Finally somebody is making sense. I completely agree with crayz. This is a complete abuse of the words "free will", which seems to me to either have the intention of promoting or distorting the religious definition of "free will". Instead of using the words "free will", they should have simply said exactly what it is, some combination of chaos and determinism, and left it at that.
I'm really disappointed in the Slashdotter's responses, once again. Whereas, it seems that they recognized that something wasn't right with the article, they didn't make the effort to explicitly point out what was wrong (excluding crayz). It seems, more and more, that the press, and researchers, are trying to add a "flare" for the dramatic to make the story sound more amazing than it really is.
Furthermore, it's really SAD to think that Slashdotters are supposed to be the "bright" people. It makes me not even want to THINK about the "not so bright" people in our society. We really are turning into an "Idiocracy". It's a funny movie, but it's not going to be so funny when it actually happens in real life. We are RAPIDLY approaching 100% stupidity in our society, and unfortunately, technology is to blame. The pacifying effects of technology have lulled us into a collective "stupor". Unless we counteract the pacifying effects of technology, with some OTHER technology (which SOMEHOW has the reverse effect), we, as humanity, are going to fall asleep someday, and never wake up.
Any way I look at this you are INSULTING good work by professionals in this field, and you have no clue what you are talking about.
By the way the Hodgkin Huxley model simulates depolarization waves along the cellular membrane; the models in the papers they cite do not. Therefore the HH model is higher fidelity than what they are using.
I was studying computational complexity improvements on the Hodgkin-Huxley model 15 years ago, so don't patronize me. Where the HH model does simulate single neurons accurately it's computationally infeasible at this level. But there is more than one way to define the "quality" of any neuronal simulation, as I'm sure you already know. And, if one looks at the OVERALL quality, given the scale, topology and general accuracy of the neuronal model, I would say this is supersedes ANYTHING that was done 50 years ago, BY FAR.
Where exactly in that research report did they "VERY clearly specified that at least an approximation to the topology of the cortex is used"?
Are you even reading the same paper I am? Not the short two page paper, but the longer preprint. I think this may be the problem. In any case, you should have been able to find it for yourself before bringing your accusations to me. It clearly specifies the setup they are using, and it's not at all what you are claiming. It seems you are incapable of doing simple research and understanding its implications.
You pretty much don't know what you're talking about...
Right back at you. You're not even looking at the right paper. Now, PLEASE, give it up. You are the one embarrassing yourself, especially if you are the "neuroscientist" you claim to be. Please, tell me, who comes on to the internet claiming credentials as an anonymous person??? Yeah, and I can claim I meet with Nobel Prize winners on a regular basis (which happens to be fact, but is completely irrelevant on the internet). You bring FACTS here, not credentials. Read the FULL paper this time, and see the FULL facts.
I think I have already begun to. I can see that you are agreeing with many of my main points.
I'm talking about real action.
That's just it. You're TALKING about real action. EVEN you, claiming to be enlightened as to what must happen before we see change, are merely TALKING. This is EXACTLY why no change will occur. The fact of the matter is: We do not know HOW to solve these problems that religions attribute simply to personal failure of one type or another. There is NO failure on the part of the person. There is only failure on the part of PEOPLE, as a society. WE define the NORMS. WE define what WE want to do, and ONLY the leaders that WE choose can change that. That is not something that you or I as individuals can change unless WE become those leaders. But that can only happen by CHOICE of the people, and so we have an unbreakable cycle that was started long ago, and once started could not, and can not be stopped.
Thus, what we see in society REFLECTS the state of society. Social issues reflect the very essence of human nature. At one time it was possible to control human nature through the religious nature of man. Those days are fading quickly because, as science and technology progress, we see how truth becomes incompatible with the dogmas of religion. That's the beautiful thing about truth. It's like a diamond reflecting light from its many facets. It changes depending on your perspective. As we learn more our perspective is constantly changing. As that change becomes ever more apparent, tension will build, until we snap.
Yet change starts with individuals. Individuals like you and me. Sharing ideas. Coming up with better ideas of how to do things.
The question is, do you have any better ideas? You're telling me you can come up with an idea that six BILLION people haven't been able to come up with? THEREIN, lies the problem. We are only as strong as our weakest link, and we are only as intelligent as the smartest man (or animal, for that matter), AT BEST. Humans, however, have been very resourceful and developed LANGUAGE. Language allows TWO people to increase their total intelligence. However, as the number of people grows, that "benefit" decreases, and reaches a limit. We can only talk to certain number of people in a day.
We need more intelligence to solve our ever more difficult problems.
Besides this fact, people are becoming apathetic to other people as technology has an increasingly pacifying effect. People are happy to live their lives the way they are, and see no need for change. The problem is, they WON'T see any need for change until major problems start occurring. We're tearing ourselves apart from the seams, on the verge of falling apart, yet apathy has made us indifferent.
And lastly, WE don't know what sources WE can trust, as every individual and institution has their own motives. I don't know what your motives are, although I'm sure you have motives, some of which are PROBABLY not for MY benefit. How do I know if I can trust you? (In fact, I'm working on a cryptography problem similar to this at this point, and it's not even a MATHEMATICALLY "easy" problem, as you may well already know.)
I'm actually not done yet in replying to all of your points. I have a lot of very tangible points I would like to make. I've been very interested in this particular topic for many years, and I have made a lot of progress in trying to understand the underlying problems, but they are certainly not "easy" problems. If you want to know MY motivations, and what drives, I'll tell you at least PART is the hope that, one day, people will remember me as a person of dignity, as a person who wanted the best for humanity. Why? Because I know that, ONE DAY, I'm going to die, and ALL that will be left of ME, as a person, will be how people remember me. Needless to say, I do not believe in an afterlife. But I know that this is simply not how most people on Earth think. Most people on Earth think, that NO matter WHAT they do, they'll be forgiven and live an eternally blissful life. What would YOU do?...
