Flying By Brain

rat brains by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-23 13:02 · Score: 4, Funny

the last thing i want is a rat flying my plane

Re:rat brains by eingram · 2004-10-23 13:15 · Score: 4, Funny

Well, that now makes all rats possible terrorists. Please report any unusual rat activity ASAP.

Uhm, not the appropriate response, but by MrHanky · 2004-10-23 13:02 · Score: 4, Funny

The first thing I thought was: I want one. Wonder if it could learn to play GTA?

Abby someone by Alien+Being · 2004-10-23 13:03 · Score: 5, Funny

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein : Igor, would you mind telling me whose brain I did put in?
Igor : And you won't be angry?
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein : I will NOT be angry.
Igor : Abby someone.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein : Abby someone. Abby who?
Igor : Abby Normal.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein : Abby Normal?
Igor : I'm almost sure that was the name.

Re:Abby someone by pipingguy · 2004-10-23 16:52 · Score: 4, Informative

What hump?

The quoted dialogue above is a hilarious exchange from an extremely funny movie. They made it in B&W and it still worked in 1974. Today it's quite a cult classic.

I haven't seen a slashdot name of Abby Normal yet and you can always slip brains through slot in door after 5PM.

What's next.. by KinkifyTheNation · 2004-10-23 13:05 · Score: 5, Funny

Are we getting closer to create an artificially made conscious being, or perhaps, a living computer?

Or better yet, self-controlled flying lawnmowers!

Does this......? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-23 13:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

Does this freak the shit out of anyone else?

Re:working backwards by metlin · 2004-10-23 13:06 · Score: 4, Funny

Chicken-egg problem, anyone? :)

Jesus Christ!

Am I the only one who thought of the dangerous consequences of this?!

Wait and watch, they're just about to embark on the creation of Pinky and the Brain :-/

Pinky: What are we going to do tonight, Brain?
Brain: Same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try and find myself a Brain.

ObSimpsons.... by Elminst · 2004-10-23 13:07 · Score: 5, Funny

I for one welcome our new plane-flying rat-brain overlords...

--
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.

Fire Ron Zook by daidojiuji · 2004-10-23 13:08 · Score: 4, Funny

As a recent graduate of the University of Florida, I have one question to ask of these researchers: How many days do we have to wait until they have a prototype that can function as the football team's head coach? It can't be too hard to do better than Coach Zook.

One question... by doublebackslash · 2004-10-23 13:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

How did the clump of neurons know what they were trying to accomplish? More precicely, why didn't they try to crash the plane? What sort of positive/negative feedback did they use? I understand that this works, and vaugely how it works, but i can't wrap my poor little brain around what sort of feedback they used!

--
md5sum /boot/vmlinuz
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e /boot/vmlinuz

Re:One question... by ajna · 2004-10-23 13:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

The parent post is simplistic and misinformed. Here's why:

Point 1: This isn't a brain we're talking about, it's 25,000 neurons in a dish that has a grid of electrodes on the bottom, so whatever structure has come to being is unlikely to resemble that of a brain except that it's made up of neurons which synapse on other neurons.

Point 2: Pleasure and pain are not localized in the brain. You can feel many different kinds of pain (visceral via sympathetic nervous system vs. somatic, for instance) and can feel each of these kinds of pain at different regions in the body (and thus different groups of neurons in the brain). I imagine the same holds true for pleasure, with different neurotransmitter pathways involved for each.

About the grandparent, that's exactly what I wondered too, and I couldn't find any pertinent info in the two articles either. The two following paragraphs are what I find to be very handwavy and suspect:

"Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn't know how to control the aircraft," DeMarse said.

"So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft."
Re:One question... by Hatta · 2004-10-23 14:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

About the grandparent, that's exactly what I wondered too, and I couldn't find any pertinent info in the two articles either. The two following paragraphs are what I find to be very handwavy and suspect

He's talking to the lay press, give him a break. Even if he gave the information we all want, it's likely the reporter didn't understand it well enough to realise its importance. We'll just have to wait until his paper is published to find out how he's done it.

