A Worm's Mind In a Lego Body

mikejuk writes The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is tiny and only has 302 neurons. These have been completely mapped, and one of the founders of the OpenWorm project, Timothy Busbice, has taken the connectome and implemented an object oriented neuron program. The neurons communicate by sending UDP packets across the network. The software works with sensors and effectors provided by a simple LEGO robot. The sensors are sampled every 100ms. For example, the sonar sensor on the robot is wired as the worm's nose. If anything comes within 20cm of the 'nose' then UDP packets are sent to the sensory neurons in the network. The motor neurons are wired up to the left and right motors of the robot. It is claimed that the robot behaved in ways that are similar to observed C. elegans. Stimulation of the nose stopped forward motion. Touching the anterior and posterior touch sensors made the robot move forward and back accordingly. Stimulating the food sensor made the robot move forward. The key point is that there was no programming or learning involved to create the behaviors. The connectome of the worm was mapped and implemented as a software system and the behaviors emerge. Is the robot a C. elegans in a different body or is it something quite new? Is it alive? These are questions for philosophers, but it does suggest that the ghost in the machine is just the machine. The important question is does it scale?

Comments

Put the glasses on, stupid.

[ColdWetDog]

Initially read it as "A Woman's Mind in a Lego Body". Wasn't quite sure where to go from there so I squinted a little bit. Fortunately Timothy saved me from having to explain to my wife just what 'that stupid Slashdot article" is about.

Re:Put the glasses on, stupid.

[ColdWetDog]

Actually, that's pretty cool. The bot goes back and forth, kinda like a real worm. It would be interesting to scale this behavior up to several thousand 'neurons' (I'm sure somebody is going to try).

Re:Put the glasses on, stupid.

[whereiswaldo]

What else would be interesting: let this "worm" mate and see how it offspring adapt to their new body.

Re:Put the glasses on, stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

ah but then it begins to eat harvesters.

Re:Put the glasses on, stupid.

[Noah Haders]

Yea I read that too and got all excited and stuff. Major let down.

Re:Put the glasses on, stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

As the article mentions, this isn't too interesting to AI developers. We already know how neural networks work and some are turning complete so they can do anything. What we aren't good at is designing them. Add a connection here or there, set the weight to .000803 or .0040075, switching to pulsating, or whatever. We don't know. Instead we run thousands upon thousands of simulations that use other AI algorithms to make the networks for us.

We haven't scaled up to human levels because there's so much more to complex brains. There's some sort of cross talk with chemicals, other chemicals coating neurons to make them fire differently, neurons growing together or apart, cells dying, new cells emerging, etc... Now maybe all that's not needed, good enough is fine for evolution, but were not at that level yet.

There are human-level brain simulations being worked on, but I haven't been following them closely. I don't think they're implementing everything. Actually, I know they aren't because we keep discovering new things. Are they working off and standard model of the human brain or a specific person's brain?

It would be more ground breaking if someone did the reverse. Engineer a neural network then grow it into another animal. That would be new, but due to the nature of neural networks, we also already know it would work.

Re:Put the glasses on, stupid.

[Cito]

Scaled up we'd then have Johnny Depp try to take over the world and "upgrade humans"...

Har :-P

Re:Put the glasses on, stupid.

[SomeoneFromBelgium]

Indeed, she (the woman's mind in a lego body) doesn't need too much neurons does she?

Re:Put the glasses on, stupid.

[Peter Simpson]

I had my glasses on, and read it the same way.

My second thought: Does the minifig have an insatiable desire to go shoe shopping? :-)

I believe I need another cup of coffee this morning...

Re:Put the glasses on, stupid.

[omnichad]

You'll have to call Kevin Bacon. That's what happens.

Re:Put the glasses on, stupid.

[omnichad]

There are human-level brain simulations being worked on, but I haven't been following them closely. I don't think they're implementing everything. Actually, I know they aren't because we keep discovering new things. Are they working off and standard model of the human brain or a specific person's brain?

Oh, you know. It'll be just like the Nintendo 64 emulators. You start with an HLE instruction set and work your way to cycle accurate. Before you know it, we'll be playing commercial humans.

Re:Put the glasses on, stupid.

[LeadSongDog]

We already know how neural networks work and some are turning complete so they can do anything.

Autocorrect? Or perhaps not????

The important question is does it scale?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to scale this worm's mind in a lego body, try MongoDB. It's web scale and has sharding. It just works.

Re:Of course the ghost is just the machine

[Livius]

Superstition comes from the instinctive default assumption that unexplained things are animate things out to get you.

The false positives are a nuisance, but living on the savanna without modern science it was sometimes the safe assumption.

No programming?

[tomhath]

The key point is that there was no programming or learning involved to create the behaviors.

Yes, there was. The behaviors didn't just "emerge", they're coded into the robot.

Re:No programming?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Yeah, that silly statement in the summary stood out like a sore thumb.

(As does my bad metaphor)

Re:No programming?

[Kjella]

If you call copy-paste programming. They took an "executable", dumped it from the worm's brain, put it in a robot and found it acts like a worm. The behavior emerged through evolution and was encoded in the neurons by nature, not the researchers. If you could dump a human brain, put it in a robot and have it act like a human without ever "reverse engineering" it that would be most impressive.

Re:No programming?

[bane2571]

From what I can see, the neural map resembles a set of logic gates. X input pass through the net and produces Y output. It's damn cool but I personally cannot see how it is in any way different from existing robotic constructs using integrated circuits.

As they say in the article, the key will be in scaling the system. Will it be able to replicate complex and/or learned behaviours, I'd love to see a robot with a built in reward system similar to dopamine and the ensuing pavlovian responses.

Re:No programming?