The day they extract any significant amounts of water from mars is the day I'll care. This is simply propaganda for more funding. It is extremely low of NASA to stoop to the level of playing on people's emotions and primal need for water for more funding. This is an absolutely disgraceful thing for NASA to do. But it shows you the state of the world we're living in. People will do just about anything to make money, just look at reality TV. I really don't know what else to say, but that this is low, disgraceful, and very unbecoming of NASA.
Yes, I realize that "water" molecules may exist, but water is simply hydrogen and oxygen. It's bound to occur all throughout the universe. But, the real question is, what is the practical significance of water's existence on other planets? How is this going to help humanity? The answer, at this point, is that there is little to no practical significance. This is not, in any measurably small way going to help humanity in the next 60 years, if things keep going the way they have been going. If scientists and engineers weren't wasting their time doing this crap they could significantly improve the quality of human life here on Earth. Going to the Moon WAS an important goal, it gave the U.S. a direction, it gave the U.S. a meaning, it gave the U.S. a purpose, and besides that, the Moon, unlike Mars is the closest sizeable object to Earth. We need to establish a presence on the Moon before we even TALK about going to Mars or other locations in our solar system. I don't see that happening any time soon unless we resolve some very fundamental issues here on Earth. Scientists and engineers are some of the smartest people on this planet, and their more interested in LEAVING the planet then fixing the problems we have. Well, I can say right now that NOBODY is going to be leaving if we don't fix these social problems. Humanity will not survive if we do not fix the underlying problems ( religion, conservatives, extremists, drugs, etc...).
And most of all, the U.S. needs a president that will provide a direction, meaning, and purpose for our country, not these wishy-washy politicians. Now is the time, when the REST of the world needs to step up and be an example for the United States. Now is the time, when leaders from other countries need to step up and give a clear meaning, and purpose to their countries. Now is the time when we should get rid of these wishy-washy politicians, and replace them with real political leaders that will guide the tremendous power they've been and that they are now wasting. Now is the TIME for change!!!
No, actually I was right.
No, respectfully, sir, you are wrong.
I'm a cognitive scientist...
That is of no signfigance here. You cannot prove or disprove that to me, nor do I care.
This neuronal model has decent accuracy. If you look at the "words" I was using you will see they are are subjective. You are using absolutes to downplay the signficance of their research. I will quote you:
... & the words that they're using indicate that they did not connect their simulated neurons in a manner consistent with known biology of any part of mouse cortex.
No respectable scientist would base an argument on their subjective interpretation and claim it to be fact. I highly doubt this is your field of expertise because of your naive understanding of this research something even related to a simple Hodgkin-Huxley model. The fact that you did not even look into their research makes me think that you are disregarding it simply because it does not benifit your field. This is a highly disgraceful behavior for a professional of any field. To mock the research of highly talented scientists and engineers working on this project is the lowest any professional can get.
Just because cortex is roughly regular/on a macro scale/ doesn't mean that you can just wire together a bunch of neurons and call it an accurate simulation of the computations going on in brain.
It is disgraceful that you would even claim that they just "wired" together a "bunch" of neurons. It shows you have little to no understand of the research, which the VERY clearly specified that at least an approximation to the topology of the cortex is used.
Go back to your hole in the ground, programmer.
(Yes, I admit that was "distasteful", but rightfully deserved. Computer programmers on this board are acting in an almost self-preservation mode, as if this reseach threatens their job and their very existence.)
My grandma can hand sew polygons faster than that, and she's dead. Come on, with the amount of money they are making, it's practically a crime that cards aren't at least 10 times faster than they are. In fact, this article is just propaganda to make them even MORE money to roll in. There should be a much smaller limiting size for monopoly businesses. In any industry you look, a few giant companies basically control the whole industry. Our society is falling apart right in front of our eyes, and people are just going about their merry lives. Don't wait until you get a wake up call that the twin towers have collapsed before you start taking action. Oh, wait... that already happened. Well, don't wait until 33 people die at VT in some crazy mass shooting, because some guy was off his meds, that were "helping" him. Oh, wait... that already happened too. Well, don't wait until Global Warming causes hurricanes that wipe out entire cities. Oh, shoot, that happened too.
Will somebody **PLEASE** tell me what is going on here???
Could all of this, POSSIBLY, be due to ONE thing? Perhaps, GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION???? Wake up Slashdotters. You all know that something is not right. You're smart people. Do something about it before it's too late.
It's not the cost of the raw materials, it's the cost putting those raw materials into space, and THEN making sure that everything goes as planned. When you're talking about the number of probes we've sent off, you're talking about a LOT of money. That money and research goes into designing a system that's going to tolerate the extremes of space, that's going to send back data over huge distances, and that's going to containing sensors capable of reading large amounts of data. All of those scientists and engineers could actually be doing something that would improve life on Earth. Instead their wasting time on their space toys. Let's face it. We have HUGE social issues that we need to deal with before any REAL progress is going to be made. Technology has the ability to deal with some of those social problems, and yet, these intelligent scientist and engineers are off wasting their time, building a hunk of metal that they are going to throw into space. I rest my case.
It's called "sleeping on the job". It really works, you should try it.