--
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Re:One question... by starm_ · 2004-10-23 14:53 · Score: 5, Informative

Well I took a course about artificial neural net (not the biological ones like here). But we learn that biologocal neurons learn by repetition and correlation. When a neuron sees a pattern it tries to repeat it. They probably ran the simulator under different conditions. While giving input to the neurons they forced the output signals. (with simple voltages) The neurons learned these output signals. Afterwards, they just had to give the inputs signals and the neural net would automatically give the output signals it got used to.

basically the net learns an unlinear function or the inputs. outputi = fi(input1,input2,input3,input4 ...) and these are all voltage pulses (caused by chemical reactions and input signal from the computer)in the neural net.
Re:One question... by Quantum+Jim · 2004-10-23 16:02 · Score: 5, Informative

why didn't they try to crash the plane? What sort of positive/negative feedback did they use?

The second article stated that neurons were given information on the tilt of the airplane:

To control the simulated aircraft, the neurons first receive information from the computer about flight conditions: whether the plane is flying straight and level or is tilted to the left or to the right. The neurons then analyze the data and respond by sending signals to the plane's controls. Those signals alter the flight path and new information is sent to the neurons, creating a feedback system.

It seems that this experiment builds on earier research by DeMarse, Wagenaar, Blau, and Potter in 2001 called the the animat. It wondered in a box without goal-specific behavior. However, it also tended to specific patterns and states. That is a very readable article - I highly suggest you read it.

But why did the neurons want to stablize the aircraft? I couldn't find a paper on the aircraft experiment, but a second paper, "Removing some 'A' from AI: Embodied Cultured Networks" (by Bakkum, Shkolnik, Ben-Ary, Gamblen, DeMarse, and Potter, 2004) summarized another experiment where neurons were trained to keep a set distance from an object. The paper is the first article on the same page of publications as the first paper. It seems that the neural network responded nonlinearly - that is, it changed state from one behavior to another one - when the input stimulus frequency was adjusted (correct me if I'm wrong). So by changing the input stimulus frequency, they were able to train the network. I gather that the new experiment simply uses when certain "level = good, nonlevel = bad" stimuli. It's a long way off from Robocop II, but it is a start.

--
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
Re:One question... by tyler_larson · 2004-10-23 17:28 · Score: 5, Interesting

How did the clump of neurons know what they were trying to accomplish? More precicely, why didn't they try to crash the plane?
I think it's significant that they chose a flight simulator instead of a more traditional "game" to teach the newly formed brain.
Here's a couple of points to remember:
The difference between the makeup, function, and behavior of a given type of cells between one species and another is so insignificant (remember, we're talking on a cellular level) that they can generally be ignored. You can almost always assume that a given cell type in one organism will behave identically to a parallel cell in another. The species that the cell came from is all but insignificant.
Brain cells, (in humans and in other species) are amazingly versatile. While capable of specializing (vision centers, speech centers, etc.), these cells seem to be capable of taking on any function necessary for the benefit of the organism. For example, humans brains in which a specific part has been damaged (such as the vision center) have actually re-mapped other cell groups to take over that function. They do what they have to to survive.
Brain cells are cooperative in nature: if placed in proximity to eachother, they'll work together for their common good (read: survival). They'll "instinctively" form a structure similar to how they're pre-designed to work. They'll form a brain--as fully functional as the situation permits. It doesn't necessarily matter how you arrange them, the brain cells can sort those details out--somehow.
Brains look for order. We've known that for ages. Finding order is how a brain learns, it's how the brain separates relevant details from the background noise. The ability to identify order is the whole basis of intelligence. Every sense, every stimulus, every aspect of the brain has order-seeking overtones. This feature of brains is so absolutely universal that it must be deeply ingrained into the neurons themselves.
Put those details together, and you end up with the following scenario: if you take neurons out of an organism and place them together, they'll form a brain. Probably not as complex or capable a brain as you started with, but a brain none the less. Actually this is the ideal brain to study, as you're starting "from scratch": there's no evolutionary specialization involved. Each cell will attempt to make sense of its neighbors, and as a result, the organism as a whole will attempt to make sense of its environment (brain processes are the ultimate in emergent algorithms). The brain will follow this behavior as if it were necessary to the brain's survival.
Which brings us to the flight simulator. If you instead had the brain play with a chessboard or a clock, the results would probably be unimpressive. But a flight simulator--that's really the perfect environment. There's the potential for the brain to actually order its environment: there are equilibrium points that the brain will eventually find where it has greater control over its inputs. Assuming that flying too hight or too low creates a more chaotic state, you can likely expect the brain to learn to avoid it.
In fact, I'd be very much surprised if you didn't actually see the brain cells start to specialize. Some cells will become responsibe for directly manipulating the flight controls based on the inputs from the brain. Some will attempt to maintain aircraft equilibrium in absence of any other input from the brain. Others will control the aircraft as a whole, their location in the network giving them a better overall picture of the situation than, say, the cells near the controls. Furthermore, I fully expect some cells to not participate at all: cells that are "out of the loop", so to speak, will proably cease most activity to avoid disturbing the overall process.
I, personally, have been waiting to see this very experiment conducted and see the results. I think this is very exciting science.

