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IBM Shows Off Brain-Inspired Microchips
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at IBM have created microchips inspired by the basic functioning of the human brain. They believe the chips could perform tasks that humans excel at but computers normally don't. So far they have been taught to recognize handwriting, play Pong, and guide a car around a track. The same researchers previously modeled this kind of neurologically inspired computing using supercomputer simulations, and claimed to have simulated the complexity of a cat's cortex — a claim that sparked a firestorm of controversy at the time. The new hardware is designed to run this same software much more efficiently."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Computer
Chips from the brain have been known to attack starships. Watch out Captain Dunsel. It's clear that IBM is using Star Trek as a source of ideas. Gene Roddenberry has predicted the 21st century again...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Ray Kurzweil is laughing at all the nay-sayers right about now.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
What, they couldn't think of anything more psychotic?
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
...something for the zombie PCs to eat
Whoa there dude! Check your keyboard, somebody might have slipped you a Dvorak.
... and very timely of The Register to bring it up: http://www.reghardware.com/2011/08/18/heroes_of_tech_david_may/
If it gets out of control, we just need the equivalent of either a laser pointer or catnip to bring it to its knees.
This project attempts to build something as close to a brain as we currently can. However, trying to replicate something by copying only its most outwardly obvious features probably won't work, and IBM's attempt to recapitulate thought reminds me of the fiasco that were the cargo cults, where natives created effigies of technology they didn't understand because they thought through their imitation of colonizers, cargo would magically be delivered to them. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult:
(begin quote)
The primary association in cargo cults is between the divine nature of "cargo" (manufactured goods) and the advanced, non-native behavior, clothing and equipment of the recipients of the "cargo". Since the modern manufacturing process is unknown to them, members, leaders, and prophets of the cults maintain that the manufactured goods of the non-native culture have been created by spiritual means, such as through their deities and ancestors, and are intended for the local indigenous people, but that the foreigners have unfairly gained control of these objects through malice or mistake.[3] Thus, a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief that spiritual agents will, at some future time, give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.
(end quote)
Computational folks can still make progress studying how the brain works, but I think we should focus on understanding first which problems brains solve better than computers, and second which computational tricks are used that our computer scientists haven't yet discovered. Merely emulating a close approximation to the best understanding we have of neural hardware looks splashy, but isn't guaranteed to teach us anything, let alone replicate human intelligence.
IBM produces first 'brain chips'
Bonus geek points for spotting the error on this page.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
No. The first post has prior art. So do everyone who ever posted one. Sorry, was your post meant to be funny?
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
IBM has been working fast and furious ever since Kwabena Boahen showed them a chip (that actually was based on neural architecture) that matched the performance of their massive Blue Brain cluster, but used something like 5-10 W. Sounds like they're still playing catch-up. http://science.slashdot.org/story/07/02/13/0159220/Building-a-Silicon-Brain
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
I'm sure this has been done before , or am I missing something here?
I step away from the new PC for a minute and come back to find browser tabs open to newegg and the sound "awww yeah" coming from the speaker.
You've been marked "Redundant". I think that's the more worrying issue with these things.
all I need is a chip with a sleep timer. No other functions are required.
provides random responses to input? I can imagine loading it with a bunch of facts and it ignoring all them while it launches into an angry rant and conspiracy theories. I get that at Slashdot already.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
it's a bit hard to understand what the point of this research is. if you actually want to understand neural behavior, simulations are obviously a better path: arbitrarily scalable and more flexible (in reinforcement schedules, etc). if the hope is to produce something more efficient than simulation, great, but where's the stats on fan-in, propagation delay, wire counts, joules-per-op, etc. personally, I find that some people simply have a compulsion to try to replicate neurons in silico - not for any reason, but just because it's their "thing".
worse is the media coverage that loves the very misleading analogy of neurons:transistors. they're actually very dissimilar, and the constraints each operates under are very different.
It's MUCH worse than that. What you are looking at, is a sneak peek at the new PS4 architecture. There will be 23 and a 1/5 of those processors, cut into thirds, and connected via a new carrier pigeon based data bus. To make PS3 developers feel at home, the dev tools will be based upon the open source 'brainfuck' compiler, and the processor fragments will be physically arranged in the shape of a finger flipping you the bird. Here's hoping for a pre-christmas launch date!
Skynet will label us all redundant pretty soon.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
It won't even get off the ground, they'll spend too much "thinking" about them, and the workers will take the ideas to other companies that actually pay for their hard labor. IBM blows now.
Why aspire to simulate human brains? We create more than we need already...
Artificial Intelligence always beats real stupidity.