But, seriously, the progress has been slow, to practically nonexistent. Why? One word. OIL. Everybody knows this. How do we stop it? Get rid of big oil. In fact, get rid of ANYTHING with the word, "big" in front of it. Their all bad. Everything from "microsoft" and "sun", the dictators of the software industry, to, YES, even, dare I say it, Gooo... Goooog... Ok, OK, Google. And, of course there's Big Tobaco. And, last, but not least, big George W. Bush. Just get rid of them all, and the U.S. will be a millions times better because you did. Vote democratic and privatize everything, share your toys, and eat your greens, and the world will be a better place.
There is no point, unless we are capable of near light speed travel. There is NOTHING of real significance in our solar system, other than the Earth, (and, of course, the Sun as an energy source). We must stick to the Earth (and possibly the moon as a last resort) for now. There is no point in us spending all of this money creating probes that image planets that have absolutely no impact on life here on Earth. Granted, the technology they have developed is useful, and has contributed significantly, but we are wasting money we just don't have by actually sending probes to other planets. If that same amount of research was applied to practical applications, here on Earth, it could make life a lot better for all of us.
Let's talk about being "real". Look at the state of the world around us. Poverty, crime, illiteracy, slave wages, drugs, gangs, etc, etc, etc... etc, etc... and you think a little bit of "happy talk" is going to fix that? We're going to "fix" crime? We're going to "fix" poverty? No, I'm sorry, that's simply NOT going to happen.
You think that just because you don't see any progress we haven't been trying. That is absolutely NOT true. These issues have been brought up again and again as excuses to avoid the REAL issues. These are BYPRODUCTS, of much more fundamental social issues.
Furthermore, you misunderstood what I was saying in my previous post about how AI can be used. Certainly AI will be working at McDonald's before they are capable of "solving our problems".
The wage slaves are replaced with automatic factories run by few General AIs and a slew of robots with Genetic Algorithms. What will happen to those people who have been replaced? They will be unemployed with no chance of ever getting a better life.
No, that's not at all what will happen. Certainly before AIs are capable of completely replacing humans there will be a time where they merely assist humans. I don't see humans "replaced" by AI, I see humans assisted by AI. What you are claiming is the equivalent of saying the "hammer" will replace the human. Certainly not. Somebody must still "hold" the hammer. Besides the fact, that, at this point you are just getting in to wild speculation. Why are we even talking about AIs replacing humans? Probably because movies have so distorted people's perception reality. If we build the AIs, as a part of a capitalistic society, we WILL find a way to help them improve society. You are fearing "fire" even before any "fire" has been made. What would have happened if man had such an irrational "fear" of fire when it was fire discovered? You have been watching all kinds of movies, about how "fire" will burn you on a stake, alive, that you don't see all of the benefits that "fire" can bring. And you've never even seen REAL fire before. But you have seen sparks.
FluxIntegrator: All of that is great, and people have been trying to do these things for decades.
No they really haven't.
Yes, they really have. It practically saturates the news, does it not? I only here two things that are REGULARLY talked about on the news any more. First is the war in Iraq, and second are social issues. Social issues have prevaded the news for decades. We are simply not capable of making the changes that are needed. We are driven by economic incentives, and all the talk in the world is not going to change economics.
If these limited efforts have been unsuccessful does that mean that we should stop and wait for some mythical AI to come and solve our problems.
There is nothing "mythical" about AI. A lot of progress has been made in recent years. Limited "intelligence" exists in many of the things we buy already. I'm talking about a relatively minor change from current levels of AI to truly intelligent AI.
Do you know the operational capabilities of an AI that does even exist yet? Your faith in a technology that is nothing more than vaporware at the moment is disturbing.
I have no "faith" in anything. AIs by definition have Artificial Intelligence. That is a definition, not a "faith". That's all one needs to know. They are capable of thinking, and they are capable of solving complex problems. And we already know that they are NOT beyond our ability to construct, as limited AIs have already been constructed which demonstrate a resonable amount of intelligence.
What is distrubing to me is how much faith you put in people to just "change themselves". This seems to me to be an almost relig
READ. It said 8 MILLION neurons, EACH with 8000 synapses. Maybe if you had done some research before jumping to conclusions you would have seen that.
When it comes to neuroscienc slashdotters know practically nothing. This is an incredible advancement and slashdotters are downplaying it like it's nothing. Maybe you guys should stick to computer programming, since it seems that is all you're capable of.
How is simulating a brain, any brain, going to improve the chances of human survival?
It's a matter of intelligence. Humans are not intelligent enough to solve some of the problems we are now faced with. And, as our problems become increasingly complex, there will be an increasing number of unsolved problems.
How about using our own brains for something more constructive?
It's a nice thought. However, as you have pointed out, it will require radical social changes, that won't occur until we solve some of our many unsolved problems.
How about solving the social problems that we have?
How about solving societal problems that we have?
People have been saying this for decades, and the situation has gotten worse, and not better. Social problems have very deep roots in our society. They go all the way back to the very structure of society itself, which was very carefully planned and exists in a very delicate balance. However, even with all of that careful planning that balance is bound to becomed unbalanced eventually, unless we are actively correcting the new problems that arise as population increases and new techonologies are developed.
Artificial brains can be of enormous practicality to society. They can be designed to lend a hand to workers, at the lowest incomes which, if we are really honest with ourselves, have replaced what used to be the slaves of society. THAT is where your "social problems" are coming from. Every time humanity designs a new tool to help lowest income workers, everybody in society reaps the benefits. We're reaching the limit of how much a tool can help, without needing some kind of intelligence.
How about recycling everything on a global scale?
How about using energy sources that are non-polluting?
How about stopping non-necessary traffic around the world?