--
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
Re:One question... by Illserve · 2004-10-23 23:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it's hard to tell because these guys specifically avoid using the technical terminology of the LTP (Long Term Potentiation) literature, probably because they know they aren't getting it and don't want to step into that minefield.

As near as I can tell from their paper at:
http://www.neuro.gatech.edu/groups/potter/papers/D agstuhlAIBakkumpreprint.pdf

the network is not "learning". Rather, they are setting up the system so that the inherent properties of the neurons cause the correct response to the feedback it receives from the environment.

The real knowledge about the task is built into the systems that interface with the neurons.

As an analogy, the neuron is behaving like a spring in a mechanical system, it has some basic fundamental properties that are statistically predictable, and the system around the spring expects it to behave thusly. But because it's a complex system it may take time for the system to settle into the stable state, hence it looks as if the network "learns", when really it's a system of springs settling into an equilibrium.

Not to understate their technical accomplishments. They've done amazing things with cultured neurons. But this is not about reward and punishment, the network is far too simple for such words to have any meaning. It may not even be about learning in the sense of permanently modifying synaptic connections. I can't tell from my first read through, and that's what really sets off the alarm bells.

They also avoid the obvious experiment that should be done if they think long term plasticity is involved. (ie, can it still navigate the next day?)
Re:One question... by NeuroHx0r · 2004-10-24 04:09 · Score: 5, Informative

We did not report LTP because it is NOT LTP. In fact, we are using and effect reported by Eytan, D., Brenner, N., and Marom, S., Selective Adaptation in Networks of Cortical Neurons. Journal of Neuroscience, 2003. 23(28): p. 9349-9356 in which "high" frequency stimulations (once every second) was reported to depress the response of the network while "low" frequency stimulations resulted in an enhanced response. For our system we tied the network's response to the control surfaces, dedicating stimulations on one channel for pitch, and a second for roll control. Each channel is stimulated separately, and the response (PSTH) is recorded. Control movements are proportional to the current error from straight and level by mapping the error (0 to 180 degrees) to the interval 0 to 100 ms of the PSTH and integrating the difference in response before training, to the current or enhanced or depressed levels. The more error, the more the control surface is moved. The networks only gradually control the aircraft since the Marom effect requires over 15 minutes to develop. The two frequencies are then used to adjust these weights (i.e. number of spikes in the PSTH) to produce optimal flight. The neurons/network don't seek optimal flight in the classic sense. Instead, we adjust the weights (using high and low Freq. stims) in the network to produce that result. It is a very simple system and our only interest in it is in terms of those changes within the network and the possibility to extend it to more of the network than just two or three different channels. Hope that helps.. Tom DeMarse

obligatory by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-23 13:08 · Score: 5, Funny

(in drone-like monotone)
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these things.

Re:obligatory by mark-t · 2004-10-23 13:34 · Score: 5, Funny

Actually, since it's a living brain, it may even be able to imagine itself.

--
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'

Great now im going to lose my job by XST1 · 2004-10-23 13:09 · Score: 5, Funny

As an airline pilot for American, its nice to see my job being outsourced by rats in the future.

Re:Great now im going to lose my job by GileadGreene · 2004-10-23 14:06 · Score: 4, Funny

Reminds me of a classic aviation joke one of my commerical pilot friends told me once:
Back in the day, a big plane took a crew of 5 - pilot, copilot, navigator, flight engineer, and radio operator.
Then radio technology improved, and they eliminated the radio operator, so it was down to 4.
Next to go was the navigator, as long range navigation beacons became prevalent. So we're down to 3 crew members.
And even those days are numbered - as planes have become more computerized, flight engineers have become unnecessary, and many newer planes don't require them. So in a lot of cases we're down to just 2 crew members, pilot and copilot.
My friend truly believes that the next step in aviation automation is to eliminate the copilot. Instead, the crew will consist of a pilot, and a dog. The pilot is there to feed the dog...

...and the dog is there to bite the pilot if he touches anything in the cockpit. ;)

Great, how long until... by tao_of_biology · 2004-10-23 13:09 · Score: 4, Funny

they outsource my programming job to a petri dish...

