Slashdot Mirror
Leech Neuron Computers
Ralph Bearpark writes "The biological computer is born.
A computer made of neurons taken from leeches has been created by US scientists. "I'
I'd actually read about some of this research being done back in the early 80s at Bell Labs. Apparently they could actually get some read/write to the leech neurons, for use as storage devices, but they...uh...kept dying after for a few minutes. Anyone confirm/deny that?
Other than the... er... providence of the components, how is this different than a silicon neural net?
Hmm...everytime I read about bio-computers it
reminds me what Ken Thompson said about going into
biology instead or CS. Why do I get the feeling
that all of my experience with "traditional"
computers is going to be worthless in about 15
years. Kinda like what happened to some of my
older physics and EE profs when transistors came
along and made their tube knowledge obsolete.
Don't you guys remember all these movies where the AI takes over the world? Like Terminator, for instance, or Matrix? Well, now it can finally become a reality. According, to the article, the leech computer can actually think for itself, without having to be told what to do. Just think of the implications... I say if AI does take over the world, it would have to be biological.
Am I the only one who's paranoid?
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I can just amagine....
"..this top of the line Intel Slugium 500 with NNX..."
I can't see anyone wanting to get their hands dirty everytime their slugs explode because they over clock them, and where are the animal rights guys? If they were doing this with pigs [what a sight] they [the animal rights dudes] would be all over them.. Interesting article anyways.. Its a neat idea, and would make replacing CPU's a bit cheaper...
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
SB.
They tried that is Phantom menace with disasterous results... when the orbital supercomputer is blown up your 'bots all shut down.
Complexity Happens
Then if computers can take on human characteristics through "taking living brains from dead bodies," we'd first need to figure out how to shut down or control parts of the brain that control aspects of the human personality.
We've all seen The Matrix, 2001, Terminator, etc, and all have to do with machines becoming sentient and destroying their operators when they threaten to pull the plug. It's a natural aspect built into our personality - logically a machine with a human brain would inherit that characteristic as well.
Imagine if you're trying to reboot your human-brain computer and it doesn't want to? Will it lash out at you by doing whatever it can to stop you? ("Open the pod bay doors, HAL.")
Before you know it they will want to use human neruons because of the obvious advantage in intelligence. Like maybe people who are near death will donate some neurons or something. Then you really have an ethical problem on your hands. Leeches probably won't raise a stir though because people tend to care less about things that aren't as cute.
While not quite as intelligent as you expect biological computers to become, we do have biological 'robots' who serve us; dogs, horses, oxen, elephants, little kids making Nike shoes, and half blind engineers in cages coding M$ OSes.
It won't be anything new, or newly immoral, or unethical, if we design a biological computer than can work out problems for themselves: people already do it, and we actually frown on people taking initiative, why would it be any different for computers? Likewise, a computer that can come to correct answers based on partial information is a hallmark of living beings, because they have to act/react based on partial information. Waiting until they know everything just leaves them dead.
Sentient robots is a ways off, first we need biological computers, and we need sophisticated electrical/silicon robots, and we need a way to integrate the two.
You're fear of slaves is unfounded, unless you object morally to our current use of them.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I didn't mean to imply that our current morals and falliability should limit our future morals. However I do believe that 'intelligent' wetware based computers are far off, as compared to something with the capabilities of a dog or a rat; it is these computers and robots that I suspect will appear first, and these computers and robots that I do not fear or object to, just as you do not fear or object to dogs or horses.
I truly see no need for human class intelligence except on a theoretical and experimental level, because we can. It's probably easier and cheaper to raise and train a human than to build and program a similar computer/robot, excepting that these computers and robots may have higher tolerances than we do... and that's a recipe for disaster if they indeed decide to revolt.
Anyhow, super-intelligent computers is not my point. Feeling fearful and squeamish about wetware computers isn't necessary, I think.
There is a fine thread between human falliability and human capability. If we need an autonomous search and exploration robot on mars or under the sea, a little bit of falliability is fine if the intelligence is enough to correct itself, and if the intelligence makes it flexible enough to work independent of us, as is the case where lag times between instruction, feedback, and further instruction is prohibitive.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I find this very interesting. And a little bit scary. If they anticipate being able to build a 'brain' out of leech neurons, which can interface with the electronics of a robot, I have to wonder how long it will be before the next step - to use the fully developed brains of other animals - such as humans - as the CPU in, say, spaceships? McCaffery and Heinlein, among others, already have seen the future of such - taking the living brains from dead bodies and using them to power starships. Even the Superman comics have seen living brains planted into metal bodies.
It's a brave new world that's opening up. And I'm interested in seeing where it goes.
By the same token why not have the "brain" separate from the "body"? The "body" would have a sort of pre-processor that would decide what to send to the main "brain". This would act sort of like an autonomous nervous system to handle "reflexes" and similar things that couldn't handle the latency of remote communication.