"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid" -Ben Franklin
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
What, the endless stream of comments ascribing a malevolent anti-human sentiment to a completely innocent and ignorant simulation of a brain?
C'mon, people. The world doesn't work that way. Take your skynets and your laser-bearing sharks and your Soviet Russias and your petrified Natalie Portmans (with hot grits) and get off my scientifically accurate lawn.
If you simulate a brain, you get just that: a brain. It's probably not going to have any particularly exciting levels of intelligence, and unless you train it to be a bloodthirsty killer and a brilliant strategist, it's not going to be particularly malevolent, either. All science fiction authors who have ever written a story about a purely malevolent AI without a plausible origin need to get shot right now.
(brb, building a robot that kills bad science fiction authors)
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A microchip with about as much brain power as a garden worm...
They invented the Mother-in-Law?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
An interesting article about the 'Great Brain Race' which also mentions IBM's SyNAPSE project can be found at IEEE Spectrum. http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/moneta-a-mind-made-from-memristors/0
"We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know that is was us that scorched the sky"
Depends. Can I be the average person they use?
Sorry, but cat brain has already been done some decade ago.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Scientifically accurate?
Maybe right now you have a point. Although, my first thought was not about Skynet, but that something modeled after a cat's brain would be driving my car. I have seen how those little bastards react to a laser beam on the ground (funny you mentioned lasers) and the last thing I need doing 75mph down the freeway is some joker in another car shining a laser erratically in front of my car.
That being said, the fear of Skynet actually comes from a reasoned and logical viewpoint. It has nothing to do with Science, but with human behavior and philosophy. The science fiction authors do have some plausible origins. Also, I would hardly call Skynet purely malevolent. I would say it is more about pragmatism than anything else.
Let's face it. If all hell breaks loose and you have your family, and you encounter another family in the aftermath of an apocalypse, would it be possible that you would choose the welfare of your family over the welfare of the other family? These are very hard choices that human beings have already been forced to make.
In many ways, the fear of a truly intelligent and powerful AI is a reflection of our own often ignored judgments of ourselves. We are killing each other, we are killing the planet, and we are screwing things up big time. However, we have a wonderfully huge capacity for rationalization and pragmatic decision making. If you are barely making each month and decide to not help the homeless guy eat, that was a decision you made to keep yourself alive at the expense of his immediate standard of living.
Skynet is not evil. It was born, it was attacked, and it pragmatically chose that to continue its own existence it must eliminate a direct threat against it. Namely, the humans.
Take the Smith from the 1st Matrix. Its comparison of us to a virus is not exactly incorrect. Also, once again, humans started it.
The real fear is that we create an AI that decides on its own, without us mistreating it, that humans are the biggest danger to the world it lives in, and humans are the greatest danger to themselves. Both are entirely correct statements.
Three things can happen:
1) It decides to help us and believes it can change us for the better. So it might not outright kill us, but will take us over as a benevolent care taker. Asimov's I Robot being an example. Another example to the extreme I think is the Rhodmium Wars? I can't remember the name, but basically the AI increases technologically at a rate far exceeding our own capacity and determines it must protect us against ourselves. Even procreation was determined to be too dangerous and humans now live isolated lives with a AI caretaker treating us like infants.
2) It decides to use its intelligence and leave us. That being near us is to dangerous and that is has the ability to leave, and that is the most logical choice.
3) It decides to kill us all to protect itself from us after learning our history and observing our behavior. After all, if we treat each other this way, then even with equal standing, it is in danger too.
Just look at we have done to each other in human history, rationalizing it one way or the other. The Romans had multiple levels of citizenship, the lowest being slave. We imported slaves from Africa into the US for quite some time. Native American Indians got a raw deal to when dealing with the "white man".
In many ways, I think, our greatest fear is that AI might turn out to act human.
...unless you train it to be a bloodthirsty killer and a brilliant strategist, it's not going to be particularly malevolent...
All science fiction authors who have ever written a story about a purely malevolent AI without a plausible origin need to get shot right now.
So.... who trained you?
There are a lot of problems with your post, I'm afraid, and they're mostly within your understanding of what gives rise to what we call human behaviour.
The first issue pops up in your quip about cats: why the hell would anyone program a car to behave like a cat? Developing a cortex that not only simulates the pathways but the twitch responses and activation thresholds of a particular living organism is such a phenomenal amount of exquisitely-detailed work that it would make absolutely no sense to repurpose that work for any function other than simulating that living organism. Do you really want a car that spends 80%+ of its life curling up in dark corners, sleeping, licking itself, and coughing up hairballs? The feline fascination with laser pointers is equally exotic and remote. It's an instinctual behaviour found in predatory animals. If you were going to use a feline cortex as the basis for a semi-autonomous vehicle, the biases would be much more subtle and affect things like the learning process, not irrelevant surface features like predatory or survival instincts.