--

-- "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."

Re:teh living computer by thorndt · 2004-10-23 13:09 · Score: 5, Interesting

Am I the only one disturbed by this stuff? I know it's only a rat, but...imagine a world where your brain (sliced and diced) is worth more outside your body than inside. For some reason this kind of reminds me of Larry Niven's classic "Patchwork Girl".

--
- The race is not [always] to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. -

Do you have to think in Russian? by Omega1045 · 2004-10-23 13:11 · Score: 5, Funny

Do you have to think in Russian?

--

Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein

Re:Do you have to think in Russian? by mchinand · 2004-10-23 14:02 · Score: 5, Informative

I assume you're referring to this

Anyone know how it knows what is "good" and "bad?" by Hollinger · 2004-10-23 13:11 · Score: 4, Interesting

So, how is this thing reacting to good and bad?

Did they create a neural net that falls through a given search space to a local or global minimum, or what?

Is "good" a total lack of input, i.e. the plane is flying straight with no lateral or vertical drift, and is degree of input dependent on the amount of lateral motion, etc.?

As I type this, it makes sense that this might be so, but I wonder why the network created a negative feedback system, and not a positive feedback system.

~ Mike

--
Michael C. Hollinger

Human neurons... by zors · 2004-10-23 13:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

I wonder if human neurons would be more effective? Or are all neurons created equal, and only the structure of a brain makes it more or less intelligent? Could we grow rat neurons into a human brain? Maybe we could customize brains for certain abilities, by growing them along certain structures. I don't have alot of personal knowledge here, so i'm just putting out some questions that this brought up for me.

Re:Human neurons... by reporter · 2004-10-23 13:17 · Score: 5, Interesting

Could we grow rat neurons into a human brain?
The answer is "yes".
Currently, one of the experimental treatments for Parkinson's disease is to insert brain cells from pigs into human brains. The patients have responded well, and the pig cells do thrive within the human brain.

Re:Rats... by BasilBrush · 2004-10-23 13:24 · Score: 4, Funny

Making them pilot a flying aircraft is one thing, but you'll never get them to helm a sinking ship.

Re:Anyone know how it knows what is "good" and "ba by nucal · 2004-10-23 13:25 · Score: 5, Informative

Steve Potter, the former mentor of the UF researcher has a pretty thorough description of it. http://www.neuro.gatech.edu/groups/potter/animat.h tml

sea slugs by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-23 13:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

I know of similar work with sea slugs in an off-campus lab funded partly by UF (the Whitney Lab). I'm not _too_ familiar with it, so this may not be entirely accurate. Basically, they found that neurons in the brain of the seaslugs are always in the same positions as other animals of the same species. They then started training animals, much like pavlov's dogs, to close their siphon whenever they were electrically shocked on their tail (by touching the siphon whenever they were shocked so the animal would relate the 2 stimuli). They then could isolate the neurons in the brain and train then individually. Two neurons in a petri dish would gradually connect and then share information. At the moment the group is working on identifying which genes control what part of the brain, or something like that..

Re:Huh? by MoralHazard · 2004-10-23 13:28 · Score: 4, Informative

I'll bite. No, this doesn't necessarily mean that a rat could be trained to fly a plane. A rat has millions of neurons, but most of them are taken up full-time doing specific things (strangely enough, a lot of that is scent processing). But if you can define goals for the rat, you can probably train it to do a lot of things, including a subset of the plane-flying challenge.

You don't want to think of the neurons as "hardware" exactly, either. The process of building and training a neural network is about replacing the programming component of building a system, not about replacing the hardware. Writing a piece of software to fly a plane by itself is hard work--complicated task, not easily reduced to algorithmic instruction sets. Lots of tiny rule modifications needed to the basic set of "maintain altitude and heading". The trick with neural nets is that you set up the network, and then you train it by trial and error to do the task. It programs itself, essentially.

We can and do build neural net simulations in pure software, which is where most of the research has been done so far. But neural net simulations on computers are VERY computationally expensive and take up a shitload of memory, so there are limits as to how big you can make your simulation and still do anything with it. This is a big problem, because neural nets can potentially do incredibly interesting things (like, say sentience!) if they get big enough--but we don't have computers big enough to model neural nets as complicated as we'd like.

I know the article says that these guys are only using this project to investigate how neurons work in the real world, but the potential applications of this are big. Neural nets using actual neurons, not expensive simulations, could be cheap enough to build and train that they would find commercial uses.