How about stopping the manufacture of weapons?
How about using the knowledge that we already have in improving the quality of life for all?
All of that is great, and people have been trying to do these things for decades. However, these things are not going to solve our deeper social problems, whereas, AI does have that ability.
The symbolizing capacity of the brain has never been measured directly, only inferred. In short, the answer is, basically, yes. Hawkins explains the immense symbolizing capacity by talking about a hierarchy in space and time, created by layers of microcolumns. Read Hawkins book "On Intelligence" for an in depth, biologically plausible, explaination.
First of all, please forgive the typos, it's late here and I'm getting quite tired. But this is a field I'm passionate about so I felt obligated to post a defense for these IBM researchers. They really are doing great work.
One correction, I said:
...consider that each neuron had its own dedicated computer.
I was thinking about an eariler simluation done by IBM that was only simulating a single microcolumn. In this case, there are 4096 processors each simlulating 4096 somewhat biologically accurate spiking neurons. The structure is also a fairly accurate reconstruction of the cortex including microcolumns.
(Please, see my response to ralphdaugherty.) Basically, you're completely wrong here. Furthermore, the "network topolgy" is already well understood.
An achievement would be to understand and simulate the network topology of half a mouse brain. or heck even just one of the visual, auditory, motor or olfactory systems.
They did much more than simulate a single part, they simulated half of an entire mouse brain. The individual cortices are almost completely identical in structure.
This is a remarkable achievement, not just because of the research, but because of the fact that large companies are starting to take notice. Certainly the model can be improved significantly, but not if people don't start taking notice. This and quantum computing are practically the only hopes for the survival of the human species (and quantum computing is much more of a longshot). By disregarding this research, and practically mocking it, slashdotters are basically waving goodbye to the only REAL chance humanity has.
You have several misconceptions. First of all, this is not simply a "neural net". This is a somewhat biologically accurate model, with structure similar to a real cortex, including microcolumns, in addition it is:
A massively parallel cortical simulator with (a) phenomenological spiking neuron models; (b) spike-timing dependent plasticity; and (c) axonal delays.
(see the actual research description here: http://www.modha.org/papers/rj10404.pdf)
Secondly, it is not necessary for a cortex to have left-right brain functionality in order for it to function. This has been demonstrated in live humans.
And third, the speed, relative to real-time, is irrelevant. It is comparatively a minor task to increase the speed of the simulation by increasing parallelization.
Now, to respond to your somewhat antiquated understanding of the current state of AI:
In addition, everything I have seen in tech press on AI since the rules based AI reasoning failures of the 80's has been neural net simulations looking for patterns, such as the mentioned synchronized firings.
Sounds like you're a couple of years behind (as would be expected on slashdot, which primarily focuses on IT and science, and not neuroscience). Let me bring you up to date a little. Spiking neural networks began to grow in popularity in the mid to late 90's. They are much more biologically realistic then most of the models used in the 80's and early 90's. Also, a lot of research has been done which points to the significance of chaotic attractors, which arising from phase-locked loops in the neuronal structure. The fact that synchronous firing is observed tends to imply similar dynamics are occurring.
Furthermore, you make the assumption that biological brains are somehow superior to simulated brains, just because they are more chemically complex. That assumption has absolutely no research to back it up. For all we know at this point all of that chemical complexity may be superfluous for evolutionary benefits (and this is direction which evidence suggests).
Aren't the neural net rules just tweaked until they get interesting behavior like that?
That's the way it used to be done, so I can understand your confusion here. I think the problem lies in the fact that people are very interested in neuroscience these days. But a remarkable amount of progress has been made. Phenomenological spiking neural networks are quite a bit biologically accurate than the "neural nets" of the 80's and early 90's.
Don't tell me you think they actually have any idea how they would simulate brain functionality.
The cortex is arranged into mircocolumns of neurons, which have a very definite structure repeating structure over the surface of the cortex. Jeff Hawkins has recently presented a very convincing argument for structure of the mind, in relation to the structure of the cortex.
Training neural nets is just something easy to do. Beats actually writing complex code, doesn't it?
If you're implying that the simulation was not complex, consider that each neuron had its own dedicated computer. And, once again, this is much more complicated than a simple neural network.
I've never seen any explanation for how either short term or long term memory works, much less reasoning or any other functionality. And that at least is something that would seem able to be modeled and explained. How does man know anything about something they have never encountered before, for example, to acquire language as a child?
Explanations for both short and long term memory have been out there for quite some time. But neuroscience is not a popular topic of discussion, partly because it can get quite complex. People would much rather be talking about the step in the evolution of Intel processors, or life
Slashdotters are disappointing me on this one. I practically fell out of my chair when I read that half a mouse cortex has been simulated. This is an INCREDIBLE advancement. Furthermore, the fact that synchronous firing (which is probably THE most important feature of neuronal activations in the cortex) was observed is absolutely remarkable.
First of all, the human brain is not a quantum computer. The scales as WAY to large, and this has been known for many years . Only crackpot websites have suggested otherwise. There is absolutely NO serious research on quantum computation in the brain. That theory was discarded several years back by serious researchers.
Secondly, there are consistent theory of the mind. In particular, Jeff Hawkins Memory-Prediction framework. It is becoming increasingly evident that the mind is simply an extremely powerful predictor, which evolved to protect organisms.
And third, recent research has linked synchonous firing to CONSCIOUS attention. Which means that this simulated half a rat brain is most likely the first conscious simulation EVER.
This is HUGE.
I cannot believe, on a forum such as this, that people would be making jokes that imply that absolutely nothing has been accomplished. This is practically the beginning of the next stage of human evolution.