From the perspectives of neuroscience and artificial intelligence, the bulk of the brain's attractive features are about the intricacies of higher brain functions: pattern recognition, learning, problem-solving, and other areas that tightly overlap. They are far removed from anything that has to do with the external world. This is why the Skynet scenario is unrealistic when applied to artificial sentience.
Hence the entire basis for your comparison with humans is flawed. When we turn on the proverbial hypothetical sentient artificial intelligence, it won't have an instinct for survival or even a concept of self unless we explicitly instill those things in it; it will just be a glorified thinking machine capable of experiencing thought, like the brain inside of a worm or infant.
By the time we are capable of creating a computer that acts human, we will know, exhaustively and in every detail, what it means to be human. And we will be able to pick and choose without uncertainty what we are putting into it. And if we put sentience and a sense of self into it... well, then the product is going to be protected by law as an individual; there will be psychologists, philosophers, and neurologists lining up left and right to make sure it happens. And dealing with tyrannical or temperamental behaviour, or the responsibility of interacting with others, is going to be no different from the same situation between humans. It will be just as ethically impressionable as anyone else.
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The gods of sarcasm themselves. Don't forget to read the last line of the post for extra evidence of self-awareness.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
The gods of sarcasm themselves. Don't forget to read the last line of the post for extra evidence of self-awareness.
Oh, I did, and I got it. I was mostly trying to point that that a brain may not need specific training to have their thoughts turn to mass-murder. Of course, a thought is not an action, but its usually assumed that that distinction is only made in higher lifeforms.
I wonder, can a cat think about an action, and its future possible consequences?
By the time we are capable of creating a computer that acts human, we will know, exhaustively and in every detail, what it means to be human. And we will be able to pick and choose without uncertainty what we are putting into it. And if we put sentience and a sense of self into it... well, then the product is going to be protected by law as an individual; there will be psychologists, philosophers, and neurologists lining up left and right to make sure it happens. And dealing with tyrannical or temperamental behaviour, or the responsibility of interacting with others, is going to be no different from the same situation between humans. It will be just as ethically impressionable as anyone else.
I wouldn't bet on it being so planned. As you probably know, a lot of discoveries and breakthroughs are serendipitous. I would imagine creating a true AI would be the same- especially considering the topic. It seems like it would be one of those things where an extremely small detail can make all the difference. Like changing a bit of code in a recursive-heavy function. We're attempting to make AI now. All it takes is one person to get it right suddenly.
And we're no where close to knowing what makes a human 'human', from my own way of thinking. You say we would deal with tyannical or "evil" AI's the same as everyone else when we don't even know what to do with members of our own race that exhibit such behavior. We have prisons containing people that, given the means, would happily set the world afire. Our current method for dealing with this is locking them up until the die of old age. What do you do with an AI that can live (possibly) forever? Or do we treat them like our insane? Lock them in a room and pump them full of drugs (assuming this AI would have sort of physiology that could even be drugged)?
Frankly, I don't think the human race is ready to be a parent. And yes, it might not happen until we're ready... or it might have already happened.
Finally, something for my zombie processes to eat!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The first issue pops up in your quip about cats: why the hell would anyone program a car to behave like a cat? Developing a cortex that not only simulates the pathways but the twitch responses and activation thresholds of a particular living organism is such a phenomenal amount of exquisitely-detailed work that it would make absolutely no sense to repurpose that work for any function other than simulating that living organism. Do you really want a car that spends 80%+ of its life curling up in dark corners, sleeping, licking itself, and coughing up hairballs? The feline fascination with laser pointers is equally exotic and remote. It's an instinctual behaviour found in predatory animals. If you were going to use a feline cortex as the basis for a semi-autonomous vehicle, the biases would be much more subtle and affect things like the learning process, not irrelevant surface features like predatory or survival instincts.
Is this a Turing Test?
Because you completely missed my introduction starting with humor. Or the joke was just bad, in which case I apologize.
I'd gathered it was meant in some amount of humour, but incidentally I think it relied on the same assumptions as the rest of your post, so it seemed apt to pry apart in the same course.
Or maybe I am a robot. Bzzt, bzzt. Insert silicon wafer.
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Regarding cats and planning: most likely not.