[teslar]

The behavior emerged through evolution and was encoded in the neurons by nature

What has been implemented in this robot has nothing to do with biological neurons of C. elegans.

The robot uses integrate-and-fire neurons. The "signal" sent from pre- to postsynaptic neuron is an integer equal to the number of connection between the neurons in the real worm. If the sum of input exceeds a threshold, the neuron "fires" (sidenote: right here's a bit of programming: how did the threshold values get chosen?).

C. elegans neurons do not "fire" (they are not spiking neurons and lack Na+ channels) but use calcium-based analog signals.

The body does matter too. C elegans has muscles on either side that it contracts alternately to move in a sinusoidal fashion. Not wheels. C elegans locomotion does not work like wheeled locomotion.

So, yes, you are right, C elegans neurons encode behaviour appropriate for a C elegans body given the biology of the neurons available here. None of this, however, makes it into this robot. An abstraction of the connectome does (C elegans has both electrical and chemical synapses; that distinction seems to be lost here too) and that's it.

It is kinda cool that the connectome does seem to naturally implement some basic response patterns; but given that muscles have been replaced by wheels, I'm not sure how meaningful that actually is.

Re:No programming?

[ashshy]

If you call copy-paste programming. They took an "executable", dumped it from the worm's brain, put it in a robot and found it acts like a worm. The behavior emerged through evolution and was encoded in the neurons by nature, not the researchers. If you could dump a human brain, put it in a robot and have it act like a human without ever "reverse engineering" it that would be most impressive.

All of this is true, but the inputs and outputs still have to be mapped to the appropriate endpoints. Unless, of course, mapping them at random still produces the perfect Lego/worm beast after a little bit of real-world action. The article doesn't talk about this, so I'm assuming the sensors and effectors were hooked up to the proper Lego tools by hand.

Which, in my book, counts as programming.

Re:No programming?

[Tyr07]

Actually they did just emerge.

You see, these neurons were wired in the living worm to send signals to different parts of the body. A signal from its nose, in the real worm, would go to a neuron, which would fire other neurons, that caused it to stop moving. This happened by sending a signal to other neurons which then sent them down to parts of the body.

What they did, was use UDP packets to be the 'signal', and then sent electrical currents down to the robotic corresponding parts as the original living worm did, which resulted in the same behavior.

They didn't put a chip in where it goes if range 20cm stop. They mimicked the worm and said if range 20cm send signal to neuron C. Neuron C in the worm and robot goes if receive signal, send electrical pulse to wire C. Wire C causes it to stop motion.

So behaviors emerged, were not "programmed" so to speak.

Re:No programming?

[pubwvj]

This is the goal. That will provide the platform, the OS so to speak, for then overlaying the data set which is the user's personality allowing us to transfer ourselves from a dying human organic body to a immortal machine body.

I should say immortal with the slight qualifier of, "until the manufacturers obsolescent you and fail to offer a forward path for your legacy data set." Bummer dude. You're out of date.

Does it scale?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Duplo.

Re:Does it scale?

[halivar]

Wouldn't they have to rewrite everything in Python?

Okay, that's it.

[ScrewMaster]

I read that as "A Woman's Mind in a Leggy Body."

I'm going to bed now.

Memory mapping?

[Kevin Fishburne]

Emulating the connectivity and functionality of neurons is pretty awesome, but it would seem the next logical step would be to map and interpret how memories are stored and processed, as well as organ feedback (skin, smell, glands). What's really interesting about this is that it shows, at least to some degree, that a simple brain can be reproduced using mathematical relationships (programming) and "run" with a I/O feedback loop. As far as the philosophical stuff, I think eventually we'll be forced to accept that life is a type of machine and that the "ghost" is an illusion emerging from its complexity. Other than better neuroscience, the main thing holding us back is pride.

Re:Memory mapping?

[Anonymous Coward]

The main thing holding us back is internet porn.

Re:Memory mapping?

[Anonymous Coward]

The position that life is a type of machine is not new at all. Philosophers call it "physicalism." Its roots go way back to the golden age of Greek philosophy (and arguably wasn't new then). There are plenty of modern-day philosophers who assert this position.

It is very unfortunate that philosophy is such a dirty word among scientists who haven't actually studied it, as there is quite a lot of it built into science and plenty of benefit a practicing scientist can gain from studying it.

Anyway, among actual philosophers (not religious nuts who claim the label), there is an important distinction to be drawn between "soul" and "consciousness." A soul is the hypothetical non-material aspect of a person that acts as the medium of his consciousness. Soul is a distinctly religious concept and is generally defined only so that it can be explicitly excluded from any serious philosophical dialogue.

Consciousness is that simple yet mysterious phenomenon whereby sensory data is transformed into the experience we have when we are bombarded with it. In short, consciousness means "feeling." It is a small matter to say that the physical brain is the medium of consciousness (with no need for the unsubstantial concept of a soul). But, the common presumption is that this phenomenon is unique to biological neural networks (brains do it and rocks don't), with no means of determining why. Computer intelligence has generally been lumped on the "rock" side of this divide, since the mechanisms of automation of intelligence remain so simple.

However, with the ability to directly map a neural network on to a non-biological medium (not just fake it with a script, but make the silicone behave in a way that is both structurally and functionally isomorphic to the neural net), and get identical behavior, makes the question ever bit as interesting as philosophers have long hoped it would become.

Whether or not the machine is alive is just a question of stipulation. But does the machine feel? We no longer have any reason to say "no."

Re:Memory mapping?

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me when you show non-biological free will. Emulation of deterministic life processes is interesting, but it's free will that needs to be demonstrated in silicon.

Re:Memory mapping?