I could say more, but I'll let slashdotters redeem themsevles.
Ok, so all we have to do is harness negative energy from the Casimir effect to stabilize several micro black holes produced by the (highly anticipated) LHC. IF they can be produced and stabilized over long periods of time, possibly a bright flash of light would make it through the wormholes in some order. Thus, it would be possible to send signals backward and forward in time.
Of course, that's a pretty big IF.
Slashdot Mirror
When did the joke become more important than the science on Slashdot? Where did all the nerds go?
Finally somebody is making sense. I completely agree with crayz. This is a complete abuse of the words "free will", which seems to me to either have the intention of promoting or distorting the religious definition of "free will". Instead of using the words "free will", they should have simply said exactly what it is, some combination of chaos and determinism, and left it at that.
I'm really disappointed in the Slashdotter's responses, once again. Whereas, it seems that they recognized that something wasn't right with the article, they didn't make the effort to explicitly point out what was wrong (excluding crayz). It seems, more and more, that the press, and researchers, are trying to add a "flare" for the dramatic to make the story sound more amazing than it really is.
Furthermore, it's really SAD to think that Slashdotters are supposed to be the "bright" people. It makes me not even want to THINK about the "not so bright" people in our society. We really are turning into an "Idiocracy". It's a funny movie, but it's not going to be so funny when it actually happens in real life. We are RAPIDLY approaching 100% stupidity in our society, and unfortunately, technology is to blame. The pacifying effects of technology have lulled us into a collective "stupor". Unless we counteract the pacifying effects of technology, with some OTHER technology (which SOMEHOW has the reverse effect), we, as humanity, are going to fall asleep someday, and never wake up.
By the way the Hodgkin Huxley model simulates depolarization waves along the cellular membrane; the models in the papers they cite do not. Therefore the HH model is higher fidelity than what they are using.
I was studying computational complexity improvements on the Hodgkin-Huxley model 15 years ago, so don't patronize me. Where the HH model does simulate single neurons accurately it's computationally infeasible at this level. But there is more than one way to define the "quality" of any neuronal simulation, as I'm sure you already know. And, if one looks at the OVERALL quality, given the scale, topology and general accuracy of the neuronal model, I would say this is supersedes ANYTHING that was done 50 years ago, BY FAR.
Where exactly in that research report did they "VERY clearly specified that at least an approximation to the topology of the cortex is used"?
Are you even reading the same paper I am? Not the short two page paper, but the longer preprint. I think this may be the problem. In any case, you should have been able to find it for yourself before bringing your accusations to me. It clearly specifies the setup they are using, and it's not at all what you are claiming. It seems you are incapable of doing simple research and understanding its implications.
You pretty much don't know what you're talking about...
Right back at you. You're not even looking at the right paper. Now, PLEASE, give it up. You are the one embarrassing yourself, especially if you are the "neuroscientist" you claim to be. Please, tell me, who comes on to the internet claiming credentials as an anonymous person??? Yeah, and I can claim I meet with Nobel Prize winners on a regular basis (which happens to be fact, but is completely irrelevant on the internet). You bring FACTS here, not credentials. Read the FULL paper this time, and see the FULL facts.
I think I have already begun to. I can see that you are agreeing with many of my main points.
I'm talking about real action.
That's just it. You're TALKING about real action. EVEN you, claiming to be enlightened as to what must happen before we see change, are merely TALKING. This is EXACTLY why no change will occur. The fact of the matter is: We do not know HOW to solve these problems that religions attribute simply to personal failure of one type or another. There is NO failure on the part of the person. There is only failure on the part of PEOPLE, as a society. WE define the NORMS. WE define what WE want to do, and ONLY the leaders that WE choose can change that. That is not something that you or I as individuals can change unless WE become those leaders. But that can only happen by CHOICE of the people, and so we have an unbreakable cycle that was started long ago, and once started could not, and can not be stopped.
Thus, what we see in society REFLECTS the state of society. Social issues reflect the very essence of human nature. At one time it was possible to control human nature through the religious nature of man. Those days are fading quickly because, as science and technology progress, we see how truth becomes incompatible with the dogmas of religion. That's the beautiful thing about truth. It's like a diamond reflecting light from its many facets. It changes depending on your perspective. As we learn more our perspective is constantly changing. As that change becomes ever more apparent, tension will build, until we snap.
Yet change starts with individuals. Individuals like you and me. Sharing ideas. Coming up with better ideas of how to do things.
The question is, do you have any better ideas? You're telling me you can come up with an idea that six BILLION people haven't been able to come up with? THEREIN, lies the problem. We are only as strong as our weakest link, and we are only as intelligent as the smartest man (or animal, for that matter), AT BEST. Humans, however, have been very resourceful and developed LANGUAGE. Language allows TWO people to increase their total intelligence. However, as the number of people grows, that "benefit" decreases, and reaches a limit. We can only talk to certain number of people in a day.
We need more intelligence to solve our ever more difficult problems.
Besides this fact, people are becoming apathetic to other people as technology has an increasingly pacifying effect. People are happy to live their lives the way they are, and see no need for change. The problem is, they WON'T see any need for change until major problems start occurring. We're tearing ourselves apart from the seams, on the verge of falling apart, yet apathy has made us indifferent.
And lastly, WE don't know what sources WE can trust, as every individual and institution has their own motives. I don't know what your motives are, although I'm sure you have motives, some of which are PROBABLY not for MY benefit. How do I know if I can trust you? (In fact, I'm working on a cryptography problem similar to this at this point, and it's not even a MATHEMATICALLY "easy" problem, as you may well already know.)
