus was no, his brain is intact, and he's just inarticulate.
Now, *Dan Quayle* -- 'nuff said. President Reagan is the most concrete recent case of a senior politician suffering from brain damage, but I acknowledge his Alzheimer's is tragic not funny.
Sure, this thing can do 100 teraflops, but does that mean that it has any intelligence? That it can learn? Those are the true qualities of the human brain, and without those ASCI Purple is just an incredibly large and expensive calculator.
Look at it this way. Go outside, on a windy day (adding more variables to the mix) and have someone throw you a football/basketball/baseball/frisbee/whatever. It probably takes 3-4 seconds at most for the ball to reach you, and looooong before that, your brain completed a monstrous calculus problem. It figured in the position of the thrower, the wind velocity and direction, direction/speed of the ball, the ball's arc of travel, and in the next split second, sent signals to your legs and feet to move your body to the ball's expected landing spot.
But wait, it's the ball's landing spot minus about five feet, because your brain figures you want to be positioned to catch the ball when it's about 4-5 feet off the ground. It simultaneously sends signals to your hands and arms, positioning them to catch the ball, taking into account the ball's speed, size and mass.
A lot of calculations in an extremely short period of time! And, if you think that's impressive for a human brain, the brain in that dumb mutt of yours in the back yard can do the same thing when you toss him a tennis ball.
These numbers will go up. Within a decade, they could store DVD size dossiers on the lot of us. Combine this with cameras with facial recognition capacity, and Maury the spook, can find out where you were at 7:35GMT.
I am sure this use has never occured to our benevolent leaders though.
---
When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
The fastest computer in the world will always be limited to how quickly data may be fed to it. One way or another, a human will have to direct this operation
... and that speed is far slower than the speed with which information can be fed into computers (as is well documented by everything from math tests to aviation accidents). So instead of a sense of smell it has a sense of "1 Gbit ethernet" through which a torrent of data is poured. So what ... the information is there, and can be interpreted, i.e. in theory thought can occur ... probably at speeds, and possibly at levels of cogitation, unreachable by human beings.
The world is full of semi-autonomous computing systems. Your example from "math class" is a total non-sequitur.
Absolutely right.
Not only that, he misses the point that humans are limited by the speed with which data can be fed into them as well
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
ASCI Purple will be built using 12,544 IBM Power5 microprocessors, the same chips that are used in Apple PCs and Nintendo games systems.
Umm, how about...NOT. Just because they're all PowerPC based doesn't make them the same. Based on that logic a 386 and a Pentium 4 are the same too, just beacuse they're both built on the x86 architecture.
Power 5 (can't find a link) is a generation of chips that are related, but further on the horizon than the chips Apple is buying (both are Power 4 spin-offs, but quite different). The chips used in the Nintendo GameCube are not even related -- they just happen to also be made by IBM -- not to mention they are several years old while the above chips are not even available yet.
Then again having a server class chip in a Nintendo might be interesting...
SkyNet not Skylab. Skylab fell back to earth in 1979.
Trolling is a art,
This is fantastic news (to some), and I really think having all this processing power is...interesting...but think of how large the room for all these servers is going to be. Think about the sheer volumetric capacity required to hold just this much processing power - its unbelievable.
Now think about stuffing all that power into our little heads...what would that be? A sqaure foot? Our brain is the ultimate laptop. This server doesn't even come close.
Sure, we're building a computer with the same processing power - but it'll be decades before we reach the sheer density of the actual human brain.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
ASCI Purple will be built using 12,544 IBM Power5 microprocessors, the same chips that are used in Apple PCs and Nintendo games systems.
all I need now are 13,000 nintendo game cubes.....
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Boy, does that bring back memories. In the fifties computers were invariable referred to as "electronic brains" or "giant brains" and at regular intervals from the fifties through, maybe the seventies it was announced that computers that "rivalled the brain" in processing power had just been built.
About the time Hubert Dreyfus published "Artificial Intelligence and Alchemy" everyone started to get a little more restrained about this.
Of course, estimates of the brain's processing power have been made periodically, notably by Nicolas Rashevsky , but since all such estimates are based on the assumption that we understand how the brain works, and since we don't, in fact, understand how the brain works, they should be regarded as very suspect.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I was going to say, "Hey, welcome to Slashdot," but then I recognized you as our biggest poster. Still, I've noticed that you never seem to learn, Mr. Coward.
