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Spaun: a Large-Scale Functional Brain Model
New submitter dj_tla writes "A team of Canadian researchers has created a state-of-the-art brain model that can see, remember, think about, and write numbers. The model has just been discussed in a Science article entitled 'A Large-Scale Model of the Functioning Brain.' There have been several popular press articles, and there are videos of the model in action. Nature quotes Eugene Izhikevich, chairman of Brain Corporation, as saying, 'Until now, the race was who could get a human-sized brain simulation running, regardless of what behaviors and functions such simulation exhibits. From now on, the race is more [about] who can get the most biological functions and animal-like behaviors. So far, Spaun is the winner.' (Full disclosure: I am a member of the team that created Spaun.)"
Well, did ya?
.... something the size of a human skull?
Just imagine how many people this could help!
It's not purely functional unless it's written in Haskell.
The golden age of humanity will start soon. The last gasp of the fossil fuel powered consumer society is now. We will create a new model of society, with longer living people and an understanding of how life works at the cellular, and most importantly, mathematical level. The future is not space, it's synthetic biology.
This simulation takes an hour to simulate one second of neural activity, but the researchers want to speed it up to real time. Why stop there? This brain would be much more interesting if it could simulate an hour of neural activity in one second.
Just a caution, though: make sure the physical arm it's connected to isn't within reach of any nuclear footballs.
"I still have the highest confidence in the mission, Dave."
Table-ized A.I.
What to teach Spaun: that it was intelligently designed, or evolved from its predecessors?
Could you possibly post a link to a version that is not hidden behind a paywall? Perhaps a pre-print on your own research site; perhaps an HTML web page summary of your work?
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http://nengo.ca/
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It looks like they use Python scripting in their NENGO simulator: http://www.frontiersin.org/neuroinformatics/10.3389/neuro.11/007.2009/abstract
would like to welcome our new Large-Scale Functional Brain Model overlords. (about time we had overlords with a functional brain and all)
I can't afford a yacht, or even a Lambo. I don't feel left out or discriminated against on that basis.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This type of tech is a central part of Robert J. Sawyer's sci-fi novel "The Terminal Experiment". Very good read, if a bit dated now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminal_Experiment
http://www.sfwriter.com/exte.htm
The fact this responds in similar ways is astonishing.. not because of what this model has accomplished, but because it's a great big flashing light pointing to this being the right way to machine intelligence. "HEY OVER HERE!"
I'll pre order his book, and wait patiently for an open source version of this research / model to appear for people to hack on.
It's slow now, but 1/3600 speed within the next generation of computers to do in real time - and that's without optimization.
Interesting times indeed.
..don't panic
Hmmm...that seems to be more capable than a large segment of the human population. Impressive.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Spaun sees a series of digits: 1 2 3; 5 6 7; 3 4 ?. Its neurons fire, and it calculates the next logical number in the sequence. It scrawls out a 5
What the article doesn't tell you is that the "5" was followed by "@r@H c0Nn0r?"...
Not sure, but if computers can get intelligent, isn't there then a special ethics to it? Perhaps let information be oriented on by computers but a way to back up its intelligence so that it can delete parts of its development for as long necessary? (meaning it can have pains and decide to continue with pains. "A mad machine' "? (bezerking?))
This model requires a machine with at least 24GB of RAM to run the full implementation. Estimated run times for a quad-core 2.5GHz are 3 hours per 1 second of simulation time.
:>)
So running the model requires running it inside a Java Virtual Machine and running the Spaun model appears to require having a machine with 24 GigaBytes of RAM to allow the JVM enough space for doing its thing.
And the simulation runs at 3 hours of wall-clock time (I assume) per 1 second of simulated time, ~ 10800:1.
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Perhaps not using Java might help a bit; perhaps just Python; perhaps just straight in C to really speed things up? Perhaps even a GPU version to really-zoom-speed it up?
Destination: Void is a great Frank Herbert book along these lines; always thought it would make a great play. Admittedly, the last line is a bit too cheesy, though.
re: Runs at 1/3600 real time
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No, it appears that running the Spaun model on NENGO in a Java Virtual machine on a quad-core cpu running at 2.5 GHz takes 3 hours to run an emulated 1 second:
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http:models.nengo.ca/spaun
Notes:
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- This model requires a machine with at least 24GB of RAM to run the full implementation.
Estimated run times for a quad-core 2.5GHz are 3 hours per 1 second of simulation time.
- See the run_spaun.py file in the spaun directory for experiment options.:
IN SPACE! Come on man, this stuff would be perfect in space. Also once we modify ourselves to meld with the artificial, we'll be able to move beyond this pale blue dot.
large scale is a bit of a joke, it's like describing an amoeba as a large scale creature because it's large scale compared to a protein. A four year old and write numbers, and do loads of other things besides. I suspect a computational model would need more processing power than the world can put together.
If the brain were simple enough to be understood, it would be too simple to understand itself. (anonymous author).
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
The paper abstract says 2.5 million neurons are simulated in Spaun, at 1/3600 speed. A human brain has 100 billion. So I guess it's off by a factor of 144,000,000 from doing my homework for me.
Think how much the spammers and data miners would pay for such a simulated brain. Typical anti-spammer challenges on the web involve presentation of a picture of a sequence of characters and digits, which you must identify and repeat back as ASCII text. This simulated brain could easily accomplish that task. What challenge system will we switch to next...