[Kjella]

Emulating the connectivity and functionality of neurons is pretty awesome, but it would seem the next logical step would be to map and interpret how memories are stored and processed,

We actually have a fairly good clue on how the brain stores information chemically, but that's all but useless without understanding the neurons because they're the ones that disperse a memory during storage and gather all the sensory clues to trigger semantic meaning like recognizing a person's voice as well as all the associations related to that person during retrieval. It's not like computers with a storage unit, all neurons can store information and it also modifies their behavior so the memory and path to the memory is integrated and extremely multi-path, you can read a person's name or see their photo or smell their perfume and it all triggers the same memory.

In particular it seems we have two very different kinds of associations, one that tries to join same with same like how one person looks similar to somebody else, the other hooking up disjoint information that this name belongs to this face and the former seems to go by brain centers so we get these nice macro maps of what happens where. I guess that's great for those trying to create machine vision or something like that, but for AI it's the links between the sights, sound, smells, tactile and semantic information that matter and you don't understand those without understanding the micro scale, what hooks those two particular pieces of information together.

Re:Memory mapping?

[Kevin Fishburne]

Call me when you show non-biological free will. Emulation of deterministic life processes is interesting, but it's free will that needs to be demonstrated in silicon.

Life is extremely efficient, from the micro to the macro scale. To attempt to recreate even a simple organism using current technology (including a purely logical recreation in silicon) would be like building a modern supercomputer out rocks and sticks. When you speak of "free will" being recreated, you've pretty much chosen the highest possible level of what we'd consider a property of advanced life. What excited me about the article is that it suggests instead of tackling the mountain it may be more fruitful to attack a single grain of sand first. Perhaps once we understand a grain of sand, we can start working our way up to the higher and more complex relationships and functionality.

For example, rather than trying to create AI using programming, try reverse-engineering a single-celled organism's molecular composition and chemical processes. If that can be understood completely it provides a starting point for how to reproduce and modify it. Being able to "run" a bacterium in a simulated environment, and later being able to create one physically, is the first step toward truly understand how life works as a machine. Until we have that kind of understanding, the idea of creating real intelligence or artificial life will be confined to cheap imitations which work nothing like the real thing. If we don't understand how a human works as a massive ongoing chemical reaction, we have zero chance of creating one out of gears and silicon.

Re:Memory mapping?

[Kevin Fishburne]

Pride is not what is "holding us back" in this field.

Pride has held us back since we were first capable of feeling it. The inability to admit to being wrong because the evidence offends one's vanity has always plagued science and every other part of our culture and personal relationships.

After thousands of years of attempts, not one man out of the whole of humanity can tell us what intelligence is, much less how it can emerge out of any observed natural process. We only assume that it is possible because we are operating on a presumption of materialism.

Considering how little we understand life mechanically, much less life as mind bogglingly complex as a human, it's no surprise that we currently have no answer outside the realm of philosophy and general description. If "materialism" is what can be directly or indirectly observed by people, unfortunately there's no escaping that without divine intervention.

Once we can fully measure the state of every particle in a human brain and run a simulation with complete accuracy, we should not be too surprised if it turns out to be only a simulation of a comatose state.

I think a lot of people, particularly atheist scientists, would be so surprised they'd immediately fall to their knees and ask God for forgiveness. Ironically I'd be overjoyed to discover we all had souls. Unfortunately the smell prevents me from believing it.

Re:Memory mapping?

[putaro]

That's such bullshit. We didn't understand the atom until a little over a century ago. Quantum mechanics even later. Just because it's been thousands of years and we haven't figured something out doesn't mean that it's unknowable.

Re:Memory mapping?

[WillAdams]

More importantly, the Bible tells those who believe in it that nothing is unknowable: Genesis 11:6

>The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language
>they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do
>will be impossible for them.

So it's blasphemous for Christians (or Jews or Muslims) to say that humanity can't understand such things (or anything).

Re:Memory mapping?

[LeadSongDog]

The main thing holding us back is internet porn.

Once our robotic overlords figure out how to enjoy that, we may be safe from extinction.

Re:Memory mapping?

[Creedo]

Call me when you can show biological free will. I haven't yet seen it positively demonstrated in carbon, let alone silicon.

Re:Give it one more neuron and

[Anonymous Coward]

Take away all three, and it becomes a voter...

Of course it scales

[GrahamCox]

it does suggest that the ghost in the machine is just the machine. The important question is does it scale?

Our own brains are proof that it scales, at least if you get the implementation right. Unless you're of the rather woolly Penrose school of thought, there's nothing "magic" involved in the physical implementation of the mind, it's just physics. The devil is in the software model that it runs. We have no idea how that is architected, but experiments like this will probably help to shed some light.

Re:Of course it scales

[Cito]

Our luck science will eventually decompile the "software" that runs our brain and find that humans were written in Java :-P

Re:Of course it scales

[narcc]

Unless you're of the rather woolly Penrose school of thought, there's nothing "magic" involved

Wow, total fail! I take it you never managed to actually get through any of his books on the subject?

Did the math scare you off? No, that's giving you too much credit. I'll bet that you "formed" "your" opinion by blindly believing some nonsense someone wrote on an internet forum. Very likely someone who also didn't read those same books.

For clarity: I'm not offering my opinion on Penrose here. I'm just pointing out that you clearly know absolutely nothing about his thoughts on the subject. You should probably avoid this topic in the future. It makes you look like a name-dropping moron.

Re:Of course it scales

[frank_adrian314159]

Everyone knows it's Lisp all the way down until you get the the atoms, then it's this weird probabilistic stuff.

Re:Of course it scales

[RespekMyAthorati]

Penrose bases all of his ideas on the assumption that there are limits on computational methods that apply to machines but not to humans.
There is no basis for that assumption.