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Yes, but how many BP does it take to process one LOC (Library Of Congress) of data?
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
Digital computers and the human brain work on completely different computational principles. The people who run these meaningless calculations on the "processing power of the brain" take each synapse to be a bit. That's absolute bunk when you're talking about the nonlinear properties of even small networks of neurons, much less the massively complex architecture of the brain. Until we actually develop an understanding of how neural networks (real neural networks, not the stuff that drives touchpads) operate, we can't even begin to make realistic comparisons.
btw, I'm a ee who does neuroscience research, so I'm not talking out of my ass here.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
£184 million, not $184 million.
Great. So a beowulf cluster of these would effectively be a committee.
Stupid, unable to make reasonable decisions, but thousands of times faster.
My life feels improved already.
Even if they can compute as many instructions per second as the human brain is capable of, it won't matter unless they have a good enough understanding of AI to come up with software that can mimic human types of intelligence -- things like intuition, insight, creativity.
Otherwise it'll just be a very expensive, very fast data processor.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
It will come with a built-in infrared interface so it can change the channel every 10ms.
What operating system will this thing use? The linked article didn't say, except for something about "autonomic" self-diagnosing and repair, which is intriguing as well.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
>But here is the kicker: Will those 100 teraflops be flops that can use thousands of inputs?
...And, to go with that, will they find someone smart enough to actually implement some adaptive technique that emulates a human brain?
--
God is the only form of extraterrestrial life that we could ever possibly communicate with -- SETI is a joke, people
That's half a million times as much RAM as I have.
That's 1 kilobyte for every dollar Microsoft has stashed away.
That's five pages of text for every man, woman, and child on the planet.
That's . . . how many Libraries of Congress is that?
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
A computer can input, sort, save, and output "billions and billions" of bytes while a person hardly read more than a few hundred, or even thousand, words a minute. The answer lies, I suspect, in resource allocation. A computer program may have up to 100% of the CPU, memory, and peripheral time. The program, and therefore the computer, is single-purpose, relative to any brain function. The brain must always monitor its sensory organs and its involuntary functions, which may be used as input to its control and decision mechanisms.
My seems to have lots of overloading problems, both internal and external. I am beginning to be less and less impressed with my brains's ability to make value-judgements on *any* subject. Cheers. }:{)||
One computer to rule them all. ..and in the darkness *general protection fault err code: 1222335499xxvb45561e*
One computer to find them.
One computer to bring them all.
First rule of benchmarking-->In order to benchmark two different systems, you must run exactly the same software.
Without this ability, comparison is impossible. Most of the things that human brains do so well, we can't make computers do at any speed. That suggests that the hardware differential is currently unknown. First, we need software that can imitate the human brain, and then we can make the analysis.
What I want to know are the algorithms! For example, human beings have nearly perfect (excepting edge cases like optical illusions) object recognition. Even if you don't know what the hell something is, we can tell it is a seperate object, independent of other objects in the scene. Also, the occipital lobe does some extremely funky processing in breaking down what is essentially a pixel grid (the receptors in the eyes) into lines curves and whatnot. That, IMO, is far more interesting than the raw processing capabilities of the brain.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Do a Slashback when it can rival the human brain by also being air-cooled and sustainable on Mountain Dew and day-old pizza.
Art - from the Darwinist point of view - is just a waste of energy and as such had no reason to evolve in our brain.
Not true. Artists get laid a lot. It makes as much sense for art to evolve as for a peacock's tail feathers.
Natural selection isn't about the strongest and most efficient, it's about who has the most babies.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
I was just reading the specs on these two monsters, and the bigger of the two (Blue Gene/L, 360 teraflops) runs Linux. 130,000 processors. Wow.
According to Helsingin Sanomat, IBM will build two of these giants. One of them will run Linux.
The whole idea of comparing a computer to a brain has too many assumptions. This is because we dont really have a clue about how the brain works. Is the brain turing complete? Does it even operate on information? Is the relationship between computation and what the brain does only superficial?
When the answer is a sound "don't know", how can you start pulling numbers out of your orifices to compare them?
"I'll believe all this bullshit when I see someone actually create an organic, conscious brain from scratch. Until then, its all moot."
But, how would you know that the computer actually *is* conscious, and not just pretending to be conscious? Sure, you know that *you* are conscious, but how would you know for sure that anybody else in the world is? It's an interesting puzzle, and one that will probably never leave the domain of philosophy and religion...
Yeah, but WHO'S brain will they be rivalling? There are a few folks out there that would be hard-pressed to out think a 286 running DOS.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Please do not use a government worker's brain as the template.
is the witty comment I was going to make, but instead I'll pose a question: At my place of work we have 15 2.4GHz PC's with 512MB RAM apiece. Almost 99% of the time the computer is simply going through an idle loop and not doing anything which brings me to the seti@home project. It accomplished what not many supercomputing projects have done at a tiny fraction of the cost, gathered support from all corners of the globe and put the CPU's of many computers to real work.
This tells me that people will enthusiastically take part in such mammoth projects if they see some sort of benefit ("Our team rulez", plain simple interest, cool screensaver etc) and they have the feeling that they are actually taking part. Would the response be as enthusiastic if there were a distributed project to calculate how to kill millions of people, although the nuclear club already has many times that capability? For one the government wouldn't allow it for security reasons and two, there are many people who don't actually believe that killing all the "mud people" and "terrorists"(i.e. the current governments foes) is for the good of mankind.
I do think that a distributed project to simulate global warming or weather modelling or better food distribution will gather much greater interest, especially if ego boosting a la seti@home is included.
Give the people some say in what you use their tax money for.
ASCI White, Deep Blue(understandable), but now
:) )
ASCI Purple and Blue Gene/L ? WTF?
Is the next version going to be called
ASCI Pink and Purple? or ASCI Barbie's Dreamhouse.....
Get back to naming the systems after Tolkien characters, or greek gods. (
Skynet will rule the human race, sure enough, but it won't be called "Skynet". It will be known as
ASCI SuperPoopyPants.
nbfn
The way the human brain works is so different from a computer it is ridiculous to compare them. Even if they made a computer that was 10 times as powerful as what they're planning it still couldn't do what the brain does... unless someone figure out how our _software_ works. It's all in the nodes, baby.
Are we going to have to come up with a "teraflops myth" to counteract this misinformation? I mean, we don't want Joe Sixpack to buy into the hype and start purchasing "brain-rivaling" computers instead of making friends...
Cheers
Sheesh. My mom hates the fact that I keep my old 486 around. I can't imagine who would keep that many old Nintendos packed away in their basement/attic. (probably someone not living with their parents, I'm sure.)
Karma: NaN
>
> Considering we can blow up the surface of the world a couple of times(at least) over with our existing stockpiles, why are we spending ANY money on ANYTHING except REDUCING said stockpiles?
It's you :-)
Seriously - reducing the need for large nuclear stockpiles exactly why the money's being spent on simulations.
Nukes are complicated devices, composed of weird stuff (the fissionables and other what-not), and normal stuff (the explosives that trigger the weird stuff).
Over time, the weird stuff changes its properties. So does the normal stuff.
One of many issues with nukes is that if you're gonna throw one at someone, you want to be damn sure it goes off. Otherwise, you've probably just given your enemy enough weird stuff that they could build their own bomb. This, I think we can agree, is a Bad Thing.
If you're going after a guy in a hardened bunker, and your nuke blows up but doesn't blow as strongly you thought it would, you may have to lob another one at the same target. And that means you need to have more nukes in reserve.
And worse yet, if you're going after the same bunker, but your nuke works a little too well, you've just wiped out a city instead of just the few hundred feet around your target. This is inefficient at best, and barbarism at worst. (The early fusion bombs had this "problem", and some tests resulted in radiation exposures far greater than was expected, mainly because the bomb was "better" than it was supposed to be.)
If you want to cut down on the number of nukes in the arsenal, a good way is to make sure that you've got a few very good ones that always go off when they're supposed to, with the correct amount of "boom".
One way to make damn sure your nukes blow up when and how big they're supposed to is to test them regularly. I'll grant that mushroom clouds over the Nevada desert were probably very pretty to watch, but they were also pretty messy for those living downwind. Bad idea.
The second way is underground testing, which solves most of the "downwind" problem, but can still result in some leakage under some circumstances.
That really only leaves one other option - to run simulations. Lots of simulations. Using the best math your scientists can come up with, and the fastest computers your geeks can build. No radiation leaks, and what you learn while building the supercomputers can be used for building higher-performance computers for peaceful purposes in the future.