Re:really scary by pclminion · 2004-10-23 13:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

Not really. The network of neurons is not conscious; it's just a mass of cells that happens to have a way to communicate with each other that's convenient for the application.

What? How can you possibly assert that? I could make the same claim about you. All you are is a "bunch of neurons" that exhibits complex behavior. I have absolutely no reason to suspect that you are conscious. Sure, you act like you're conscious, but you're just saying that.

Re:working backwards by Shinglor · 2004-10-23 13:30 · Score: 5, Informative

A brain is a neural network. Artificial neural networks were created to simulate them using mathematical models.

Re:Brain bags! by RedCard · 2004-10-23 13:30 · Score: 5, Funny

Soon we will all be augmented by our extra brain bags! Organic computers in a purse that we either wear or have implanted in our abdomens

To quote the work of Scott Adams...

Dogbert: (Talking to PHB at the office) The dogbert consulting company will plot a new course for your business

Dogbert: My consultants are so smart that their brains don't fit in their heads. They have to strap the extra brains to their torsos.

Ratbert: (Later at home) Why do I need a piece of liver strapped to my torso?

Dogbert: I got a little carried away at the pitch meeting.

Re:really scary by Usquebaugh · 2004-10-23 13:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

But is it self aware? At present I would doubt it, but maybe in the future, just maybe.

This I find fascinating. The moral ramifications are huge.

For starters if it becomes self aware, is it alive like us? If so are we no more than complex machines or is there something else? :-)

Re:Disturbing Experiment: Who is "I"? by pclminion · 2004-10-23 13:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

If we conducted a similar experiment with a human brain, would the artifical brain now be separate and distinct from the human victim who surrendered the brain cells for the artificial brain? Have we created 2 "souls"?

Does the question even mean anything?

Years ago, patients with extreme cases of epilepsy were treated by severing the connection between the left and right halves of the brain. The theory was that this would prevent the "electrical storm" of the seizure from propagating from one side of the brain to the other. This would supposedly reduce the frequency and severity of the seizures.

As a result, these individuals had, in their skulls, two independent brains with no communication link between them (a simplification, but mostly accurate). These patients would report strange experiences, such as getting up out of a chair and walking to another room, without having any idea why they were doing it. Essentially, the two halves of their brains were functioning independently, and sometimes "fought" over what the body was going to do.

It's a very interesting question -- did the "person" go into the left half of the brain, or the right? If it went into the left side, for example, what happened to the right side? Is it now a soulless automaton? How can a single person exist in two conscious modes simultaneously? Yet these people live normal lives, for the most part.

Sadly, you are trolling. But you raise an interesting point.

This is your brain... by Eric+Giguere · 2004-10-23 13:36 · Score: 5, Funny

Adds a whole new dimension to the commercial, doesn't it?

This is your brain...
This is your brain on drugs...
This is your brain on drugs flying a plane without you...

Eric
Why Vioxx is Prozac for lawyers

Re:teh living computer by WhiteDeath · 2004-10-23 13:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

It's not too difficult to find a source of brains - visit your local abbatoir.

Wouldn't want to use the sheep brains though.... Imagine a "mob" of aircraft playing follow the leader...

Seriously, you would want to use something with a life span of more than a few years - besides, how do you do backups? how do you transfer existing knowledge to the new, untrained brain? (I mean more efficiently than us humans manage to using our existing I/O ports).

Ladies and gentlemen, from the flight deck by HangingChad · 2004-10-23 13:41 · Score: 5, Funny

This is your captain, Rat Brain 4023, integrated neural network and my first officer, Rat Brain 4024. We'll be flying at an altitude of 30,000 feet and are expecting a nice smooth ride-- HOLY SHIT CHEESE!!! LOOK OVER THERE IT'S CHEESE!!! Ooop, sorry about that, false alarm. We're expecting nice weather in HEY THERE"s A F*ING CAT IN THE CARGO HOLD!!! Eject! Eject! Eject!

--
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage

And what is consciousness? by Colin+Smith · 2004-10-23 13:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

What makes you think a large simulation of a brain won't be conscious?

http://www.ad.com/

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Deleted

Re:Brain bags! by node+3 · 2004-10-23 13:49 · Score: 4, Funny

Soon we will all be augmented by our extra brain bags! Organic computers in a purse that we either wear or have implanted in our abdomens. I can't wait for the beta test.

People with their brains implated in their (lower) abdomen? We've already got those. They're called "The RIAA".