I'm actually not done yet in replying to all of your points. I have a lot of very tangible points I would like to make. I've been very interested in this particular topic for many years, and I have made a lot of progress in trying to understand the underlying problems, but they are certainly not "easy" problems. If you want to know MY motivations, and what drives, I'll tell you at least PART is the hope that, one day, people will remember me as a person of dignity, as a person who wanted the best for humanity. Why? Because I know that, ONE DAY, I'm going to die, and ALL that will be left of ME, as a person, will be how people remember me. Needless to say, I do not believe in an afterlife. But I know that this is simply not how most people on Earth think. Most people on Earth think, that NO matter WHAT they do, they'll be forgiven and live an eternally blissful life. What would YOU do?...
The day they extract any significant amounts of water from mars is the day I'll care. This is simply propaganda for more funding. It is extremely low of NASA to stoop to the level of playing on people's emotions and primal need for water for more funding. This is an absolutely disgraceful thing for NASA to do. But it shows you the state of the world we're living in. People will do just about anything to make money, just look at reality TV. I really don't know what else to say, but that this is low, disgraceful, and very unbecoming of NASA.
Yes, I realize that "water" molecules may exist, but water is simply hydrogen and oxygen. It's bound to occur all throughout the universe. But, the real question is, what is the practical significance of water's existence on other planets? How is this going to help humanity? The answer, at this point, is that there is little to no practical significance. This is not, in any measurably small way going to help humanity in the next 60 years, if things keep going the way they have been going. If scientists and engineers weren't wasting their time doing this crap they could significantly improve the quality of human life here on Earth. Going to the Moon WAS an important goal, it gave the U.S. a direction, it gave the U.S. a meaning, it gave the U.S. a purpose, and besides that, the Moon, unlike Mars is the closest sizeable object to Earth. We need to establish a presence on the Moon before we even TALK about going to Mars or other locations in our solar system. I don't see that happening any time soon unless we resolve some very fundamental issues here on Earth. Scientists and engineers are some of the smartest people on this planet, and their more interested in LEAVING the planet then fixing the problems we have. Well, I can say right now that NOBODY is going to be leaving if we don't fix these social problems. Humanity will not survive if we do not fix the underlying problems ( religion, conservatives, extremists, drugs, etc...).
And most of all, the U.S. needs a president that will provide a direction, meaning, and purpose for our country, not these wishy-washy politicians. Now is the time, when the REST of the world needs to step up and be an example for the United States. Now is the time, when leaders from other countries need to step up and give a clear meaning, and purpose to their countries. Now is the time when we should get rid of these wishy-washy politicians, and replace them with real political leaders that will guide the tremendous power they've been and that they are now wasting. Now is the TIME for change!!!
No, respectfully, sir, you are wrong.
I'm a cognitive scientist...
That is of no signfigance here. You cannot prove or disprove that to me, nor do I care.
This neuronal model has decent accuracy. If you look at the "words" I was using you will see they are are subjective. You are using absolutes to downplay the signficance of their research. I will quote you:
... & the words that they're using indicate that they did not connect their simulated neurons in a manner consistent with known biology of any part of mouse cortex.No respectable scientist would base an argument on their subjective interpretation and claim it to be fact. I highly doubt this is your field of expertise because of your naive understanding of this research something even related to a simple Hodgkin-Huxley model. The fact that you did not even look into their research makes me think that you are disregarding it simply because it does not benifit your field. This is a highly disgraceful behavior for a professional of any field. To mock the research of highly talented scientists and engineers working on this project is the lowest any professional can get.
Just because cortex is roughly regular
It is disgraceful that you would even claim that they just "wired" together a "bunch" of neurons. It shows you have little to no understand of the research, which the VERY clearly specified that at least an approximation to the topology of the cortex is used.
Go back to your hole in the ground, programmer.
(Yes, I admit that was "distasteful", but rightfully deserved. Computer programmers on this board are acting in an almost self-preservation mode, as if this reseach threatens their job and their very existence.)
My grandma can hand sew polygons faster than that, and she's dead. Come on, with the amount of money they are making, it's practically a crime that cards aren't at least 10 times faster than they are. In fact, this article is just propaganda to make them even MORE money to roll in. There should be a much smaller limiting size for monopoly businesses. In any industry you look, a few giant companies basically control the whole industry. Our society is falling apart right in front of our eyes, and people are just going about their merry lives. Don't wait until you get a wake up call that the twin towers have collapsed before you start taking action. Oh, wait... that already happened. Well, don't wait until 33 people die at VT in some crazy mass shooting, because some guy was off his meds, that were "helping" him. Oh, wait... that already happened too. Well, don't wait until Global Warming causes hurricanes that wipe out entire cities. Oh, shoot, that happened too.
Will somebody **PLEASE** tell me what is going on here???
Could all of this, POSSIBLY, be due to ONE thing? Perhaps, GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION???? Wake up Slashdotters. You all know that something is not right. You're smart people. Do something about it before it's too late.
It's not the cost of the raw materials, it's the cost putting those raw materials into space, and THEN making sure that everything goes as planned. When you're talking about the number of probes we've sent off, you're talking about a LOT of money. That money and research goes into designing a system that's going to tolerate the extremes of space, that's going to send back data over huge distances, and that's going to containing sensors capable of reading large amounts of data. All of those scientists and engineers could actually be doing something that would improve life on Earth. Instead their wasting time on their space toys. Let's face it. We have HUGE social issues that we need to deal with before any REAL progress is going to be made. Technology has the ability to deal with some of those social problems, and yet, these intelligent scientist and engineers are off wasting their time, building a hunk of metal that they are going to throw into space. I rest my case.