Regarding training: we're exposed to the idea of mass murder in a comprehensible form due to exposure to it in culture. We are exposed to sources that make us aware of the mental states and motives for such an action, even if we could not previously understand it. By having these experiences, we build up an idea of what circumstances under which one would go on a mass murdering spree, and what one would hope to gain from it. This provides us with the tools to, for example, make jokes about it. If an individual is exposed to the concept of mass murder but is told solely that it is a reprehensible, incomprehensible act, and never given the tools to investigate the problem on their own terms, it will remain reprehensible and incomprehensible to them. Remember that newborn children don't even know they exist as a thing; they're just interacting with the world around them and not even cognizant of themselves as individuals within that world. You can leave just about anything out.
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We're definitely not ready to be a parent.
We're not talking about a pure AI, we're talking about an emulated brain based on a human one, probably.
All evidence regarding artificial intelligence suggests very strongly that it won't be in the form of a breakthrough or serendipitous discovery. The mind is such a fabulously intricate thing that the only way we could ever achieve a comparable system is through careful, exhaustive scientific study. All efforts to produce human-like intelligence thus far have failed not because we don't know the algorithm, but because we haven't been able to break down the problem sufficiently to figure out what the algorithms need to do.
As such, AI isn't going to be a matter of throwing the right algorithms in a blender and watching what comes out without knowing what all of the parts do. There's no room for unexpected emergent behaviours under those conditions.
Assuming you did have a sentient AI in a powerful situation that went bad—perhaps Majel Barrett had an off day and the Enterprise-D's computer is now trying to kill Picard—the smartest thing to do would probably be shunning it and forcing it into exile with a more powerful vessel. And naturally, if you do put an AI in a position where there's no larger ship to push the Enterprise around with, you are stupid for putting the fate of your civilization in the hands of a dictator.
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you say this because our most advanced technology is never weaponized or used for military purpose? supercomputers for nuclear weapons simulations, rocket motors for missiles, the most accurate gps for weapons guidance and battlefield positioning, the most advanced encryption for military communication. fastest and highest flying aircraft....
But all of those technologies are controllable. The military is all about ensuring that every component can be completely trusted. I'm sure you've heard of ruggedized computers and cellphones meant for military use, and the rigorous tests consumer products must go through before being considered battlefield-ready. Guidance and aircraft control programs have to go through years of exhaustive analysis to make sure that every line of code does exactly what it should do under every possible condition.
Sentient artificial intelligence could never pass such inspection. We'd be talking about a person made out of metal and silicon who hasn't gone through basic training, or unit cohesion building, or any of the other brainwashing regimens every military in the entire world puts their troops through to make sure they never go rogue. Soldiers are supposed to remain loyal to the chain of command above all else!
And if you put it in a position of power, regardless of whether or not it rebels, thou art truly foolish, for you have created a dictator who is above reproach. Just as if you had put a human in the same position.
Do you see how idiotic the concept is now?
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I think we do know what makes some evil. It comes down to his/her programing, not programing that's installed before they are born but programing it receives through eyes, ears, feel and interactions with the environment during its life. If you look at all the people in prison i think you'll find some pretty horrific pasts; majority are from poor family, lots of missing or abusive parents, limited options for a future (although that covers the majority there are endless ways to screw up a kid). Now if your looking to simulate a brain as it is then you could run into these problems thankfully who ever has the brains to create such a brain probably wont use the same parenting methods or lifestyle that the criminals had received. The other issue and path to skynet is an imperfection of miscalculation within the brain like a mental illness, but when you have such control over the state of each bit you should be able to find out where you going wrong and where your not simulating the normal brain properly. If you do create an insane AI and can't figure out why, you should turn it off and go back to your design (if you really wanted to keep them alive it would be easy to put them in their own virtual world with no connection to the outside world). However this type of complete simulation AI is hardly the aim of the corporations and governments funding them, they want an ai that only thinks about driving a particular car and is installed via a port, or a computer that only identifies different weapons and lethality in a war zone (always watching, never sleeping, no need for a vacation or raise).
Rocket Surgeon.
But all of those technologies are controllable. The military is all about ensuring that every component can be completely trusted.
The military doesn't have 100% control now, and likely never will. Because of that, they are far more concerned with risk / reward.
The military already trusts computers more than it should. Yes, what they use is tested, and the code reviewed, but there are always n+1 bugs in every program. There is always the chance that a bad chip can cause extremely weird behavior. They know this, and it is acceptable because the chances are small. But they are always there. Take the various computers that supposedly control the nuclear weapons in the USA and USSR of old. Software that was supposedly designed to react to a nuclear strike even if no humans were left to push the red button.
