IBM Takes a (Feline) Step Toward Thinking Machines

bth writes "A computer with the power of a human brain is not yet near. But this week researchers from IBM Corp. are reporting that they've simulated a cat's cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain, using a massive supercomputer. The computer has 147,456 processors (most modern PCs have just one or two processors) and 144 terabytes of main memory — 100,000 times as much as your computer has."

Comments

"100,000 times as much as your computer has"

[MC68040]

So...

114 terabytes = 116 736 gigabytes
My machine has got 4 gigabytes of RAM, 100 000 x 4 = 400000... Hm?

meat versus silicon and metal

[jollyreaper]

It amazes me how much hardware and power has to be thrown at the problem to solve it while nature can create a self-organizing machine that only requires material input of raw mice and lasagna. Puts me in mind of this quote:

"If research leads to the development of successful new modeling techniques that can carry out new and better forms of information processing, no one will really care if they do not exactly mimic the functionality of the human brain," concludes Hall. "I honestly doubt you'll find too many people today who are upset that the wings on an aircraft do not flap like those of a bird or that a submarine does not swim exactly like a fish."

It's an interesting way of looking at things. Man's earliest ideas of flying all involved trying to mimic the actions of a bird. And ornithopters remain impractical as passenger vehicles. But new breakthroughs in material sciences and computing are allowing for autonomous bots that fly like birds, bats, bugs, and can swim like snakes and fish. Engineers will point out that the evolved solutions we see in nature are working with the materials at hand, they might not be the best of all solutions. Every flying vertebrate known to science turned forelimbs into wings and flap them. Is it the most efficient way to fly? That's an argument I'll leave to the biologists and engineers but it's certainly the only way those vertebrates were getting into the air! They have to work with the materials at hand. If we ever saw flying horses, the only thing we could be absolutely sure of is that this would not be achieved by sprouting two more limbs from the back. We see evolution taking away limbs but never adding new ones.

Re:meat versus silicon and metal

[Marcika]

We see evolution taking away limbs but never adding new ones.

I think the elephant's prehensile trunk would qualify as a counterexample... (Though I won't think that the chances of a Dumbo-style evolution are significant...)

Re:meat versus silicon and metal

[jollyreaper]

I think the elephant's prehensile trunk would qualify as a counterexample... (Though I won't think that the chances of a Dumbo-style evolution are significant...)

But that developed from the nose.

Take a look at the very word tetrapod. "Tetrapods (Greek tetrapoda, Latin quadruped, "four-footed") are vertebrate animals having four feet, legs or leglike appendages. Amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs/birds, and mammals are all tetrapods, and even the limbless snakes are tetrapods by descent. The earliest tetrapods radiated from the Sarcopterygii, or lobe-finned fish."

I think it's absolutely remarkable how many anatomical elements are preserved across so many species. Makes you wonder what would have come about if more Devonian lines were given a chance to evolve. There was certainly some weird shit swimming around back then.

Re:meat versus silicon and metal

[agrif]

I promised myself I wouldn't be a quote-quoter, but really, you guys make it too easy. The quote above from Hall most likely references this, from one Edsger Dijkstra:

“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.”

Unfortunately, you'll find a lot of people that think he meant "Submarines don't swim, you retard! So computers don't think!" It seems pretty clear to me that he means making computers think like organisms would be an inefficient and pointless gesture, as they are capable of something far less primitive.

(I found this quote in Accelerando, by Charles Stross, and loved it. It's Creative Commons, so you have no excuse not to read a little.)

Moore's Law

[feedayeen]

Moore's law predicts that computing power will double roughly every 2 years. Log base 2 of 147,456 is rounded up to 18 generations. In other words, in 36 years you can simulate a cat on your desktop. Of course you can always do that today with Nintencats.

Aineko? Is that you?

[molo]

This reminds me of Aineko in Accelerando by Stross. I wonder how long until it becomes sentient and surpasses human intelligence. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_(novel) http://www.accelerando.org/

-molo

Re:Cat-Brain Tech

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it with everyone spelling lose "loose"? This is the first time I've ever witnessed language evolving in my lifetime.

Cores does not equal processors

[gyrogeerloose]

For what it's worth, here's a text dump from the Apple System Profiler on my MacBook Pro:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2

So, it would appear that Apple at least does not equate the number of cores and the number of processors.

Re:How hard is it to simulate a cat's brain on 1 c

[Lemming Mark]

I used to do this to my friends - when I was at highschool I used to write conversational simulators of people I knew using QBASIC. Throw in a few catchphrases and favourite memes and it is remarkably easy to catch the essence of a conversation with someone you know, especially if they're a geek. If they're rude, it's even easier, since you don't have to have such a coherent conversation. I've known people who wouldn't pass the Turing Test in normal conversation.

Somebody should try doing this for ... well, anyone famous really. The French government, Silvio Berlusconi, Theo de Raadt, Linus Torvalds ... all good targets, I suspect!

they need to add in the limibic system, etc.

[happyjack27]

They need to add in the limbic and other closely tied-in systems before they can get a truly accurate simulation. without doing so, the virtual cat won't get angry, sad, happy, hungry, etc. It won't get dopamine, it won't get positive and negative feedback, it won't learn. The hormonal system of the body is arguably more important than the brain for survival. It codifies the most crucial instincts and provides a logical foundation for the more complex planning of the brain. Without it the cat won't meow. (or would do so relatively randomly)

Missed one part

[damn_registrars]

You left out the all-important "attempt_to_kill_owner" loop.

Simulated at what level?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can write a simulation of a cat's cerebral cortex that will run on my MacBook. It would be a bad simulation, but a simulation nonetheless.

The article doesn't explain to what level the cortex is simulated. Are they simply modeling the connections? Are they modeling 3D structure? Are they modeling chemical electrical transmissions? Are they modeling gene expression? The Blue Brain Project (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page18699.html) currently simulates the activity of a single neocortical column (of which there are approximately 2 million in humans) using 8146 processors to model the 3D structure of the neurons and their interactions.

Given that TFA says 147456 processors for the entire cortex, it must be using a much simpler simulation than the Blue Brain Project.

Simulates a brain?

[SteveWoz]

It should run Eliza to make people think it's really a brain.

Moores Law

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember back in '99ish getting a graph with X=time and Y=computer power (mips, exponential not linear increase), positions on the Y axis were marked with organism complexity equivalents. On the graph were plotted a bunch of points showing computing breakthroughs. I drew a rough best fit curve through these and continued it into the future, at that time we were somewhere around the more complicated end of amoebas, perhaps entering very simple insects.

The curve hit mouse right around the date when that psp ad about having the complexity of a mouse came out, 2003 I think it was.
We aren't due for cat for another year I think, but the graph was whole organism complexity (I think).
The curve reached chimpanzee complexity around 2012, and human only a few months later.

Ever since then when I told people about it the response was "yes but Moores law cant go on for ever, and now it seems like we cant get any further, X has just about reached its limits"
seems like we are right on schedule.