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Can We Build a Human Brain Into a Microchip?
destinyland writes "Can we imprint the circuitry of the human brain onto a silicon chip? It requires a computational capacity of 36.8 petaflops — a thousand trillion floating point operations per second — but a team of European scientists has already simulated 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections. And their brain-chip is scaleable, with plans to create a superchip mimicking 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses. Unfortunately, the human brain has 22 billion neurons and 220 trillion synapses. Just remember Ray Kurzweil's argument: once a machine can achieve a human level of intelligence — it can also exceed it."
"Can We Build a Human Brain Into a Microchip?"
No.
While the CPU/RAM model is not the way the brain works (I suppose), but it can be used to run a "virtual machine" that itself does work like the human brain does.
I don't think they are trying to simulate a human brain just by throwing a bunch of hardware together...
"Can We Build a Human Brain Into a Microchip?"
Not YET.
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Even if we have a chip capable of simulating the same number of neurons and synapses as the human brain, that will not magically form an artificial life-form. I know little about simulated neural networks, but I do know that they are only a very rough approximation of the workings of the human brain. We still don't understand all the intricacies of the neural and chemical interactions that occur to a sufficient level to properly simulate all of them.
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How many of those can work 24/7/365 on a single subject with 100% concentration?
Or how about how many of those can you scale down to fit into a shoebox or smaller (while they are till operative) or scale up by linking them in a cluster (preferably of the Beowulf kind)?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The way we evolved can be a hint about efficiency. For example, bipedal movement turned out to be pretty efficient on a human scale, while eight legs like a spider are not. Therefore, it is important to know *why* things evolved the way they did. Was it because of energy efficiency? Adaptation to local predators? etc.
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Why should we try to create an artificial brain in the computing lab when it would be much easier to do it in the genetic engineering lab?
Hawkins believes computer scientists have focused too much on the end product of artificial intelligence. Like B.F. Skinner, who held that psychologists should study stimuli and responses and essentially ignore the cognitive processes that go on in the brain, he holds that scientists working in AI and neural networks have focused too much on inputs and outputs rather than the neurological system that connects them.
I agree with this quote. A lot of computer scientists try to build artificial intelligence without really understanding how their own brain works. It is really too bad because they have an unusually observable specimen right in their own head. Genetic learning? Is that how you feel you learn personally? Of course this question can't answer everything about artificial intelligence, but it can definitely help and is too often ignored.
Also, one thing that isn't clear from the article is whether the synapses will be static, or whether they can move and grow, just as human brain synapses can.
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I feel he has done a great disservice to the field of artificial intelligence by promising unrealistic things in interviews to the lay person. Disappointment is a sure fire way to get yourself branded as a snake oil salesman religious nut.
A disappointed public threatens research funding, but an unprepared public threatens chaos.
I'm more concerned with making sure we're thinking ahead to the radical change that is likely to come, be it in 10 years or 40, than to be concerned that lay people will distrust AI researchers.
Biologist P.Z. Myers has criticized Kurzweil's predictions as being based on "New Age spiritualism" rather than science and says that Kurzweil does not understand basic biology.
Having some personal understanding of both, I heartily agree. Lets separate out wishful thinking and esoteric "knowing" - both are merely ungrounded speculation.
Myers also claims that Kurzweil picks and chooses events that appear to demonstrate his claim of exponential technological increase leading up to a singularity, and ignores events that do not.
I once seriously considered a strategy for building and artificial brain with a veteran professor of computer science. Examining the problem I gave up when I realised that the individual cells are "intelligent". I think this is vitally important How does the "mind" of a protozoa work? They can navigate obstacles, identify and assimilate food, run away from danger, and have a 20 minute memory. We can assume that a single neurone may well have all of these capabilities and more. I believe that we may be myopically focused on nodes and connections, without considering just how complex and capable a single node is.
So the complexity of the problem is probably an order of magnitude beyond 22 billion neurones and 220 trillion connections. Then consider the effect of 1000s of unknown neurotransmitters - and we know little about the "known" ones, such as serotonin and dopamine, except that they have a profound effect. And _then_, consider that the brain has structure, and we know comparatively little about that structure, and only a few hints about the algorithms and data structures that it uses.
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I agree 100%. I still don't understand why this charlatan ...
Well, despite my overly critical initial post I will waste karma with further speculation on Kurzweil. He's actually not a charlatan. He's just stepping outside of his field and extrapolating out some of the things that have been achieved ... and using some unrealistic exponential curve to guide his predictions.
The man has experience great success -- both in business and academia -- throughout his lifetime. But past 1990 he's made a few inventions to help learning and disabled students. Which is great. Unfortunately he's found that writing books, holding symposiums and giving speeches about fantastic science fiction is what draws attention and resources. So he keeps doing it. It results in a lot press and I'm sure his aging body might drive him to hope and fund a singularity before he dies.
While this singularity is a romantic idea, it's just not based on science. He's lost sight of what he once did musical hardware that advanced synthetic music far beyond the rate at which it normally would have run. And now his efforts are not designated to realistic goals but instead loftier goals that no one can achieve. What's worse is that it depends on crosses between fields he's simply not an expert in.
You might be able to argue that he's a charlatan now but in my mind he's Thomas Edison turned Nostradamus. He's pulled out all the stops that relegate normal scientists to the scientific process and has passed optimism onto fantastical dreams. He can write all the books he wants but until he gets back to what made him great -- actually implementing something and leaving a legacy of working examples -- he runs of the risk of tarnishing his reputation.
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I see no reason to believe we have "free will". As far as I can tell, whether we have free will or not is irrelevant to anything important. We have "will", and that is sufficient.
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From TFA: imprint the circuitry of the human brain using transistors on a silicon chip?
No, not on binary circuits we can't. We might simulate the brain, or even model the brain, but we won't imprint it.
The brain is a parallel processor.
Tremendously paralell; and it's a multimode analog design, not a single mode digital design. There are many different kinds of brain cells, with both chemical and electrical components.
We can model an atomic explosion, but we understand the physics behind an atomic explosion. We have hardly begun to understand how the brain works. We'll have cures for all mental ilnesses before we can accurately model the brain, because if you can't fix a broken machine you don't understand how it works, and even sometimes if you can fix a broken machine you still may not understand that machine completely.
When you model an atomic explosion, there is no radiation released. A model is not the real thing.
There is no test for sentience. Without such a test it would be impossible to kow if you have succeeded in accurately modeling it.
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