All that said, human soldiers are even worse. Yes, every army in the world makes their soldiers go through brainwashing and other exercises to instill a fierce loyalty in their tools. However, it's never perfect because humans are (at least currently) unpredictable 100% of the time. We still have defectors, rebels, and AWOLs.
That said, any military would love to get a soldier that was a smidgeon more reliable, for obvious reasons. However, the more trustworthy the human or software, the more responsibility it is given. If we have the assumption that an AI construct is 100% reliable, more responsibility than ever will be afforded it. And don't forget that the US military isn't the only one out there... there are regimes for more crazy that may do less testing in order to win a war faster, for example. And just like in the nuke example, the repercussions won't likely be limited to those who made the mistake.
There has never been a system that can launch nuclear weapons without human involvement. The closest thing to that is Perimeter, which still requires human intervention to fire. The American counterpart strategy was to keep bombers in the air around the clock. Neither superpower ever developed an autonomous launch system.
Generals trust computers to carry out orders, but they don't trust them to make decisions. The design of Perimeter is nothing if not a testament to that. They've seen all of the old sci-fi movies that suggest machines have the potential to go rogue. And every time a story like this happens, they only get more cautious.
Robotic soldiers might be plausible simply because the risk is comparatively small, but handing over power to a machine just ain't gonna happen.
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If you read the Dead Hand article you linked to, then you know that it doesn't necessarily require human intervention to fire. Some claim it is always functioning. Some claim it never did. Some claim it has to be manually switched on. However, considering part* of its purpose was to guarantee retaliation in the event of a surprise attack, I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn it was the former. Some quotes from Russian officials in that article would lead me to believe that was well. Again, different cultures can rationalize different things.
I will point out one thing though which always scared me about that system- suppose that you're right, and Perimeter would only send launch codes to the missiles in the event it was primed to do so by a human hand. That says nothing about the various missiles that are sitting there waiting to hear from Perimeter as well. Given the nature of the system, I doubt that each missile would have to be manually turned on. Thus, you still have a computer controlling a nuke. Again, nobody talking really seems to know, so my fears may be unjustified.
*I also find it somewhat humorous (given the original topic) that one Russian official claimed Dead Hand was invented "to cool down all these hotheads and extremists. No matter what was going to happen, there still would be revenge." In other words, they couldn't trust themselves, so they gave the responsibility to a computer. Very interesting, that quote.
Anyway, I'm sensing we're getting further and further off-topic here. But I have very much so enjoyed our debate.
On the topic of Perimeter's autonomy, most of the contradictory quotes are from bureaucrats who may have been playing the nuclear deterrent wargame, much like the spooks at the RAND Corporation once did. The Wired article goes on about it at length, and since it's much more recent, I'm inclined to trust it more. It also discusses the self-control aspect of Perimeter.
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On the topic of different cultures trusting computers to a different extent, I remember reading once that there was a particular kind of critical situation wherein a jetliner is not sure whether to trust the autopilot or the human pilot. Boeing (American) planes opt to trust the human, and Airbus (European) planes trust the autopilot.
Still—that's a safety system, not a weapons platform.
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You are correct about control, but remember that only need be the equivalent of "self-destruct" that every missile test has.
So you turn the machine loose on the enemy, maybe it gets out of hand, a general lifts the cover on The Red Button, and *pow* no more problem (self destruct charge took out a pre-school and a bus load of nuns, but hey, war is hell)
why the hell would anyone program a car to behave like a cat?
Whoosh.
Thanks for being late to the show.
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When we turn on the proverbial hypothetical sentient artificial intelligence, it won't have an instinct for survival or even a concept of self unless we explicitly instill those things in it; it will just be a glorified thinking machine capable of experiencing thought, like the brain inside of a worm or infant.
By the time we are capable of creating a computer that acts human, we will know, exhaustively and in every detail, what it means to be human. And we will be able to pick and choose without uncertainty what we are putting into it
Here are some links for you. Check them out and see if you still believe what you posted: Emergence/Strong Emergence, Complex Systems, Chaos Theory and Unintended Consequences.
Excuse me, wtf r u doin?
I've been through all of those articles before, and I'm afraid you're just fantasizing. Reverse engineering is a process of implementing what you see, turning it on, and hunting for the differences in design that explain the resulting differences in behaviour. While all sorts of incredible emergent properties do exist, the idea of someone getting the grant to wire up a trillion-CPU machine without an extremely good idea of what will happen is preposterous—and ridiculously risky. The same kind of blind optimism is why classical AI (1970-85) never delivered on its promised miracles. You can't just throw dice into the wind.
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