But, seriously, the progress has been slow, to practically nonexistent. Why? One word. OIL. Everybody knows this. How do we stop it? Get rid of big oil. In fact, get rid of ANYTHING with the word, "big" in front of it. Their all bad. Everything from "microsoft" and "sun", the dictators of the software industry, to, YES, even, dare I say it, Gooo... Goooog... Ok, OK, Google. And, of course there's Big Tobaco. And, last, but not least, big George W. Bush. Just get rid of them all, and the U.S. will be a millions times better because you did. Vote democratic and privatize everything, share your toys, and eat your greens, and the world will be a better place.
There is no point, unless we are capable of near light speed travel. There is NOTHING of real significance in our solar system, other than the Earth, (and, of course, the Sun as an energy source). We must stick to the Earth (and possibly the moon as a last resort) for now. There is no point in us spending all of this money creating probes that image planets that have absolutely no impact on life here on Earth. Granted, the technology they have developed is useful, and has contributed significantly, but we are wasting money we just don't have by actually sending probes to other planets. If that same amount of research was applied to practical applications, here on Earth, it could make life a lot better for all of us.
Lets be real here.
Let's talk about being "real". Look at the state of the world around us. Poverty, crime, illiteracy, slave wages, drugs, gangs, etc, etc, etc... etc, etc... and you think a little bit of "happy talk" is going to fix that? We're going to "fix" crime? We're going to "fix" poverty? No, I'm sorry, that's simply NOT going to happen.
You think that just because you don't see any progress we haven't been trying. That is absolutely NOT true. These issues have been brought up again and again as excuses to avoid the REAL issues. These are BYPRODUCTS, of much more fundamental social issues.
Furthermore, you misunderstood what I was saying in my previous post about how AI can be used. Certainly AI will be working at McDonald's before they are capable of "solving our problems".
The wage slaves are replaced with automatic factories run by few General AIs and a slew of robots with Genetic Algorithms. What will happen to those people who have been replaced? They will be unemployed with no chance of ever getting a better life.
No, that's not at all what will happen. Certainly before AIs are capable of completely replacing humans there will be a time where they merely assist humans. I don't see humans "replaced" by AI, I see humans assisted by AI. What you are claiming is the equivalent of saying the "hammer" will replace the human. Certainly not. Somebody must still "hold" the hammer. Besides the fact, that, at this point you are just getting in to wild speculation. Why are we even talking about AIs replacing humans? Probably because movies have so distorted people's perception reality. If we build the AIs, as a part of a capitalistic society, we WILL find a way to help them improve society. You are fearing "fire" even before any "fire" has been made. What would have happened if man had such an irrational "fear" of fire when it was fire discovered? You have been watching all kinds of movies, about how "fire" will burn you on a stake, alive, that you don't see all of the benefits that "fire" can bring. And you've never even seen REAL fire before. But you have seen sparks.
FluxIntegrator: All of that is great, and people have been trying to do these things for decades.
No they really haven't.
Yes, they really have. It practically saturates the news, does it not? I only here two things that are REGULARLY talked about on the news any more. First is the war in Iraq, and second are social issues. Social issues have prevaded the news for decades. We are simply not capable of making the changes that are needed. We are driven by economic incentives, and all the talk in the world is not going to change economics.
If these limited efforts have been unsuccessful does that mean that we should stop and wait for some mythical AI to come and solve our problems.
There is nothing "mythical" about AI. A lot of progress has been made in recent years. Limited "intelligence" exists in many of the things we buy already. I'm talking about a relatively minor change from current levels of AI to truly intelligent AI.
Do you know the operational capabilities of an AI that does even exist yet? Your faith in a technology that is nothing more than vaporware at the moment is disturbing.
I have no "faith" in anything. AIs by definition have Artificial Intelligence. That is a definition, not a "faith". That's all one needs to know. They are capable of thinking, and they are capable of solving complex problems. And we already know that they are NOT beyond our ability to construct, as limited AIs have already been constructed which demonstrate a resonable amount of intelligence.
What is distrubing to me is how much faith you put in people to just "change themselves". This seems to me to be an almost relig
When it comes to neuroscienc slashdotters know practically nothing. This is an incredible advancement and slashdotters are downplaying it like it's nothing. Maybe you guys should stick to computer programming, since it seems that is all you're capable of.
It's a matter of intelligence. Humans are not intelligent enough to solve some of the problems we are now faced with. And, as our problems become increasingly complex, there will be an increasing number of unsolved problems.
How about using our own brains for something more constructive?It's a nice thought. However, as you have pointed out, it will require radical social changes, that won't occur until we solve some of our many unsolved problems.
How about solving the social problems that we have? How about solving societal problems that we have?People have been saying this for decades, and the situation has gotten worse, and not better. Social problems have very deep roots in our society. They go all the way back to the very structure of society itself, which was very carefully planned and exists in a very delicate balance. However, even with all of that careful planning that balance is bound to becomed unbalanced eventually, unless we are actively correcting the new problems that arise as population increases and new techonologies are developed.
Artificial brains can be of enormous practicality to society. They can be designed to lend a hand to workers, at the lowest incomes which, if we are really honest with ourselves, have replaced what used to be the slaves of society. THAT is where your "social problems" are coming from. Every time humanity designs a new tool to help lowest income workers, everybody in society reaps the benefits. We're reaching the limit of how much a tool can help, without needing some kind of intelligence.
