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Researchers Simulate Building Block of Rat's Brain
slick_shoes passes on an article in the Guardian about the Blue Brain project in Switzerland that has developed a computer simulation of the neocortical column — the basic building block of the neocortex, the higher functioning part of our brains — of a two-week-old rat. (Here is the project site.) The model, running on an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer, simulates 10,000 neurons and all their interconnections. It behaves exactly like its biological counterpart. Thousands of such NCCs make up a rat's neocortex, and millions a human's. "Project director Henry Markram believes that with the state of technology today, it is possible to build an entire rat's neocortex. From there, it's cats, then monkeys and finally, a human brain."
Well, we might not find a faster way to do it. Doesn't matter, eventually, this will work.
... will society grant computer intelligences the same rights that us humans do?
it's rats,politicians, cats, then monkeys and finally, a human brain
Researchers have been running models to simulate brain structures for years now. Not that impressive. Most of the models make lots of assumptions that may or may not hold true in the actual biology.
This type of research is cool, but neuroscientists generally aren't impressed until results can be reproduced in a living system.
You know how much easier it would be to write AI that simulates the actions the rat takes instead of the thoughts it has that cause the action? I mean geeze, write a find food sub and run around sub and a couple more and you've got the basic behavior. But of course someone's gonna want to reply saying "But the point isn't to replicate rat behavior" to which I say, what even is the point of this? The article is titled "Lab comes one step closer to building artificial human brain" but um...why would you want to do that either? If you want to do something that requires the use of a machine identical to a human brain, just use a human brain lol. And this really isn't the right approach to building an advanced AI system that's better than the human brain so I don't think there's a point to this line of invention at all.
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Society can change quickly if required to. Consider that blacks only got the vote in USA in the last 50 years.
Far more importantly: Can this rat brain fly a plane?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
A rat brain can fly a plane. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/11/02/brain.dish/ . Can the AI thing do this? If so, it might be cheaper to replace pilots with these AI boxes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
That is technically impossible, considering the behavior of the mammalian brain is not well understood at any level. Even intracellular processes are still under investigation; how synapses are regulated, interactions between neurons, and higher level functioning are still matters of great contention.
Even if these processes were well understood, our simulation methods are not sufficient to accurately represent the massively parallel structure of a brain.
- Demosthenes
cynicsreport.com
So, when do we get the inevitable joke about Linux being ported to the human brain?
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
Why not pull together 4x more neurons and interconnections than humans have. Then maybe IBM will have... "Dave, I'm feeling much better now!"
Philosophy and theology aside, would it be possible to "ghost" my brain into a computer. Who wouldn't want to seek immortality even if it is artificial?
Life is not for the lazy.
Simulation may be one thing, but what about modeling the actual functioning? If I make, say, a computer model of snow flakes, that by no means indicates that it models the complexities of a snow storm.
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believes that with the state of technology today, it is possible to build an entire rat's neocortex. From there, it's cats, then monkeys and finally, a human brain."
It would be satisfying to resurrect the consciousness of people in the past that you hate, and beat the living @&#%! out of them. The guy who invented neckties and the inventor of the QWERTY keyboard layout come to mind. Put them in Doom and blast 'em up.
Table-ized A.I.
Not to be a doubting Thomas but I think that they are underestimating the complexity of a brain. There are many different chemicals and biochemical reactions going on in the body, that science has only a vague idea of their mechanisms. Look at any drug in the market, most of them only give conjecture on why they work. My feeling is that until one day when we can create computer models that reliable predict the effects of drugs in the brain or in the body in general, these models are nowhere near what real brains are. But I would also love to be proven wrong.
This is where real machine intelligence will come from.
Imagine simulating a human brain, but then incorporating an interface with software that enhances its functionality - from super-fast arithmetic to image output - the results would be incredible.
Amnesty International
I thought lobsters were first.
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nt
Insert obligatory rat-brained politician joke here in 3...2...1...
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"and finally, a human brain."
Why stop there?
and the out of all this research was...
Wheres the cheese? Wheres the Cheese? Who cut the cheese? I wannna get me some cheese. Where did I put that cheese? Where?, where? has my cheese gone?