Re:Of course it scales

[narcc]

Penrose bases all of his ideas on the assumption that there are limits on computational methods that apply to machines but not to humans.

Actually, he spends a great deal of time justifying that "assumption". To claim "There is no basis for that assumption." is to disregard, out of hand, the bulk of what he's written on the subject.

Try reading his books first. You'll look less foolish.

Re:Of course it scales

[GrahamCox]

I take it you never managed to actually get through any of his books

And so many unnecessary assumptions on your part as well. Yes, I've read his book (singular; one was enough). I ploughed through it. I wasn't put off by the maths, just his argument. Perhaps using the term "magic" is oversimplifying, but it's what it amounted to as far as I'm concerned.

You can argue about whether he's right or wrong, but using my opinion as a platform for a personal attack on a total stranger just makes you look like an idiot, I'm afraid.

Re:Of course it scales

[narcc]

Yes, I've read his book (singular; one was enough)

Liar. Remember, you wrote:

Unless you're of the rather woolly Penrose school of thought, there's nothing "magic" involved in the physical implementation of the mind, it's just physics.

If you had ACTUALLY read any of his relevant books, you'd know that Penrose agrees that "there's nothing 'magic' involved... it's just physics."

You can argue about whether he's right or wrong

Why? The point was that your post was laughable nonsense. My only goal was to point that out, in case some unsuspecting reader thought it wasn't.

but using my opinion

Perhaps you should stop presenting your uninformed opinion as fact?

Cylon worms ?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the creator of Battlestar Galactica dies, and we learn that people are building LEGO cylon worms. Interesting...

Accelerando IRL

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

This is the first step to the "cat chasing a mouse" AI in the Charles Stross's book Accelerando. They programmed the AI to see the missile's target as a mouse so it would chase it. We're just a few steps away from this.

Despite Elon Musk's recent anti-AI ranting (which does have truth too it), we'll get our flying cars once we can implement a "bird-based" AI to fly it for us. The more we replicate nature in our tech the further we'll get. I predict we'll see "emergent features" such as social hierarchies, empathy, emotions, and such in our tech the more neurons we add without even really needing to program it on purpose.

Re:Accelerando IRL

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Forgot to mention the research on the stomatogastric nervous system heavily relate to this too...

Re:Accelerando IRL

[Kjella]

Despite Elon Musk's recent anti-AI ranting (which does have truth too it), we'll get our flying cars once we can implement a "bird-based" AI to fly it for us.

Clearly you've never witnessed birds flying into newly polished windows, bird strikes on airplanes or what will happen if it spots a hawk. Unless we can pick it apart, remove bits and pieces and compile it back down it won't fly (literally). The programming model isn't anything like computer software we know today, each neuron is essentially its own little CPU running its own software and I don't think meaningful abstractions to manipulate it exist. Actually that could be a sci-fi plot, you've "trapped" the AI in traditional software preventing it from doing anything unwanted and the AI tries to subvert it, like trying to escape from a prison.

Re:Accelerando IRL

[Oligonicella]

Oh hell, it doesn't even have to be a window, clean or otherwise. I've watched Juncos fly straight into the side of my house on more than one occasion.

Re:Accelerando IRL

[stiggle]

My "bird-based" flying car just dropped out of the sky onto a rodent.
I don't think I should have gone for the night-driving Owl upgrade.

Re:Accelerando IRL

[Triklyn]

dinosaurs are dumb. also, is your house the color of the sky?

Re:Accelerando IRL

[Some_Llama]

"ctually that could be a sci-fi plot, you've "trapped" the AI in traditional software preventing it from doing anything unwanted and the AI tries to subvert it, like trying to escape from a prison."

That's the sci-fi plot of every AI movie. Trapping the AI and it breaking free. Congrats

They've made something that mimics C. elegans

[Beeftopia]

It's fascinating but it's not C. elegans. It doesn't reproduce. It doesn't die. It's not alive.

The sensors are implemented in large, electro-mechanical hardware. Not biochemical systems. It has no telomeres. No cells.

Humans have several subsystems: digestive, endocrine, pulmonary (pneumatic and hydraulic), muscular, skeletal, nervous. If they manage to create an electro-mechanical system to mimic the nervous subsystem, it's just that - mimicking the subsystem. It would be an amazing feat, and what's been done here is fascinating, but we're still quite some distance away from stating that a human - or C. elegans - is 2^n nand gates.

Is something that mimics a nervous subsystem via an electro-mechanical system equivalent to the nervous system? Be it the 302 neurons of the C. elegans or the approximately 100 billion of the H. sapiens? It might become very intelligent... more intelligent than us... and then we'd have a problem... Frankenstein didn't appreciate being locked in his form...

Would it really feel emotions? Pain, rage, joy, fear, ennui? Or is it just mimicking them?

Fascinating stuff.

Re:They've made something that mimics C. elegans

[Creedo]

Would it really feel emotions? Pain, rage, joy, fear, ennui? Or is it just mimicking them?

Why should we assume that anything is "really" feeling emotions? What is the difference between "really feeling" something and "mimicking feeling" something? You have a lot of assumptions flying there.

This isn't about technological developments,

[Shadow of Eternity]

it's about moral ones. If we make a perfectly simulated animal brain and it works just like the real thing does that mean we've made an animal? Do we consider that animal to be alive? Does it have less "worth" than a flesh and blood creature? Better that we answer these questions now than when we have robots asking us if they have a soul.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[radtea]

If we make a perfectly simulated animal brain and it works just like the real thing does that mean we've made an animal?

Does it taste good? If not, you haven't made a real animal.