Re:No Feedback Loop by dont_think_twice · 2004-10-23 13:50 · Score: 4, Funny

Frankly a collection of neurons just isn't powerful enough to "learn" how to fly a plane.

I will mention that to the pilot next time I get on an airplane.

Re:Ethics? by TheAntiCrust · 2004-10-23 13:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

You better be vegetarian! I, for one, know of many larger and more common masses of neurons that definately can feel things that are having much worse existances than flying a virtual plane.

neurogenesis by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-23 13:53 · Score: 5, Informative

Well, neurons are living cells... ...and therefore they can reproduce. This is called neurogenesis...and as I understand it can be stimulated by appropriate amounts of neurotrophin and other chemicals.

However, with all animal brains, there comes a point in the creature's development where the death rate is greater than the birth rate. In humans it happens at about three years, if memory serves (heh). If we could manage to find the correct chemical balance to maintain an average cell count indefinately, then perhaps we could devise a dietary supplement that would have the same (or better) effect on humans...

Of course, giving a person a lot of neurons doesn't mean that person will make use of them...

Re:neurogenesis by parvati · 2004-10-23 17:43 · Score: 4, Interesting

The parent certainly wasn't modded "5" for accuracy. Neurons are terminally differentiated and therefore CANNOT divide (or "reproduce," as the parent called it). In fact, if you stimulate an adult neuron with "divide" signals, you often get an apoptotic neuron. Neural STEM CELLS can divide, and some of them hang out near the ventricles in the adult brain and continue to produce neurons throughout life--newly born neurons have even been observed in damaged areas of Alzheimers' brains.

As far as the Wired article is concerned, this sounds pretty cool, but I never trust the popular press for scientific accuracy. The peer-reviewed paper will be worth reading.

Re:No Feedback Loop by Hatta · 2004-10-23 13:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

Don't anthromorphize the neuron. Neurons self organize and process signals in completely unconscious structures with no sense of pleasure. The neurons of the spinal cord, retina, or enteric nervous system for instance. Self organization and signal processing is just what neurons do. We've known for some time that certain types of electrical stimulation (high frequency) can strengthen a connection where as other (low frequency) can weaken a connection. But how this turns into computation, we don't have a clue.

I am really excited about this. If we can standardize this process, this gives us a whole new in vitro method for studying how neurons learn. Then we can apply drugs, or knock out proteins, or even do fluorescent imaging on the live neurons as they think. This could be as big a leap forward in the understanding of the mind as PCR or western blotting have been to understanding the cell.

--
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!

Something is wrong here by felonius+maximus · 2004-10-23 14:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

Despite finding this technology exciting, I also find myself feeling quite disturbed by it.

There are certainly some amazing opportunities here to learn about how brains work, and no doubt this could help us in building better interfaces for cybernetic implants.

I just feel very uncomfortable with this kind of experimentation. It is my understanding that given enough complexity, any system has the potential to become self-aware. This plate has 25,000 neurons in a roughly two-dimensonal matrix (from the Wired article), so it's probably not even as smart as a bug so far (I am just guessing about this, does anyone have figures to compare this to?), but given enough space and time, might it not become sentient?

This reminds me of a similar experiment involving a fish brain controlling a robot. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1043001.stm

Then again - maybe I am being squeamish for no reason. After all, if your entire existence was flying imaginary planes, maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

Re:Something is wrong here by sonicattack · 2004-10-23 18:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

What scares me quite a bit about creating artificial neural networks, is how consciousness and the experience of pain comes into the equation.

Does any complex enough system have a consciousness, just as we do? Is that "equilibrium" the system is trying to accomplish experienced as something similar to a person trying to keep their balance on their feet? As a person trying to keep their body away from a surrounding fire?

What if there is a sharp feeling of discomfort in such an artificial system when its input parameters are not within "specifications" (plane flying level)?

Can the experience of pain / discomfort always be measured from outside? Should we continue creating artificial neural networks if we can't answer that question?

Then again - maybe I am being squeamish for no reason.

Certainly not. I think these questions should be seriously considered, since we may eventually (if we haven't already) be creating a real conscious being, perhaps with no way ever of telling the outside world that it experiences a constant feeling of pain....

After all, if your entire existence was flying imaginary planes, maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

... or even boredom.

Bigger Problem is Growth of Novel Germs by reporter · 2004-10-23 14:06 · Score: 5, Informative

Here is a reputable article about the use of pig brain cells in human brains. There is always the problem of an immune system reaction, but the bigger problem is the development of super germs that cross the species barrier.