Blue/Gene L is rated at 500 TFLOPS, which is impressive, however if you don't need double-precision to do this stuff, you can run very fast on much cheaper hardware. I was looking at Nvidia Tesla cards and boxes recently, and those are claimed to pump out 500 GFLOPS per CPU... with a 4 CPU device (1 TFLOP) taking up 1U of rackspace. I think this technology will ramp up a lot faster than people expect.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
If we ever learn how to build a consciousness in a computer, will we grant it the ability to receive social security payments? If we ever find a way to put a human consciousness computer, will the consciousness be liable for health benefits? If it receives health benefits will it receive less because it takes less maintenance? If so, will health care companies to start prod people into "cyberizing" because it costs less?
It's amazing how some people want the computing resources to simulate a rat's brain but still can't simulate a honeybee's brain and the resultant behavioral complexity. After all, a bee's brain has only about a million neurons. It could probably be done on a desktop machine and yet, a bee's behavior is amazingly sophisticated. Is it me or does it seem that some people have no clue as to what constitutes intelligence and would rather spend the taxpayer's money on what can only be qualified as useless goals?
Would it not be much better to implement a downsized version of the human brain (with all the various cortices) and see if it can learn and adapt to the environment? But then again, that would be too much to ask since Markram et al don't have an overall theory of brain operation. It's better to keep your sights as high as possible and have an excuse as to why your artificial brain or cortical column is no more intelligent than a flea: you always need faster and more expensive computers. And more funding. Yeah.
Dolphins?
[The Universe] has gone offline.
Stainless Steel Rats
Wow, these scientists really were shooting for the stars. Why not start small, like say the brain of a GOP presidential candidate or that of a Britney Spears fan?
"Kinda hard to duplicate a car without knowing how it works."
You don't know anything abut what simulation is for if you make such a statement.
Simulation is the mainstay of both many branches of science (as the article states, not so much in biology... yet) and engineering.
It works like this:
1. Find a way to mathematically describe individual _parts_ of the behavior of _parts_ at a certain level of abstraction.
2. Using this mathematical model, create what is called a behavioral simulation model. This is the math implemented as a program.
3. Apply some recorded stimulus to this model (program) and see if the results are accurate at the level of abstraction desired.
4. Go back to step 1 until the simulation error is acceptable
5. Combine instances of the model and other models. The results will help you understand what is happening and make predictions...
6. - Now the part you didn't understand - you use those predictions and test their accuracy at a _different_ level of abstraction (a higher one).
This way, you build a simulation of the larger picture. Get it? At this point, individual neurons have been simulated (proven). Synapses
also. Now, this new model simulates, as I understand it, the rules for combining these blocks together. That's way it talks about
finding and optimizing the connections of the synapses and neurons.
I suspect it's likely accurate, but more importantly I expect it will make testable predictions and so it's not just "It's accurate, look
at the pretty pictures!".
Here's the trouble with experiments like this. God obfuscated the machine code of the human brain to such an extent that we'll never figure it out. Oh wait, that only applies to womens' brains.
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... will it run Linux?
This could turn out to be a way to figure out some of the great blockbuster philosophical problems that puzzle and infuriate anybody who has not read Oolon Colluphid.
If the scientists built an entire human brain they will presumably fail to install such things as Free Will - A concept which philosophers still argue is logically possible.
Will this prove that Free Will does not exist?
Or will it simply be impossible to detect?
For a sort of example of this remember William Gibson's consideration of this in his book "Neuromancer".
In that passage the mind of the hacker Case has been trapped inside a massive artificial intelligence where he improbably finds his lost girlfriend and a young boy, the manifestation of the AI known as Neuromancer on a beach.
"And here things could be counted, each one. He knew the
number of grains of sand in the construct of the beach (a number
coded in a mathematical system that existed nowhere outside
the mind that was Neuromancer). He knew the number of
yellow food packets in the canisters in the bunker (four hundred
and seven). He knew the number of brass teeth in the left half
of the open zipper of the salt-crusted leather jacket that Linda
Lee wore as she trudged along the sunset beach, swinging a
stick of driftwood in her hand (two hundred and two).
He banked Kuang above the beach and swung the program
in a wide circle, seeing the black shark thing through her eyes,
a silent ghost hungry against the banks of lowering cloud. She
cringed, dropping her stick, and ran. He knew the rate of her
pulse, the length of her stride in measurements that would have
satisfied the most exacting standards of geophysics.