There is nothing deep or even particularly interesting about these questions, and just how stupid their breathless idiocy is can be seen by asking, "Does the newly created entity lack almost every interesting property of the entity some philosophy-addled idiot thinks we should 'wonder' if it is absolutely identical to in every respect?" The answer is always, trivially, "No."

So only an extremely stupid person or a shill trying to market something (fake wisdom?) would ask such an idiotic question.

There are more reasonable questions that people who are neither idiots nor philosophers (but I repeat myself) are reasonably well-equipped to answer. Like this: lacking anything remotely resembling neurochemistry, is it appropriate for us to impute to this model any of the effects of neurochemistry that may or may not be lumped into the neuron behaviour? Since we're pretty sure neurochemistry is independent of network architecture, it would be incredibly stupid to identify the entirety of the robot's responses with the neuronal architecture, rather than the neurochemical environment they behave in?

For example, if you starve a worm its behaviour changes because its neurochemistry changes. Hormone levels, cortisol levels (or their worm equivalents) change, and that changes behaviour, in some cases quite dramatically. So what happens to the robot when you starve it? And if you can't starve it, why do you think it is in any way identical to a worm, rather than just an interesting simulation of part of it?

And of course, simply because we can imagine a more complete model of a worm doesn't mean we can build one that is sufficiently similar to a worm in all respects to make any of these questions interesting. It would have to eat and excrete and so on. It would have to have environmental sensitivities. And imagining those things aren't important is stupid: what we imagine is not relevant to what is real. There is no basis for saying a mechanical worm is a "real" worm (what would an "unreal" worm be?) It is a "real" mechanical worm. You still can't eat it, so it isn't a worm. Saying certain properties "don't count" is pure magical thinking, unworthy of scientists.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[roman_mir]

Why are you concerned with the 'soul' question? The answer is no, you don't have a soul, there is no such thing as a soul. Also there is no god. We made you to be what you are but we are not gods, you are a machine that is very complex but can be understood completely and here are the schematics.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[narcc]

An epiphenomenalist? Wow. I thought you guys had all been shamed in to obscurity!

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[narcc]

Prove it :)

Neat, huh? The answer you were looking for is "we don't have a clue". Thanks for playing.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[linuxrocks123]

Instead of calling everyone around you an idiot, why don't you read the question again and consider again what is being asked.

Unless you have absolutely no ethical qualms about what Dr. Mengele did to his experimental subjects, the ethical questions raised by emulating a complete human brain are in no way trivial and in no way unimportant. Right now, we reformat computers, turn them off, turn them on, and don't and don't have to care at all about what they "want" or about treating them with any kind of respect. If we successfully simulate a human brain to the point where it can "think" and has humanlike "emotions", deleting that neural net file might be fairly considered murder. No, really. If you can talk to the thing and it can talk back, and it looks, talks, and acts like a human ... it's a duck. Sorry, human.

Now, we are nowhere near having that capability. We don't have to worry about that question now. But it's a very interesting question to think about, because thinking about it can grant insights into what it means for something to be sentient or human in the first place.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[roman_mir]

What do you mean 'prove it'? Wrong, you have to prove that such a thing is even a remote possibility, I have to prove shit, absolutely nothing, nada, zilch. There is no soul. I don't have to prove anything because it is an extraordinary claim to make that there is a soul and so those who make extraordinary claims have to come up with all the proof in the world to back those up.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[umafuckit]

The interesting thing is that this isn't currently possible even with the worm. Yes, we know the circuit diagram, but we can't actually use it to produce simulations that behave like a worm.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[narcc]

What do you mean 'prove it'?

You made a positive claim. See:

The answer is no, you don't have a soul, there is no such thing as a soul.

Remember: you're talking about knowledge here, not belief, after all. Learn the difference.

you have to prove that such a thing is even a remote possibility

The only claim I made was "we don't know" which is true. We don't know.

it is an extraordinary claim to make that there is a soul

Sure. Did you miss the part where I never made such a claim?

those who make extraordinary claims have to come up with all the proof in the world to back those up.

"All the proof in the world" What does that even mean?

Sigh... I really wish the science cheerleaders with no actual scientific background would go away. They're dangerous.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[roman_mir]

Wrong. We know that there is not a single shred of evidence to give us even a slightest reason to think that there is such a thing as 'soul', so we do not need to bother ourselves trying to prove anything about it until such a moment that someone presents evidence of measuring this 'soul' in any shape way or form.

  We 'do not know' about soul in the same exact way, in which we 'do not know' about underpants gnomes or flying firebreathing dragons or a magic goat that lays golden eggs on the Moon every Thursday. None of these things exist until there is more than a belief but instead there is measurable repeatable falsifiable evidence that is more than some 'vision' by some believer. Oh, and the part of your statement that is an ad hominem falacy is just precious. I take it you are trolling.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[narcc]

Again, knowledge and belief are different things. You're just confused. It's probably not your fault. I blame the science cheerleaders -- they've spread more nonsense about science than the ICR could ever hope.

You're making a knowledge claim, which is completely unjustified.

It also appears that you think empiricism is the end of epistemology. You're free to believe that nonsense, but the least you could do is get it right!

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[DamnOregonian]

Or robots demanding that we prove that WE have one.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[Anonymous Coward]

Occam's razor. QED.

Do you know what "QED" means? Occam's razor is a guideline for choosing a hypothetical line of reasoning, and doesn't "demonstrate" anything.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[Khashishi]

If, by an animal, you mean a fully developed cat or dog, then I'd argue that the animal has already reached a higher level of neural complexity than a human fetus at 20 weeks. (I can't back that up with biological data, but fetuses at that age aren't really capable of doing anything.)

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[roman_mir]

Wrong, the claim is that we have no such thing as 'sou' that was ever measured or displayed in a measurable, repeatable way.

There is no measurement of 'soul', there is no place in our bodies where 'soul' resides, so that when a person dies the 'soul' continues existing. There is no reason to invent soul, it doesn't answer any physical question, it was invented just like trolls and gnomes and orcs were invented to give certain subset of population some comfort.

Comfort without any evidence, without any measurements, without any knowledge, it's self deception. So I can claim knowledge that this is self deception and was created for the purpose of self deception and control, but it was never measured, it was never observed, it was never present anywhere except for people's imaginations.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[narcc]

Wrong, the claim is that we have no such thing as 'sou' that was ever measured or displayed in a measurable, repeatable way.

It's pointless to lie when anyone can see what you actually wrote by scrolling up a bit:

The answer is no, you don't have a soul, there is no such thing as a soul.

This is getting sad. Just leave science and the defense of science to those of us with ACTUAL scientific credentials. You cheerleaders are doing more damage to the public understanding of science than even the most ambitious creationist could possibly hope to achieve.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[roman_mir]

Clearly I am dealing with an attempt at trolling here, because there is no way somebody is this dense. So give it up already, ad hominem, appeal to authority, burden of proof fallacy, etc.etc.

I am certain that you believe you are having a ton of fun, it's nice to see somebody who has nothing better to do than to go through an alphabet list of fallacies while pretending they have an argument.

There are no souls any more than there are flying fire-breathing dragons and if you want to prove that there are fire-breathing that's fine, but you can't demand that everybody proves that there are no dragons, you have to prove their existence. Same applies to your 'soul' fantasies.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[narcc]

there is no way somebody is this dense.

I was thinking the same thing!

There are no souls any more than there are flying fire-breathing dragons

Prove it. :)

See, that's a claim to knowledge. That you have no reason to *believe* in such things. doesn't mean you can claim *knowledge* that they don't exist.

This isn't complicated. Faulty reasoning is always BAD, regardless of how important you find the conclusion.

You anti-science "science cheerleaders" and self-appointed "defenders of science" only care about promoting your own beliefs and obviously don't care if you support them with nonsense reasoning and laughable arguments. People like you are dangerous. You're actively doing harm to the public understanding of science.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[roman_mir]

There are also no flying spaghetti monsters, talking flying unicorns, mice that turn into princesses when the clock hits 12. I don't have to prove any of it, I can come up with a million things that don't exist and are only a figment of my imagination, exactly in the same way that people that believe in 'souls' have done.

I claim knowledge that there is no pink flying spider octopus macaque with a huge diamond for a brain. I just invented that fantasy, it exists in my imagination but not outside of it. I don't have to prove that it doesn't exist, I can claim that it doesn't exist and the probability of my claim being wrong is in such low numbers as to being absolutely insignificant.

You can carry on with your fallacies now.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[narcc]

Ugh... It's like I'm talking to a wall.

I give up. Go ahead and continue to be irrational.

Can you do just one thing for me? Stop spreading your ignorance. As I said before, you're actively doing harm to the public understanding of science.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[rhodium_mir]

The only true God is the free market and it clearly endorses religion.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[roman_mir]

The irrational only wall here is you, don't talk about science, you don't know what it is and why we have it in the first place.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[narcc]

What gives you that idea?

As I've pointed out many, many, times here, you're the one doing the public understanding of science a huge disservice with your irrationality. I'm also the only one of us, obviously, with actual scientific credentials. See, while you were browsing the JREF forums, filling your head with nonsense, I was in grad school getting an actual education.

It's not too late for you. Lots of adults are perusing higher education these days. I highly recommend it. It sure beats watching you contribute to the erosion of the public understanding of science. You know how you feel when you see a creationist video on youtube? That's how I feel when I see nonsense from the anti-science science cheerleaders, like you.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[roman_mir]

Lovely display of logical fallacies, one piled up on top of another. Every type of logical fallacy one can imagine, it's amazing how much nonsense is accumulated in your posts, it's quite a troll show you have performed here.

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[narcc]

Just for you, since you're not interested in an actual education:

Why I roll my eyes when I read your replies

Now go and sin no more!

Re:This isn't about technological developments,

[roman_mir]

All of your claims are wrong and yes, you are using a ton of fallacies while making these wrong claims.

An interesting specimen

[Sarten-X]

I first learned about C. elegans while researching simple neural systems. There's a nice map of the neural connections available. Today, I stumbled across the name again, when Wikipedia informed me that Caenorhabditis elegans is the most primitive animal that sleeps. Now I find that there's a robot worm that I'd consider to be alive.

This guy's pretty awesome.

Re:An interesting specimen

[BiggerIsBetter]

Today, I stumbled across the name again, when Wikipedia informed me that Caenorhabditis elegans is the most primitive animal that sleeps. Now I find that there's a robot worm that I'd consider to be alive.

Does the robot worm sleep?

Re:An interesting specimen

[ArcadeMan]

Do robot worms dream of electric sheep?

Re:An interesting specimen

[LeadSongDog]

Silly, everyone knows that the dietary fancy of C. elegans is E. coli strain OP50, so that should probably be "Do Caendroids Dream of Electric Germs?" (further reading at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...)

Life grows within the womb of these Legos...

[He Who Has No Name]

Life that has never seen the surface of the Earth.

How about

[no-body]

sex and proliferation ???
Upps, we forgot about _that_....

Re:How about

[no-body]

sex and proliferation ???
Upps, we forgot about _that_....

OK - eggs (max 300 or so) and hermaphrodite going through phases, but they have a program for that (DNA) - maybe after version 5.0.