There are a lot of advantages in having the brain attached to the body. If the brain was in a separate location, you would have to worry about communications between the two. What happens when the communications link between the two gets broken for some reason or another? If the brain were connected to the body this is not a problem.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Living Neurons, Gengineered Neurons, or Engineered Silicon/Gallium Arsenide, it doesn't make a difference. This is a RESEARCH box. They're trying to find out how biological neural nets work, to make the much faster inorganic networks function in a similar fashion. I see no reason for controversy over the fact that leech neurons are being used. . .
As for the concept of "don't mess with living things", THAT one has been over for centuries: your dogs, cats, livestock, and food plants have been "engineered" for millenia. Current genetic engineering technology is merely taking the direct path to change, rather than the slower, round-about method of breeding for characteristics: both methods work, and to the same end. . .
In math/statistics/computer science there is a subfield called neural networks. Basically, this is a class of modeling algorithms which (usually) construct statistical models of data. They were really hot 4-5 years ago because of claims that they could learn -- that is, if you throw enough raw data at them they'll figure what it means.The reality, as usual, turned out to be quite uglier: yes, you can ask a neural net to construct you a model without specifying what the model should look like; no, if you don't know what you are doing, you'll end up with a lot of numerical garbage. Generally neural nets are successfully used in dealing with huge amounts of noisy data, such as voice and image recognition, stock market modeling, etc.
"Normal" neural nets, implementation-wise, are just programs that take some inputs and produce some outputs. Custom-made chips exist which put common neural net operations into hardware thus speeding the whole process immensely. It seems that what these guys are doing is a wetware neural net, that is instead of software constructs or logic gates they are using living neurons. There may be advantages to that, but I don't see them yet. Most of the stuff that they mentioned (such as making connections on the as-needed basis) are characteristics of all neural nets, including the software and the hardware ones.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Oh, sure, the neural nets are very useful. It's just that they were overhyped some time ago.
Whether the artificial neural nets modify connections during training depends on the how the net is trained. First, there are learning methods that specifically work by adding/deleting new neurons (cascade correlation); and second, most learning methods win when they are combined with a pruning strategy (shutting off unimportant connections). The problem is determining which connections are not important.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
The lack of ability of your brain to deal with large numbers has nothing to do with your brains inert inability, it simply is a lack of training. No one can be born with the ability to multiply 45834 * 4542 for several good reasons.
First of all, our brains are built to survive in a natural system. The calculations we are programmed to do are of a virtual and physics nature.
Secondly number notation is a purly unnatural thing, one has to learn what 45834 is before they can multiply it by anything. Also our brain has to learn to understand the concept of a base 10 system anyways. While us having 10 fingers does inertly lead us to developing a base 10 system, this doesn't nessesarly have to be the case, and I doupt the math that is done subconciously in our brain uses such a system.
My last point is that there are people out there who can multiply huge numbers like that in thier heads. Most of them have no idea how they do it, this is probably due to the fact that at sometime during thier learning experienced their brain discovered a way to equate the symbol 13434 (for example) with what it truly means. Most people only have a vague idea what such a number really represents. If we can be taught to understand such relationships, we could probably all do this. But then again.. who knows.. personally I couldn't tell you what 34 * 7 is
> Native brain multitasking, DSP for sound analysis, etc, etc.
Don't underestimate that little grey blob of yours. It is quite powerful.
There was a Slashdot posting a while ago about a "task switcher" in your brain.
Your ears are already DSPs. That is how you distinguish high pitched tones form low pitched tones. Your choclea (sp?), inner ear, is made up of a bunch of hairs that resonate at the frequency of incoming sounds. They hear in the frequency domain, not the time domain, the FFT is computed naturally in "hardware". Also, your ear hears intensity on a logrithmic scale. Don't even get me started on the cool-ass things that your barin does with the STEREO signal from your two ears. Bin-aural hearing is totally bad-ass.
When you catch a baseball, your brain is actually doing differential calculus. It is a learned reaction, and it is all subconcious, but given the position and velocity of the ball, and knowing (instincively) the value of gravity, your brain anticipates the future location of the ball.
There are many examples like this of the computing power of the human brain.
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
A complex biological device built from living neurons that can figure out how to solve problems on its own is not a computer, it's a brain!
While I have no objection to researching the function of neurons, and even wiring a few together (apparently in a very simple and inefficient conventional computer) for research purposes, I really have to draw the line at building intelligent slaves. Not only is it immoral (to hold such things in slavery), it is dangerous. I wouldn't want to be around when a billion artificial brains wake up and think, "What's in it for me?".
Incidentally I don't want to hear any nonsense about silicon computers being slaves, either. There's a big difference between a machine that performs discrete operations on bits in a synchronous manner (that could be perfectly reproduced or simulated on paper) and network of living cells acting asynchronously and growing new connections spontaneously. You can't simulate the latter with the former (with any useful degree of accuracy and efficiency), and we know the latter can produce consciousness in some cases. Computer neural nets are merely self-tuning programs based loosely on the function of biological neural networks, not equivalents or simulations.
Disturbing quotes from the article:
-"their aim is to devise a new generation of fast and flexible computers that can work out for themselves how to solve a problem, rather than having to be told exactly what to do."
-"We hope a biological computer will come to the correct answer based on partial information, by filling in the gaps itself."