"But you do not know her thoughts," the boy said, beside
him now in the shark thing's heart. "I do not know her thoughts.
You were wrong, Case. To live here is to live. There is no
difference."
Linda in her panic, plunging blind through the surf.
"Stop her," he said, "she'll hurt herself."
"I can't stop her," the boy said, his gray eyes mild and
beautiful."
Can you imagine shoving a Beowulf Cluster of these up your ass?
"Project director Henry Markram believes that with the state of technology today, it is possible to build an entire rat's neocortex. From there, it's cats, then monkeys and finally, a human brain."
Why stop there? I wonder, when will they have any success simulating a part of God's brain.
I have questions regarding the theoretical possibility of AI. I've asked at proggit, but haven't received good answers yet (see here for my discussion, search for yters), so I figured I'd try here.
1. Given that the CS consensus seems to be strong AI can't be algorithmic, how does modeling brain functions get around this? Plus, what is a non algorithmic method of automation? Isn't automation by definition algorithmic?
2. Strong AI seems to result in cognitive dissonance. Say consciousness is a necessity for intelligence. Say strong AI implies certain information is identical to a specific consciousness. This means the same consciousness can have multiple, discontinuous, temporally synonymous instantiations. This is a logical contradiction per the nature of consciousness (I'll elaborate once someone bites).
Sure, some may say: A) The mind comes from matter. B) Material behavior is necessarily algorithmic, whether deterministic or non deterministic. Therefore, C) intelligence, and consequently strong AI, is necessarily algorithmic. But, that line of argumentation just begs the question. There are no logically necessary grounds that the current scientific materialistic presuppositions are true, so they can't be appealed to in this case. In fact, if my above arguments hold, then the current notion of scientific materialism is false.
And please, if you feel the need to quibble over semantics, don't bother. I'll only reply to people who take my points at face value, or actually need clarification.
Are you pondering what I am pondering, simulated Brain?
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
where are the "Pinky and the Brain" jokes?
come on!
"Neo, follow the white rabbit"
"Can i eat the white rabbit?"
"No, there is no spoon to eat it with"
You are absolutely right. The problem is that nobody, other than me, has figured out the correct model for the neuron. It is rather sad when a guy in his basement can out think the entire scientific community. However, history has teaches us this usually the case. It does not take a lot of smarts, it takes a *passion* to understand.
Because after that the artificial brain could do the work for us.
I just finished a book that gave a pretty believable explanation about the advancement to the point where a Human consciousness is dumped into a computer. It's called "The Footprints of God" by Greg Iles.
It's not a preachy book - so don't let the title stop you, but it did point out a few subtle points about a thought process accelerated, and the implications beyond that.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Our model of the neuron fundamentally flawed. The synapses are *not* what allows learning to occur in the brain. I have developed a model of the neuron, which I have not shared with anybody yet, which essentially rewrites the book on what we know about neurons. In fact, when you sit down to think about the problem, there exist several obvious reasons that our model of the neuron *must* be incorrect. However, it would take an engineer, or somebody familiar with control theory, to see why.
Our model of the neuron is fundamentally flawed, but oddly, no matter how hard you observe a neuron you would never know it because the model is flawed on a time scale researchers have not studied yet.
...except that it's not connected to a rat. Now if they could power a real rat with this thing, then you'd really have something.
stuff |
Can someone actually verify their "exactly" claim? Doesn't a large part of communication mechanisms in the brain occur through chemical channels? Are they simulating that as well as the electrical network itself?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Apparently somebody modded me funny. It is not a joke.
Apparently somebody modded me funny. My post was not a joke.
This is like the early stages of the back-story for Permutation City by Greg Egan.
The ethics of simulation are kind of sidestepped in Permutation City, though the experience of the first self-aware "copy" of a person does seem to be a bit of a cautionary tale, and his later stories do get into the question of whether it's ethical to make copies at all, and what it's ethical to do with them.
This is of course a long way from Permutation City style "Copy", but I think it's not to early to open the whole issue to debate.
Do you mean "poses the question"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
Really? Because everyone on here thinks that you are a huge joke. If you have such a wonderful idea of what a neuron does, validate it, share it, or get some professional help.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
generally I avoid being the arrogant poster. But you are acting as if we are not worthy to hear your theory, so please share it with us and/or the world. Otherwise you are just another Internet crazy person that gives actual researchers a bad name.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com