Saw this a few days ago... by jafiwam · 2004-10-23 14:12 · Score: 5, Funny

... and something is REALLY bugging me about it.

How do you motivate a slice of rat brain to fly a plane? Does it feal pain when it crashes? Get nutrients when it flys far? What?

All too soon we will see little USB plug ins with these things to help the rail-gun spawn-campers aim fast in UT2024; Ultimate.

[FuZZy1] Punched a hole in 3L1T3's cranium
[3L1T3>] NOOB!
[3L1T3]; Rat-bot camper!
[FuZZy1]; LOL!1 That why tehy call me Fuzzy1

Re:Rats... by craXORjack · 2004-10-23 14:36 · Score: 4, Funny

Making them pilot a flying aircraft is one thing, but you'll never get them to helm a sinking ship.

Or to say "Mission Accomplished!"

--
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.

The rodent-feline arms race has begun. by PinchDuck · 2004-10-23 14:42 · Score: 5, Funny

Rats are ugly and disgusting and already have claws and teeth and biological weapons capability...now we give them Sidewinders, air-to-ground missles and 20 MM cannon. That's disturbing.

I'm immediately going to deploy a network of cat-neuron controlled anti-aircraft missle batteries.

damned rats.

Different brain cells by Tablizer · 2004-10-23 14:43 · Score: 5, Funny

They tried brain cells from different individuals. Here is the result:

Osama's cells: Plane kept crashing into buildings.

PHB cells: Plane kept flying in circles until it ran out of gas.

Bill Gates cells: Plane kept locking up.

SCO lawyer cells: Plane kept crashing, but blaming other planes.

RMS cells: Plane wanted to call itself "GNU Plane".

G.W. Bush cells: Plane kept crashing into Saddam Hussein no matter what, even if Osama was placed right next to Saddam.

John Kerry cells: Plane would fly to the left, and then to the right, and then to the left....

Slashdot reader cells: Plane would try to fly without first reading the flying manual.

Steve Jobs cells: Plane transformed itself into a slick, modern, translucent jet, but priced itself too high.

Mike Melvill cells: Plane kept going up and up until we lost track of it.

Emacs coder cells: Plane became a boat, a car, a house, a lawn mower, and a finger-nail clipper.

--
Table-ized A.I.

I can't believe it by blamanj · 2004-10-23 15:00 · Score: 5, Funny

Nearly 200 responses and nobody has asked if it runs Linux.

Re:Just because we can? by Bitsy+Boffin · 2004-10-23 15:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

I think I've been successfully trolled, but...

How are we to learn, if we don't experiment? These findings could directly and indirectly fundamentally improve our understanding of how the brain operates, and indeed make it so that we can study the workings of brains up close & personal without being invasive into a living creature - human, rat or otherwise.

Isn't that a good thing?

You kind of remind me of a quote from Steven Hawking regarding something the pope said..

"He [the pope] told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God."

--
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings

Re:Just because we can? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-23 15:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

How do you define "consciousness". Is an atom conscious? Chemical compound? Chemical reactions? A cell? 10 connected cells? 25,000 connected cells?

Is it when something that can 'learn'? We have computer programs that can learn.
Is something suddenly conscious when it neurons are connected? You have neurons in your leg, is your leg conscious?

Is it something can react with the enviroment? Sperm can react with the enviroment, is it conscious?

Define what it is you are actually against. They got a bunch of cells, and made it send electrical signals in a certin way.

As you say "a wise society is one that can do something, yet chooses not to and offers their reasoning for others to contemplate." But you have offered not reasoning other than to say YOU can't ethically deal with a bunch of cells sending electrochemical reactions to a few other cells and a computer.

Personally I would happly give them 25,000 of my some 100 billion neurons (In my brain alone) if it means that in the future someone who has brain damage can have their brain repaired and have their life go back to normal.

Re:teh living computer by mikael · 2004-10-23 15:56 · Score: 4, Funny

I believe the Australians have already have run simulations of heavily armed rebel kangaroos in the outback.

About kangaroos and bazookas.

It seems that an american company, which shall remain nameless because some friends of mine were working there at the time, was trying to sell a battlefield simulation program to the Australian military. The intent was to integrate it with some flight-simulators so that the Aussie pilots could have a realistic battlefield with simulations of some of the semi-random events that surround and confuse real battles to fly through.