I dunno about you, but I'll take Door Number Three any day.
While the comparison of this machine to the brain is questionable (being an apples-and-oranges situation), it's amazing that it takes this much effort to equal the computing power of a device that grows spontaneously out of organic goo.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
The Windows brain:
Clippy - It appears you're trying to catch a ball...
*THUD* OUCH!
The Linux brain:
Guy named Beowulf #1: Move left 3 feet.
Guy named Beowulf #2: Move forward 2 feet.
Guy named Beowulf #3: Raise arms 10 inches.
Guy named Beowulf #4: Catch ball.
The Apple brain:
This would be a lot easier if the ball were translucent. Also, the Apple ball only has one seam to make it easier for the user.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
with a combined capacity equal to the 500 best of todays computers.
As reported a few days ago, these guys already have 33 of them!
Hold on there!
Our brains are fine for huge linear calculations. Better than most calculators in fact.
Autistic savants....
Rain Main. That kind of thing.
There was a kid I knew in high school that could find cube roots for eight digit numbers nearly instantly but he couldn't recognize his brother's face in a picture.
My personal theory is this: Human brains are like a computer (about a million orders of mangitude more complex though). Most people have that all tied up in hardware dedicated to things like jobs, girl friends, football etc. etc.
John, my autistic friend in high school, hadn't dedicated the hardware to anything in particular, but he still had it available. He was lacking in a lot of things, but sheer processing power and memory he had in spades.
As a side story, another friend of mine in high school had epilepsy, and it kept getting worse. He eventually had brain surgery where they severed his corpus callosum. After that, he couldn't add single digit numbers if he closed his right eye. If he closed his left, he couldn't recognize faces. Just kind of shows how the brain works as a parallel system.
While this is impressive and all, it's really only a first step. The true power of the brain isn't in the hardware, it's in the software. Even with all that processing power, we still can't reproduce many of the brain's internal functions. What we really need to do is to petition God to release the source for the human brain (I hear it's written in Python) since that will make it much easier and quicker for every person to make their own improvements. Reverse engineering the compiled DNA just isn't getting us the information we need quickly enough. So, I say that until He honors our God-given right to see the source to our own heads and gives up His illegally held monopoly on the brain's operating system, we should boycott all human reproduction (shouldn't be hard for most /.'ers).
NO more closed source babies!!!!
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
Computers were already able to do things, that brains couldn't do, 20 years ago - regarding speed and precise memory (that's what I call processing power).
... ...; someone must write programs for computer to make them work, so there is little chance that computers will ever be more 'intelligent' than the one who learned them how to become intelligent.
Brains will probably always be able to do things, that computers can't do, not even with EXTREMELY much processing power.
Why?
====
A Brain works in a different way. It's good at fuzzy-logic and at distinguishing important from less important information.
To let a computer's pure logical processing power act like a brain, you have to simulate all that "fuzzy-logic" with complicated mathematics.
Computers can do a lot of things, which not even thousands of brains could do correctly, or at least in an acceptable period of time. Weather/climate simulations, sound-processing,
There are also a lot of things, which can only be done by thinking, by being creative,
We do not even know exactly, what 'intelligent' means, from a technical point of view.
Brains are more powerful than computers, and Computers are more powerful than brains.
That's what you get if you compare apples with pears.
The 2002 record is 35 TFLOPS.
Each years is 1.5x faster = 10x in five years.
2004 => 1.5 * 1.5 * 35 => 90 TFlops. IBM promises 100.
I propose a new rating:
(-2) Idiot
The head hardware engineer for BlueGene/L gave a talk at Iowa State last week. BlueGene/L is going to change the face of supercomputing. The cluster scales nicely. BlueGene/L is at heart a bewoulf cluster connected with standard gigabit ethernet. Off the top of my head and probably a little off...
2 POWER-PC Processors +256meg RAM per board
x8 boards per rack
x16 racks per shelf
x64 shelves
The key is that it uses no hard drives, and mostly off-the-shelf parts. It's fully upgradable because all you have to do is swap out the network cards, RAM, or CPU. I hope IBM will start selling them by the rack. I could use a 1024th of a super computer in my lab.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
Yes, the power of the human brain = 1 BP (brainpower).
But that's the American system. The rest of the world uses Metric, and not even NASA can remember the conversion ratio. I seem to remember something about subtracting 32, but it's getting foggy.