How about recycling everything on a global scale? How about using energy sources that are non-polluting? How about stopping non-necessary traffic around the world? How about stopping the manufacture of weapons? How about using the knowledge that we already have in improving the quality of life for all?All of that is great, and people have been trying to do these things for decades. However, these things are not going to solve our deeper social problems, whereas, AI does have that ability.
The symbolizing capacity of the brain has never been measured directly, only inferred. In short, the answer is, basically, yes. Hawkins explains the immense symbolizing capacity by talking about a hierarchy in space and time, created by layers of microcolumns. Read Hawkins book "On Intelligence" for an in depth, biologically plausible, explaination.
One correction, I said:
...consider that each neuron had its own dedicated computer.I was thinking about an eariler simluation done by IBM that was only simulating a single microcolumn. In this case, there are 4096 processors each simlulating 4096 somewhat biologically accurate spiking neurons. The structure is also a fairly accurate reconstruction of the cortex including microcolumns.
An achievement would be to understand and simulate the network topology of half a mouse brain. or heck even just one of the visual, auditory, motor or olfactory systems.
They did much more than simulate a single part, they simulated half of an entire mouse brain. The individual cortices are almost completely identical in structure.
This is a remarkable achievement, not just because of the research, but because of the fact that large companies are starting to take notice. Certainly the model can be improved significantly, but not if people don't start taking notice. This and quantum computing are practically the only hopes for the survival of the human species (and quantum computing is much more of a longshot). By disregarding this research, and practically mocking it, slashdotters are basically waving goodbye to the only REAL chance humanity has.
A massively parallel cortical simulator with (a) phenomenological spiking neuron models; (b) spike-timing dependent plasticity; and (c) axonal delays.
(see the actual research description here: http://www.modha.org/papers/rj10404.pdf)
Secondly, it is not necessary for a cortex to have left-right brain functionality in order for it to function. This has been demonstrated in live humans.
And third, the speed, relative to real-time, is irrelevant. It is comparatively a minor task to increase the speed of the simulation by increasing parallelization.
Now, to respond to your somewhat antiquated understanding of the current state of AI:
In addition, everything I have seen in tech press on AI since the rules based AI reasoning failures of the 80's has been neural net simulations looking for patterns, such as the mentioned synchronized firings.
Sounds like you're a couple of years behind (as would be expected on slashdot, which primarily focuses on IT and science, and not neuroscience). Let me bring you up to date a little. Spiking neural networks began to grow in popularity in the mid to late 90's. They are much more biologically realistic then most of the models used in the 80's and early 90's. Also, a lot of research has been done which points to the significance of chaotic attractors, which arising from phase-locked loops in the neuronal structure. The fact that synchronous firing is observed tends to imply similar dynamics are occurring.
Furthermore, you make the assumption that biological brains are somehow superior to simulated brains, just because they are more chemically complex. That assumption has absolutely no research to back it up. For all we know at this point all of that chemical complexity may be superfluous for evolutionary benefits (and this is direction which evidence suggests).
Aren't the neural net rules just tweaked until they get interesting behavior like that?
That's the way it used to be done, so I can understand your confusion here. I think the problem lies in the fact that people are very interested in neuroscience these days. But a remarkable amount of progress has been made. Phenomenological spiking neural networks are quite a bit biologically accurate than the "neural nets" of the 80's and early 90's.
Don't tell me you think they actually have any idea how they would simulate brain functionality.
The cortex is arranged into mircocolumns of neurons, which have a very definite structure repeating structure over the surface of the cortex. Jeff Hawkins has recently presented a very convincing argument for structure of the mind, in relation to the structure of the cortex.
Training neural nets is just something easy to do. Beats actually writing complex code, doesn't it?
If you're implying that the simulation was not complex, consider that each neuron had its own dedicated computer. And, once again, this is much more complicated than a simple neural network.
I've never seen any explanation for how either short term or long term memory works, much less reasoning or any other functionality. And that at least is something that would seem able to be modeled and explained. How does man know anything about something they have never encountered before, for example, to acquire language as a child?
Explanations for both short and long term memory have been out there for quite some time. But neuroscience is not a popular topic of discussion, partly because it can get quite complex. People would much rather be talking about the step in the evolution of Intel processors, or life
Slashdotters are disappointing me on this one. I practically fell out of my chair when I read that half a mouse cortex has been simulated. This is an INCREDIBLE advancement. Furthermore, the fact that synchronous firing (which is probably THE most important feature of neuronal activations in the cortex) was observed is absolutely remarkable. First of all, the human brain is not a quantum computer. The scales as WAY to large, and this has been known for many years . Only crackpot websites have suggested otherwise. There is absolutely NO serious research on quantum computation in the brain. That theory was discarded several years back by serious researchers. Secondly, there are consistent theory of the mind. In particular, Jeff Hawkins Memory-Prediction framework. It is becoming increasingly evident that the mind is simply an extremely powerful predictor, which evolved to protect organisms. And third, recent research has linked synchonous firing to CONSCIOUS attention. Which means that this simulated half a rat brain is most likely the first conscious simulation EVER. This is HUGE. I cannot believe, on a forum such as this, that people would be making jokes that imply that absolutely nothing has been accomplished. This is practically the beginning of the next stage of human evolution. I could say more, but I'll let slashdotters redeem themsevles.
Ok, so all we have to do is harness negative energy from the Casimir effect to stabilize several micro black holes produced by the (highly anticipated) LHC. IF they can be produced and stabilized over long periods of time, possibly a bright flash of light would make it through the wormholes in some order. Thus, it would be possible to send signals backward and forward in time. Of course, that's a pretty big IF.