In order to try to put on a more effective sales presentation, the orders came down to customize it -- which meant building some distinctly australian things into the system in order to impress upon the militarish folk reviewing the system that (A) the system could be quickly and easily reconfigured or altered, and (B), the company was *REALLY* serious about making this sale.

So, Australian fauna was coded in -- in particular, kangaroos. The 'roos represented a real concern for possibly confusing pilots, because they have an upright posture, they're about man-sized, and they move *fast*. If you're not paying attention, or if you're looking mainly at IR traces in a night-fight, it could be pretty easy to confuse them with soldiers.

The shop used Object-Oriented programming - a technique in which each 'object type' is a subtype of some more fundamental type. This saves work because you can 'inherit' behaviors and constraints from the more fundamental type, and write new code only for the stuff that's actually different. In the case of the kangaroos, they 'inherited' from ground troopers (the base type for most of the non-aircraft in the simulation), and put in different data for returning an image, to make them look like kangaroos. They put in different parameters for movement, to make them faster than humans (a lot faster). They used the "not under orders/cut off from c-cubed-i" methods for troopers as the primary methods for the 'roos, to simulate that they didn't have objectives or strategies, and they set their morale to 'low' because mobs of kangaroos don't hang together or fight panic the way platoons of human soldiers do.

They got orders to include kangaroos about forty-eight hours before the scheduled demo, and did it in one night. They figured they were all set.

So, cut past the sales presentation and into the demo. Some pretty high-up officer from the Aussie air force is seated in the flight simulator, flying over this simulated battlefield in his simulated aircraft, and admiring all the simulated details.

And he spots a mob of kangaroos.

So, just to see how they'll react, he buzzes the 'roos. They scatter, of course, bounding away at a realistic kangaroo top-speed in a dozen different directions. The officer laughs, turns his airplane around to get a good look at how that's working, and then gets a nasty surprise. It seems that some of the kangaroos had regrouped, ducked around a nearby ridge and set up an ambush for him using surface-to-air missiles. He didn't see them, so around the ridge he went looking for them - and then he gets a shriek on his missile-detecting radar and the next second his simulated plane turns into a great big simulated fireball.

Yup.... the guys never quite managed to override that 'response to attack' method. Just forgot, I guess. And didn't see it in testing because they never actually *buzzed* the mob of 'roos and then got back into missile range.

The unexpected thing? The officer was delighted. He'd been looking for a way to get his pilots trained to leave the damn mobs of kangaroos alone. He forbade the americans to fix the 'error'. And the Australians actually bought that system, complete with bazooka-packing kangaroos.

--
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads

No, because we want to. by Rui+del-Negro · 2004-10-23 16:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

I believe in the "sanctity" of "life", and I think it's wrong to put one person's heart inside another person's chest. If you want to give someone a working heart, fine, but grow one "from scratch". I "know" transplants are just "wrong".

I believe in the "sanctity" of "life", and I think it's wrong to give one person the blood of another. If you need blood to save someone's life, then create blood "from scratch". I "know" transfusions are just "wrong".

I believe in the "sanctity" of "life", and I think it's wrong to perform artificial insemination. If you want to help people who are trying to have children, you should er... create a child from scratch? Or maybe just pray for them (a lot)? Anyway, I "know" IVF is just "wrong".

Guess what, creating those things "from scratch" is very, very hard. And assuming someone put the time and effort into it and created them, what then? A neuron would still be a neuron, whether it came from a brain or from a test tube. And if your problem is with the (abstract) "mind", then how do you manage to turn off your PC? A modern computer, running a modern OS, displays more "intelligent" behaviour than many insects. Is a "mind" any less "sacred" if it's silicon-based, instead of carbon-based?

These experiments are very much right, and should have been done a long time ago. Modern medicine can do amazing things with muscle and bone and skin, but nearly all nervous and neural diseases are impossible to cure or even treat. A lot more research is needed.

Neurons are no more "sacred" than any other cell type (spermatozoons, for example). In fact, millions of both are wasted every second.

Re:working backwards by Shinmizu · 2004-10-23 16:40 · Score: 5, Funny

The egg came first. Why? Well, everything either tastes like chicken or is made from soy. Chicken isn't made from soy, so it can't possibly be a derivative of it. Likewise, soy doesn't taste like chicken.

The egg came first, it hatched out a soybean and a chicken. The soybean evolved into veggie burgers, dirt, and Chevy Avalanches. The chicken eventually evolved into numerous animals, possibly including humans.

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