-"We want to be able to integrate robotics, electronics and these type of computers so that we can create more sentient robots."
Just imagine it, a Terminator or Virus type of story with a Jurassic Park twist: "The cells have reverted to their natural instincts! You maniacs! They were leeches! Every machine on earth is possessed by a thirst for human blood!"
We can call it "Vampire Leech Robots from Hell" and hire Jeff Goldblum (am I thinking of the right guy? the chaos math dude from Jurassic Park) for the characteristic quote part.
^_^
Earthworms don't drown, they are frequently submerged. They come up onto the nice wet surface to mate because it's easier to find each other in 2D and they can't survive in drier weather. They don't get washed out onto the sidewalk, they wander out of their own accord. While a few of them get crushed, most of them wriggle back into soft earth when things start to dry up, and the open surface is an ideal mating ground.
Try to understand a situation before you act. There are already too many activists out there who feel that the gesture of making an effort is more important than actually accomplishing something.
I am a meat eater (a hunter, in fact) and a conservationist, and I would never call myself an activist. The very name suggests that the action is more important than the result. I primarily act through my choice of products, charities, and governments. Money and votes speak louder than pickets, and actually accomplish things.
I would also never give a second's thought to the life of an individual worm, frog, or leech. I only watch my step on a rainy sidewalk if I'm concerned about messing up my shoes. However, I could easily become concerned by a drastic change to a population of the things.
In a previous lifetime I did some preliminary research on 'living computers'. Turns out the ethical issues are pretty small but the two issues that really have to be solved are: 1) connectivity (if it can't talk to current computers it's not going to be developed) 2) architecture (take it massively parallel and it dwarfs current computing capacity, otherwise forget it.)
Neurons don't actually link up well to current computers. They are perfect for massive parallelism however. Can we figure out how to utilize that and then can we figure out how to wire it up ?
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
But I just can't get the image of some 13 year old with a biotech leech-array for storing all his gigs of appz and gamez! hmmm and what happens when a 2 ton leech-based car welding robot at the Ford plant decided it's time to knock off for a mid-afternoon snack?
Scarey stuff, I wonder if in 50 years time we'll look back on this the way we now look back on using leeches for blood-letting!
--
Rare Window - free your photos
That supercomputers are too big, and
that the robot has to carry its brain around with it.
Sure supercomputers (defined for these purposes as machines useful for real-time image recognition) are big now, but I would think that by the time he (a) gets those leech neurons wired together in a useful way and (b) figures out how to connect them to the robot parts, that such computing power will need considerably less space.
By the same token why not have the "brain" separate from the "body"? The "body" would have a sort of pre-processor that would decide what to send to the main "brain". This would act sort of like an autonomous nervous system to handle "reflexes" and similar things that couldn't handle the latency of remote communication.
Thanks to /., we can all be armchair mad scientists, too!
The idea of having living neurons at the core of a machine seems somehow wrong. Even if the process is painless and doesn't result in loss of "life", the idea will still be surrounded in as much or more controversy as cloning and genetic engineering. The consensus seems to be "don't screw with living things."
I would hope that the project is moving in the direction of being able to mechanically simulate the self-interconnectivity of neurons.
On a lighter note, is anyone working on a Linux port yet?
I've seen some basic laboratory work in a physics conference and read some theoretical works prior to this report. If you think of neurons as basic units (as they should be), what is the optimal behaviour they all should have in the beginning (birth)? This is one of the central issues of neural computing. It's now believed by many that the spike trains that neurons emit to their neighbours contains the "information content". The first thing one could do with the spike trains is to retransmit them, or return them to the senders. It turns out that it is exactly what neurons do when they first find each other out. Only things get really messy and intractable when they seem to know what they are doing. (one obvious behaviour is specialization, which could be a result of instability, or phase separation, of the syncronization process). The efforts these guys are trying are probably to exploit some known behaviour after neurons somehow begin to stabilize into some functional units.
One reason why the problem is so difficult is that information is not encoded in a static physical format. In a digital computer, you may stop the quartz oscillator and hold some gates to on or off to read out the specs, painstakingly. On a neuron, you can't do that! Spike trains are dynamical processes that have many more possible ways to encode information. A useful analogy is from languages. Let's say every single individual in this world speaks a different language in the beginning, but with the same alphabets. When I write "one" on the floor, how would the guy next to me know what it means when the word of the same meaning for him/her is "aye caramba"!
This field is a very broad subject encompassing biology, physics and statistical mechanics. One may found an interesting but quite speculative starting point to work its way backward from Frank C. Hoppensteadt et al. in the April 5 issue of Physical Review Letters, 1999. Science and Nature also may often have articles on the latest development in this field.
Jains have quite a unique perspective on life. They sometimes walk with brooms to sweep insects out of their path, as they may be stepping on a "relative". Don't laugh, I mean, lots of cultures believe in re-incarnation. Their diets are almost wholly fruitarian (again, don't laugh). Fruit is OK because it grows on trees, and you're just eating the fruit and not the whole tree. Seeds are saved and replanted. It's quite mystical. If you're intrigued, check out "The Jain's Death" at
Electric Sheep web comics. It's quite astounding.