Shock Level 4
Considering the article and IBMs processing power goal - Question: how much processing power will it take to figure out? --- Military Budgets vs. Solving World Problems productively
"ASCI Purple, which will be built first and used to simulate nuclear tests, will be able to complete 100 thousand billion calculations per second -- a speed known as 100 teraflops that some scientists say is comparable to the human brain."
"Blue Gene/L will be able to map stars in three dimensions, analyse earthquakes, and help in oil exploration."
And considering IBM Autonomic Computing effort:
Anyone notice the flaw in Autonomic Levels?
One example of the flaw - "Level 3: Predictive
The system monitors and correlates data to recognize patterns and recommends actions that are approved and initiated by the IT staff. This reduces the dependency on deep skills and enables faster and better decision-making."
Now how is the IT staff to really understand the solution direction given by the system, unless they have a deep understanding of the problems and solution direction?
If they do not have such an understanding then how are they to approve and initiate such a solution direction?
If it is the human desire to build a machine that needs humans less and less the machine will figure out a way to help that process.
IS the computer industry that short sighted, to not see that? YES! Y2K!
Of course what IBM is really doing is playing with theory and trying to make that theory work. It doesn't mean they will be successful, even with the open invitation for all to help (OSS and GPL).
It just means they are trying. It should also be noted that IBM is the top new Patent holder, year after year. Help them solve a problem and they will patent it for their control.
Today, anyone with enough money can build the biggest and fastest, etc.. computer system........ But what it really comes down to is "Why?" what is it's intended use?
Shouldn't Joel Robinson be the director of this project? I mean, the guy made at least three AIs out of parts meant to stop and start movies! Mike was barely able to keep them functioning after Joel escaped.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
But is the brain calculating this or rather looking up the answer? I know as a toddler I couldn't catch squat, but as I got older I got better. Was the reason increased proceesing power, my brain got bigger. Or more experience, I'd caught a lot more balls by then.
I doubt very much the brain is clunking through calculus.
Sure it is. What do you think "more experience" means? It means that the neurons in your brain have reconnected in ways to tackle a task better each time. It doesn't necessarily mean your brain did it one way or another. Let's look at the two ways that a wetware computer could catch the ball:
A) Mathematics. [Input: (Here is the ball now. And here is where it is now. And this is roughtly how fast the wind is blowing and what direction it is coming from...) -> Process (Compare position of the ball at time A to that of time B, then to time C, the path is making an arc... Extrapolate that arc. Where will the ball be at time D? -> Output (Move those hands and catch!)]. That doesn't necessarily mean you used more neurons (your "bigger brain") to do it. It's like taking a chunk of mixed silicon and metal and turning it one step at a time into a 3GHz custom CPU. Reorganization made for faster processing.
B) Look up tables. Keep a log of past experiences, the solution to each experience and reference it each time a task is done. Certain things your brain probably only uses a lookup table for -- digit - by - digit multiplication for example. The brain recognizes a Platonistic "football-ish" object and throws it into the works. It thinks, what did I do the last time I had a football pitched it right at my noggin?
But you can't tell me that the circumstances are the same every time someone throws you the ball. If your brain was simply trying to catch by following previous experiences, it would fail to find a previous experience when the wind suddenly shifts and blows hard. Or you trip over a rock, stumble and still make the catch. Or the ball travels at a different speed. Do you just stand there, or improvise? If your brain isn't doing any actual number crunching to catch that ball, did you only catch it the last time by chance? And just think of how much storage space would be needed to hold every experience! Quite the cluttered mess. It makes much more sense in this situation to reply more upon the math than it does look up tables.
So the last poster was right. A brain does do math to catch that ball. And you're right, a brain does reference previous experiences when trying to catch that ball.
Since this math is done by specialized brain functions that were prepared to do just that, and are inseperably integrated with other brain connections -- it doesn't mean that you could take that calculus ability and use it for another task. But the math is being done.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Software!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Jon
The idea of a brain that could do a lot more than we ever used it for, by very simple means, is an evolutionary impossibility - it could never have evolved. The idea is absurd.
And yet it is true.
Another reason that trying to explain human origins in terms of evolutionary biology is impossible.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
its like comparing apples and brains.
think about that for a second, mac fans.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
And nobody mentioning that the thing runs on Linux??
I doubt, therefore I may be.