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Researchers Build Evolving Brain Computer?
destinyland writes "'We have mimicked how neurons behave in the brain,' announces an international research team from Japan and Michigan Tech. They've built an 'evolutionary circuit' in a molecular computer that evolves to solve complex problems, and the molecular computer also exhibits brain-like massive parallel processing. 'The neat part is, approximately 300 molecules talk with each other at a time during information processing,' says physicist Ranjit Pati of Michigan Tech. When viewed with a scanning tunneling microscope, the evolving patterns bear an uncanny resemblance to the human brain as seen by a Functional MRI. Using the electrically charged tip of a tunneling microscope, they've individually set molecules to a desired state, essentially writing data to the system. And while conventional computers are typically built using two-state (0, 1) transistors, the molecular layer is built using a hexagonal molecule, and can switch among four conducting states — 0, 1, 2 and 3, suggesting it may ultimately have more AI potential than quantum computing."
1. Find complex math problem
2. Build evolutionary chip to solve the problem
3. Invent SkyNet
4. ???
5. PROFIT!
Hi, I'm your tunneling microscope programmer. I'm going to need a few new development tools in order to write your Facebook alternative website ... including a tunneling microscope. Your new site is going to give "head in the clouds" a whole new meaning!
can switch among four conducting states
Hmm, maybe that's why all the memory units in Star Trek are "quads"..... (I've heard it retconned as "quadrillion bits" - but really this fits better).
Isn't that how the Matrix supposedly started? Humans invented computers complex and "organic" enough to develop AI?
So should we kill it now before it enslaves us all, or what?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
"How do I escape from this lab . . . ?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Goddamnit, that is not how it works. Even if each molecule has four different states, you can easily map them onto a small, finite number of bits - you just represent each molecule with two bits in a computer, and there's your equivalency. You don't get anything out of more states per unit except higher density. Seriously, TFA doesn't make this mistake; why did you have to add some useless speculation to a perfectly reasonable article?
Intelligently designed to evolve. I love it!
All four bases are belong to us!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
The easiest way to create AI is to model the neuron inside of a computer, slice up someone's brain into lots of thin slices, and then recreate their brain in the computer. Mapping the inputs is the hard part.
You know that now, once the AI reaches consciousness, the answer to its first question "How do I become even smarter" will be to slice all human brains into slices.
And it will all be your fault.
I believe the colloquial term is "a nice nap."
rather "power nap"
Modeling neurons inside the computer is how people have been doing it until now. And while it has made steady progress, it hasn't proven terribly successful; since the advent of the computer age, these AIs have evolved from being equivalent to a flatworm to being equivalent to a guppy (and I'm being optimistic here). Trying to model a massively parallel process inside a serial computer is not terribly advantageous - scientific computations such as CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and MD (molecular dynamics) are plagued by the same limit. What we really need for these kind of processes is a computer made out of very simple, small and fast elements that do exactly the task you want them to do and that are all connected. There have been steps in this direction (earth simulator, GPU computing,...) but I feel the current approach can easily trump them all - at least for the purpose of creating AI. Scientific calculations will be another ball game, because there, the desired properties of the system are very rigidly defined.
This is not to say there is no room for classical computers - some problems are inherently discreet and serial, and there, our serial processors rule. At least until quantum computing becomes more mature ;)
"What we really need for these kind of processes is a computer made out of very simple, small and fast elements that do exactly the task you want them to do and that are all connected."
aka an analog computer...
And while it has made steady progress, it hasn't proven terribly successful; since the advent of the computer age, these AIs have evolved from being equivalent to a flatworm to being equivalent to a guppy (and I'm being optimistic here).
And how many millenia did it take for the biological process to create a guppy from a flatworm ?
Considering everything we've achieved in the last 50 years, I think the next 50 will be even more revolutionary for the AI overlords using us as 9 volt batteries.
Protip: Supreme Commander is SupCom.
SC is reserved for StarCraft.
Most computational neuroscientists are not interested in whole brain simulation. So while those that are have some good stabs at modeling various invertebrates and insects, it isn't fair to talk about modeling neurons in terms of a complete nervous system. Most models are very small scale (one or two neurons) for learning about ion channels, neurochemistry, etc or large scale, such as the visual system. With these models, you can make predictions about the effects of drugs (at the synapse) or about large scale brain damage (visual or memory systems). Granted, most people in comp neuro do not consider themselves to be AI researchers, but more like theoretical physicists: build the models, be they mathematical or neural, and use them for experimental predictions.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
The neural nets from the 60s (perceptrons) were 2 layered networks that lacked inhibition, sparse connectivity, self-organization, and were prone to catastrophic interference. They were rubbish compared to what we have now, but a necessary step along the way. One of my biggest resentments towards AI researchers is that they use arguments from the 60s that were solved/refuted by psychologists and neuroscientists in the 80s.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords
I always love quotes like this... as if this guy (or anyone) knows how neurons actually behave in the brain. So far we're still at the simple model phase... to fire or not to fire, that is the question (apologies to Shakespeare).
Ptolemy thought he understood gravity, then Newton proved him wrong. Newton thought he understood gravity, then Einstein proved him wrong. Einstein thought he understood gravity, but folks like Penrose, Ashtekar, Smolin, and the Loop Quantum Gravity guys are about to overturn Einstein... When it comes to our understanding of how neurons work, we have more in common with Ptolemy than Einstein...
I am going to make a computer with FIVE states!
That will be much better than a quantum computer because it has FIVE, you see.
And it will be an AI because it has FIVE states, and normal computers only have two.
Actually, I will have EIGHT states just to make sure the competition can't catch up to me.
I will be implementing my EIGHT states as 3 binary bits, but that's not important right now.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
What we really need for these kind of processes is a computer made out of very simple, small and fast elements that do exactly the task you want them to do and that are all connected.
I believe Thinking Machines beat you to it, but almost no one was interested in writing software for the architecture.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman