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IBM 'TrueNorth' Neuro-Synaptic Chip Promises Huge Changes -- Eventually
JakartaDean writes: Each of IBM's "TrueNorth" chips contains 5.4 billion transistors and runs on 70 milliwatts. The chips are designed to behave like neurons—the basic building blocks of biological brains. Dharmenda Modha, the head of IBM's cognitive computing group, says a system of 24 connected chips simulates 48 million neurons, roughly the same number rodents have.
Whereas conventional chips are wired to execute particular "instructions," the TrueNorth juggles "spikes," much simpler pieces of information analogous to the pulses of electricity in the brain. Spikes, for instance, can show the changes in someone's voice as they speak—or changes in color from pixel to pixel in a photo. "You can think of it as a one-bit message sent from one neuron to another." says one of the chip's chief designers. The chips are designed well not for training neural networks, but for executing them. This has significant implications for consumer AI: big companies with lots of resources could focus on the training, which individual TrueNorth chips in people's gadgets could handle the execution.
Whereas conventional chips are wired to execute particular "instructions," the TrueNorth juggles "spikes," much simpler pieces of information analogous to the pulses of electricity in the brain. Spikes, for instance, can show the changes in someone's voice as they speak—or changes in color from pixel to pixel in a photo. "You can think of it as a one-bit message sent from one neuron to another." says one of the chip's chief designers. The chips are designed well not for training neural networks, but for executing them. This has significant implications for consumer AI: big companies with lots of resources could focus on the training, which individual TrueNorth chips in people's gadgets could handle the execution.
So which shall it be? Cylons or Skynet?
Original Cylons or Reboot? In the end both Skynet and the Reboot Cylons ended up nuking humanity. So it is 6 of one or half a dozen of another.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Neural networks are simulations of how brain works. You can lose a significant part of your brain yet change in cognitive abilities will be barely noticeable. Same principle applies to neural nets, including this one.
Electronic brain. You would need to invent positronic computers first, or steal the tech from Silicoids.
You can lose a significant part of your brain yet change in cognitive abilities will be barely noticeable.
I'll drink to that!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
IBM is not simulating a rodent brain. They're not even simulating neurons, since nobody knows how neurons work. And IBM isn't claiming to, despite the lie in Wired's headline. Some AI scientist simply hope that they don't have to know how neurons or brains work, because if they just put enough not-neurons in a not-brain network, that magically, intelligence will emerge. It's like putting a barrel of nuts and bolts in a spinning cement mixer and hoping a car emerges, or maybe a bicycle. But billions of times less likely.
That was how we ended up getting married. I thought she was a hat and promised to just put my head in.
You are welcome on my lawn.
there's no "loop" in the brain where input neurons are processed on one side and output neurons exit the other.
Uhh, there are dedicated input and output parts of the nervous system...
If they simulate how the brain works
Neural nets in general are not simulations of how the brain works, but a set of algorithms originally inspired by the design of the brain. Some of them have been simplified or otherwise diverge, as they are developed for applications to other problems.
The output of the brain actuates lots of muscles, and a few glands. The 'self awareness' is a part of the processing.
The 'self awareness' is a part of the processing.
Why do you believe silly things without evidence? The answer to the self awareness question is a clear and unambiguous "we don't know".
Required reading for internet skeptics
> since nobody knows how neurons work
This would just rob the verb 'know' from its meaning for everything other than pockets of mathematics. For it is the case that even physics isn't fully figured out, what with reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics, to name one gap, let alone chemistry, which sits atop of physics, not to mention biology, which sits atop of both.
There is a huge difference between a taxi driver not knowing how the neurons work, and a neuroscientist not knowing how the neurons work. The difference isn't only in some abstract sense; neuroscience actually generates a stream of useful results, e.g. in healthcare.
I'd also guess that when it comes to our lack of understanding about how the brain works, or how consciousness arises, it's more to do with how the neurons are arranged into a network (in terms of structure and plasticity) as opposed to being limited by the knowledge of individual neurons. It would surprise me tremendously if a perfect neuron model led to the understanding of the brain, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if, once the brain's working is better understood, it turned out that a lot of detail about how individual neurons work are inconsequential or somewhat accidental, with much of neuron level complexity simply resulting from the fact that the neuron is of a complex, very large 3D shape with general chemical, electrical and molecular processes, which makes it inherently intractable. Let's not forget that tasks as simple as the three-body movement or laminar flow are still just crudely approximated in software; a single protein folding itself is complex; yet we understand how muscles move etc.
We don't have to know _everything_ in order to know _an awful lot_.
It never ceases to amuse and baffle me how even intelligent, educated Americans (such as slashdotters) allow themselves to be lured into vicious "Republican-Democrat" battles. Isn't it obvious that Demoblicans and Republicrats are just the two hands of the same power? Every minute and every quantum of attention and passion you devote to slanging off the "other" party is a minute and a quantum of attention wasted; because the American political circus has been carefully set up so that neither party can ever win decisively. Instead, you attentively watch a series of more or less random fluctuations in fortune, and whip yourself up into a rage about the character defects of the other party's politicians, all the while ignoring the psychopaths in your own chosen party. And you will never succeed in changing the government's policies by any exercise of your votes - just look at what Obama promised before BOTH of his elections, and how he gave you Dubya's third and fourth terms when you kindly elected him.
When will we see a serious discussion on Slashdot about the underlying political system that controls both parties, and excludes everyone else? Why doesn't anyone seem to care about the impossibility of voting for a political leader who doesn't want to conduct genocidal foreign wars? How about a government that reins in the banks and declines to follow the orders of billionaires? Why don't any of you seem even slightly interested in government of the people, by the people, for the people? (In case you hadn't noticed, what you currently have is government of the people, by the servants of the rich, for the rich).
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.