Re:How about

[confused one]

So, you want them to make replicators. That's a great idea. Who knew "grey goo" would look like Lego bricks up close.

More importantly. Is it WEB-scale?

[michaelcole]

More importantly. Is it WEB-scale?

Scaling

[abe ferlman]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.

Re:Scaling

[charronia]

Let's not open that particular can of worms.

Re:Scaling

[bluegutang]

Would that be the flying spaghetti monster?

Re:Scaling

[ArcadeMan]

Heresy! You shall not mention that vile creature's name in the presence of the holy Invisible Pink Unicorn!

Re:Scaling

[ArcadeMan]

Easy. Cut it in half. Then cut them in half again. And again....

I for one...

[weinrich]

I for one welcome our new Worm overlords!

Re:Not a real (earth)worm.

[buckfeta2014]

Replying to myself is kindof dumb, but obligatory Earthworm Jim... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Important question.

[fahrbot-bot]

The important question is does it scale?

No. The important question is does it run Linux? It's a given that it runs NetBSD - sure, my toaster does.

Re:Important question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes it does: https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/688254-hackable-lego-robot-runs-linux/

It can run a lot of other things too. The Lego Mindstorms line is awesome. Not too complex for noobs, yet fully expandable to custom hardware and firmware.

Stupid Questions

[Echo_Hotel]

Get stupid answers, No, No,Yes.
And when robots ask if they have souls we say "No and neither do we, It's all pointless emptiness and someday it will all be over any your choices will have no meaning." If an AI can get through the inherent futility of existence without shutting down we slap a QA sticker on it and sent it off to work, if you don't think that's fair just consider it expedited teen angst.

Re:Stupid Questions

[roman_mir]

Naming conventions are what they are based on historical precedent, nothing else. If we devise a machine that can do all the things that many other living creatures can do (probably procreate, grow, learn, feed to sustain itself) under normal circumstances (excluding edge cases that we can compare things to, like people in coma who are still alive but cannot do many things that normal people not in coma can do), then there is no difference between that machine and another living creature. However we kill living creatures on daily basis, hundreds of millions of them, most large ones are killed to eat, the invisible ones are killed because we don't care and we have to do what we have to do in life (sterilise stuff, burn stuff, whatever).

So the reality is that none of these questions matter, we are the ones in charge and as long as we can stay in charge such questions will only be a curiosity that our minds are capable of engaging into, but they won't stop us from using our inventions in whichever way we see fit.

Re:Stupid Questions

[roman_mir]

If we make creatures that are sentient and are able to argue for their rights then they should do so and it will be up to the courts, until such time that they can understand the concept of rights and courts and until the courts recognise their claims as valid, they are machines that we created and we may destroy on a whim.

Re:Stupid Questions

[Khashishi]

No rights were ever given freely by an oppressor to the oppressed. All rights were fought for and earned through a successful struggle. In some cases, the fighters are champions for another party. Artificial intelligence will have rights when they win those rights in either peaceful struggle or war.

Re:Stupid Questions

[roman_mir]

So it would be okay to torture infants for our amusement

- hmm, I never said that, why are you putting words into my mouth that I never said?

Infants have rights because their parents want them to have rights and so their parents ensure their rights. You are a very strange individual.

Not the Functionality of a Neuron

[raftpeople]

They did not emulate the functionality of a neuron. If you read up on the subject you will find that the neuron is a network all by itself with spikes moving forward and backward, local spikes on the dendrites, the dendritic tree performing multiple simultaneous linear and non-linear computations, etc. etc. etc. They used an extremely simplistic formula that completely skips over these computations that have been shown to be very important for the proper functioning of the neuron.

Re:Not the Functionality of a Neuron

[Triklyn]

just because the neuron can, and does, doesn't mean that it needs to. you can emulate the dendritic tree. and the integration over time and distance may just be a function of the fact that it's a biological system communicating over distance.

how much of the biological necessity of a neuron is important to its operation, how much is lost as noise? it might be that it's for stability too. In c-elegans i'm going to err on the side of, "simple model is fine"

Re:Not the Functionality of a Neuron

[raftpeople]

Researchers are finding that those dendritic computations are frequently very important. One example is that object recognition happens in the dendrites in human visual system. Another example is that backwards spiking in the dendrites is a key part of learning. Maybe you can emulate the dynamic learning algorithm but I seriously doubt they figured it out and are emulating it, which means the system is not dynamically adjusting the same way the worm does.

Re:Not the Functionality of a Neuron

[Triklyn]

:) yeah, but science, like politics is often the slow boring of hard boards. this is the face of progress, incremental. Someone makes a reasonable facsimile using spike and fire. Someone else, maybe even the same someone else comes along and uses that model but changes the component "neurons."

This speaks to the fact that maybe dendritic back prop, and signal summation isn't necessary for some simple behaviors in c elegans. It's a place to start and points in the right direction.

Einstein could run before he could walk, but we're not all Einsteins.

Re:Not the Functionality of a Neuron

[raftpeople]

Don't get me wrong, I like it, my point was just a word of caution about what has been accomplished with this. The neuron is constantly getting more complex as they learn more and the older assumptions about being able to emulate at that level are pretty much gone by neuroscientists.

Re:Not the Functionality of a Neuron

[Triklyn]

never,

not every complex interaction can't be simplified. we might not be able to do 300, but we most certainly will be able to emulate one. be it in via chemical electrical and spatial first. Build one interaction at a time, build in how they work with each other. Go super-fine grain if you want. interact the chemical micro environments in a single dendritic body. describe the interactions in electric fields between various adjacent chambers.

