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Artificial Brain '10 Years Away'
SpuriousLogic writes "A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed.
Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already built elements of a rat brain.
He told the TED global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses.
Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said.
'It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,' he said."
I assume that we'd basically adopt a strategy of "enlightened plagiarism": use our (nontrivial) imaging and structural analysis technology to get the best idea we can of the structure of a real brain(without necessarily understanding what it does, or why it is structured as it is). Simulate that structure. If it acts like a real brain, break out the party hats. If it doesn't, try to figure out why, tweak, and try again.
Being able to build very complex models, based on what we do know, would be extremely valuable in telling us whether or not we are looking at the right structural details, and whether or not we are missing something(and, if so, the difference between our simulation, and the real thing).
It's very simple to see why this happens. When you start a project, or even just a stage of a project, you have some list of problems and you may even have some idea of the solutions. You can use good judgement to estimate the time it takes (at least to some order of magnitude), and rounding off to 10 years makes for good press.
But when you actually begin the work, every problem you solve illuminates a whole new set of problems to solve. If each solution opens up more than one new problem, you've "increased" the amount of work left to be done. So either you cut back on some of the goals (to reduce the list of problems) or you admit it wasn't as simple as you thought and announce a new project to tackle some subset of the new set of problems.
Sam ty sig.
I'd argue the opposite. I don't think being human has anything to do with the outer shell. I, for one, use my body as a way to get my head to important places. A virtualized brain would still be self-aware and capable of having real, human emotions, in exactly the same way you or I do.
This signature serves no purpose other than to help you see which posts were made by me.
The brain is a self-modifying learning machine. Until you can build a self-modifying learning machine, you can have all the structure you want, it won't be functionally equivalent to a human brain.
Moreover, if the brain is simulated well enough, it will certainly appear self-aware. Even if there is a difference (such as it not having a soul), that's not something we can (so far) experimentally determine, and therefore any metaphysical postulations are, or should be, beside the point in the question of ethical behavior towards the simulation.
Put it here instead.
And if this silicon brain decides that it's had enough of being experimented on?
And what if they don't turn your "pain receptors" off? What if they specifically want to experiment on you to see how much pain you can endure? If you think that medical scientists don't often do brutally unethical experimentation on "lesser" humans you'd be very very wrong (though since the 90's it's gotten much better in the west). As if they're going to care about a brain that they *created*. In fact I can see that as a selling point "see we can do these horrid experiments on this artifical brain so that we don't have to do it on orphans, prisoners and the institutionalised - like we used to".
Then again if you were regarded as a sentient being would they then have to keep you alive for the rest of eternity lest they be charged with murder if they turn you off or delete you?
If you create a sentient being you have a responsibility to that being and no you can't just kill it if you get bored with it or it just doesn't meet your expectations, otherwise there would be a hell of a lot more infanticide.
Tell you what: tell me how that thing with the car keys works (you know, the one where you look at the table three times and it isn't there, you search for it for 10 minutes elsewhere, and suddenly you see it right there where you looked before), and I'll believe you.
What's so special about that? The human eye can only see a very tiny fraction of your field of view in focus, everything else is very blurry and pretty much impossible to recognize unless you already know its there. On top of that your eye has a blind spot, everything in that is completly invisible. Your pattern recognition also doesn't work 100% perfect, if you see something upside down instead of the way you expect it, you might not recognize it or not recognize it fast enough and so your eyes might have moved on before the key was recognized.
Or to sum it up: The brain actively recognizes only a very tiny fraction of the world, everything else is interpolation and guesswork and if your key hides in the later part, you won't find it, especially if you don't expect it there. Seen this? Pretty much the same thing.
So, I have all these 10000x10000 TIFFs I just took of a real brain. Now what?
Guess what I mean is, the brain is not the same from a minute to the next. It modifies itself constantly. We may be able to copy the parts (although I'm pretty sure we're more than 10 years away from that) but until we can make it "run", all we have is a stopped engine. What good would that do?
Unless what we want is a brain _model_, which is what I think is meant by the article.
There is another explanation ( related more to not find something , whether or not they are close ) :
Often , in stressfull situations , the mind will think the same over and over , rather than thinking about something else.
It's the reason you keep opening that same closet , even though you look there a hundred times . Then , when you finally give up , your mind is free to think again , and you can remember it again.
This is because the brain makes various connections to areas in the brain , depending on past expierence.
For instance , i might have gotten a drink , and then accidentally put my keys in top of the fridge. You might not remember this , until you give up your search , and pour out a drink , which may activate that part of the brain , making you remember.
Slipping shoelaces ?