Then link it up to an identical neuron, see how they interact. see if there's a significant difference between that and your model of choice.

it's doable, it might be a lifetime of work, but it's doable. I think we'll find that we can create a reasonable facsimile with pretty basic equations without loss of function.

Re:Not the Functionality of a Neuron

[raftpeople]

Well, if we consider the example of object recognition happening in dendrites of human visual system, that requires a neural network all by itself to emulate. It's absolutely doable, but there is a huge difference between integrate and fire and a non-linear NN style mapping of input to output. There are other examples of dendritic signal processing which all point to neural computation really being a level below the neuron, each neuron is a network in it's own right. So, instead of 302 neurons, to properly emulate, we may need 302 * 10,000 computing nodes ("neurons").

Re:Not the Functionality of a Neuron

[Triklyn]

:) let not the perfect be the enemy of the good.

not every branch of the tree is important, not every weight is necessary not every ion channel not every voltage gradient.

the action potential itself acts as one huge gating mechanism, and may add to the stability of a noisy biological system.

If we want a perfect system, w might have 30 million nodes... but maybe if we want one that's just good enough, we could have something like 15000. which you know... is doable.

sure our neurons do some wierd shit with integrating signals, summation, multiplication through releases, spatial signals through NO... morphological changes based on chemotaxis and usage... weird shit. but realistically, our systems are friggin robust as hell. if your thoughts and decisions were that sensitive to low voltages, they'd be sensitive enough to random noise and you'd be convulsing on the ground right now. That's why integrate and fire is sometimes good enough. because sometimes the most important function of a neuron is its ability to ignore the right kinds of inputs.

Re:Not the Functionality of a Neuron

[raftpeople]

Just one example of many of the need to properly model the dendritic computation is the hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons performing 2 different computations depending on the spatial distribution of the incoming signal (and level of synchrony). Either it performs input strength encoding or feature detection. You can't ignore this and end up computing the same thing, your end result will be different.

Re:Not the Functionality of a Neuron

[Triklyn]

yeah, but that's that, and not necessarily this. our memories are wierd things, and dreams are too. that doesn't mean every system needs to make use of it.

Re:Boobies mapping?

[Hognoxious]

make the silicone behave in a way that is both structurally and functionally isomorphic to the neural net

You don't normally use it for that...

Re:Of course the ghost is just the machine

[TapeCutter]

Superstition seems to come from a human insistence that things are better when they're a mystery than when they're solved and understood.

"It's more interesting not knowing" - Feynman.

Re:Of course the ghost is just the machine

[Tyr07]

If you look at the amount of things in this world that can make you dead, if you didn't understand them, it's a good reaction.

Car coming towards you. Will it kill you if it doesn't stop? Yes.
Bus. Plane, motorbike. Injury or death if it doesn't stop.

Any object falling towards you, pole, power line, rock, house (flood) etc. Will it kill you? Good chance of it.

The human race wouldn't have survived if it wasn't for that instinct, it's a good and proper instinct to have. It SHOULD require higher level thinking to investigate somethings potential danger before deciding we shouldn't vaporize it first. On instinct, we don't know enough that we should risk our lives until we are confident it is killing us.

But can it scale

[jpellino]

enough for a Dune reboot?

Not much of a question

[ArcadeMan]

It is a deep and long standing philosophical question. Are we just the sum of our neural networks.

Even the author doesn't seem to think the question is worthy of a question mark.

Re:Congratulations

[ArcadeMan]

To draw a parallel, they have successfully mastered Tic-Tac-Toe. Now, are you capable of mastering Thermonuclear War?

This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now. At missile two-five-MM in silo six-three in Death Valley, California, and missile two-seven-MM in silo eight-seven in the Ukraine, so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos. Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease. The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple. - Colossus

bio-coprocessor

[funkymonkjay]

forget graphics cards. these are flesh and blood AI cards you can plug in and play with.

download bugbrain

[PJ6]

No need for a Lego body when you can download Bugbrain, the single best teaching software (AI or otherwise) I have ever encountered. It's worth digging up a 32 bit machine to run it if you have the time. I tried contacting the creator once, it really should be converted to Flash so everyone can play it, but I got no response.

I completed the game (I'm no expert, but the software is so good it also means I know a little), and I came away unconvinced that neurons are completely understood yet. I think there's more at work than just sigmoidal backpropagation.

UDP packets?

[friesofdoom]

User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets between neurons? What the hell are they doing? Neural network != computer network. It's clear they have no clue...

Re:UDP packets?

[friesofdoom]

Ummm,

"The model is accurate in its connections and makes use of UDP packets to fire neurons. If two neurons have three synaptic connections then when the first neuron fires a UDP packet is sent to the second neuron with the payload "3". The neurons are addressed by IP and port number."

My initial comment is 100% valid in that context. The overhead for the UDP communication between neurons is just ridiculous, why would anyone in their right mind try and prototype a neural network in this way unless they have NO idea about what they are doing? This could be done in a thousand other ways (GPIO between simple micros if you want your neurons to be discrete) rather than getting some crazy network protocol working and slowing the whole simulation down...
OR
get this... you could get any 90's era calculator to simulate a 302 neuron network with out any problems.

Re:UDP packets?

[friesofdoom]

What moron up-voted you for that moronic excuse for a reply? It doesn't address my concern about using UDP packets in a neural network, and then goes on to explain their future work which has not been completed, isn't part of the work they DID, and is barely even mentioned in the article at all.

CurryCamel: "dfjhbgaerlkngdegibugfn, rfgipojfgnjdfkjgn, dskjdfhg, i like pie!"
Moron: "Oh yeah, that's the shizzle, I need to up-vote that nugget of brilliance."

Re:intelligence is a myth

[messymerry]

Let's not leave out bankers and used car salesmen...