Without using any lens at all, anyone can clearly see that what's discussed in this article is biological evolution, which is, by definition, random and without intelligent direction. After all, it aims to explain the origin of species, which origin is said to arise out of chaos. Evolution in any other context is irrelevant.
Wolves and dogs are the same species. Wolves and dogs are interfertile, meaning they can breed and produce viable offspring. In other words, wolves can interbreed with any type of dog, and their offspring are capable of producing offspring themselves. While it's likely true that men domesticated dogs from wolves, no additional functions were added to create a dog. Rather, functions were subtracted from wolves to produce dogs.
An essential aspect of evolution is that it is a random processing, not the result of conscious decisions by another organism.
The study did not observe evolution. Not one single biological trait conferring a survival advantage was detected. All that was observed were two mutation of unknown origin. The authors surmise "paternal leakage", but nobody really knows the source of the mutations. The act of mutation itself was not observed. It was only detected by comparing samples over a long time span.
This is similar to what astronomers' do when they "blink" star fields -- switching between early and late images to make any change easy to pick up visually. When a change is picked up, the astronomer knows nothing about the cause, only that the change occurred.
But here we are, science and media over-reaching. The researchers themselves asserting that evolution is happening, and happening faster than before. We've never observed evolution yet -- some scientists only assume it from observed differences in the fossil record.
Why do scientists feel the need to over-reach in their conclusions? I can only guess. Funding, probably.
That's why I'm here to help you. Now for the next step. Find a tall building, go to the room and throw something soft off the edge. Graph the object's path. Compare with previous graph. That's a "plummet" vs a "gradual decline".
If you still can't visualize the difference, then the final step is to gain personal experience. While still on the tall building...
...you resort to name calling and litigation. This should "settle" the question of the foundation of misguided climate change alarmists: dogma, not science.
Wrong. The Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale was only ivpnented in 1971. Satellite clocking of hurricane wind speeds -- the sole metric of that scale -- has only been available since 1977. Before then the only hurricane speed measurements were on land and ships.
Recorded history goes back much farther than that. Like 6,000 years, give or take.
Using your term, we didn't 'know' how gravity worked even after Newton's and Kepler's work, still we were able to construct accurate ballistics, because we still knew something.
That example is not congruent with the AI claims made here.
First, we still do not know how gravity works. We have observed its effects and have drawn conclusions that were then formulated into physical "laws", but nobody understands the mechanisms of gravity.
Second, gravity is a very simple process compared with the processes of intelligent thought. We don't even know that thought occurs in the brain. The brain might just be an I/O interface to a completely different repository of intellect that we haven't discovered yet (e.g., what some people call the soul). Maybe, maybe not. We just don't know. Nobody has proven that intelligence resides in the brain. We've only poked at it and observed effects.
Given that level of uncertainty, nobody currently understands neurons and their role in intelligence to do anything more than wild, unprovable guesses.
I agree, except that all that's been achieved so far -- self-driving cars, speech recognition, etc -- is just automation, not intelligence. None of these artificial processes are intelligent, they are simply reliable at solving a small class of problems to a certain level.
Unfortunately you can't define what intelligence is, so these not-neurons in a not-brain network may well be producing it and you wouldn't know.
The burden of proof is not on me, but on those making assertions about IBM's chips achieving rodent brain capabilities. I don't need to prove anything, and demanding that AI researchers and the media support their claims with facts is not a strawman argument.
>We are talking about reproducing the intelligence of a rodent brain.
No. We're not. We're talking about *simulating* a rodent's brain to the limits of our current understanding
Sorry, no. The Wired article title in "IBM’s ‘Rodent Brain’ Chip Could Make Our Phones Hyper-Smart". The title is derived from IBM scientist Dharmendra Modha's description of what IBM built: "You’re looking at a small rodent,”
The claim, at least by Wired, is that IBM has simulated the intelligence of a "small rodent."
The point is that AI researchers and the media keep recklessly spewing outrageous, but unjustified, claims about what they've achieved.
We know things about neurons, but we do not know how they work. Just as I know things about the Navy Seals, but I don't know how they works. The difference is that knowledge about how the Navy Seals work is possessed by some humans. Knowledge of how neurons work is possessed by no human.
There is a huge difference between a taxi driver not knowing how the neurons work, and a neuroscientist not knowing how the neurons work.
My point is that there is not huge difference. In fact, I think the taxi driver is in a far better position, because he isn't lying to people telling them that he is close to reproducing rodent and cat intelligence from a simulation of not-neurons based on not-knowledge of intelligence and neural biology.
See, dichotomies work all the time. Especially when you have facts to back them up.
All your handwaving about how much knowledge is enough for useful simulation is meaningless, because we aren't talking about useful simulation. We are talking about reproducing the intelligence of a rodent brain.
The other simulation examples you cite are all experiments based on knowledge we already have. You can't model something you don't understand, and we do not understand ANYTHING about the relationship between neurons and intelligence. We don't know how memories are stored, or where they're stored. We don't know how decisions are made, or even if they're made in the physical brain at all. We know so little tht we can't even estimate how much more we need to know.
Nobody is building a mouse brain this week. Or this year. Or even this decade and I doubt this century.
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.
I never said you annoyed me. Please don't put words in my typewriter.
Annoying people are just another class of humans that infringes on the happiness of the Normal. Annoyed should pay for that deficiency iPod their ticket. Tall people, though, should get a discount, since they weigh more without impinging on their neighbors' happiness. So anyone sitting next to a tall person should pay a surcharge. Short people are getting away with murder though, since they can still be quite wide while remaining in the "normal" weight category. So they must automatically pay a height insufficiency penalty. When two shorts or two talls are in one row, a formula can be devised based on the number and sequence of people in the row and, perhaps, their IQ.
The thing about nitpicking is that there is no clear boundary between the asinine and the absurd. The world has enough of it already. It's unwise to add more.
Slashdot Mirror
Who knows how many speciation events happen and die off before being able to leave a mark in the fossil record.
The absence of data is not data.
The absence of data is not data.
Without using any lens at all, anyone can clearly see that what's discussed in this article is biological evolution, which is, by definition, random and without intelligent direction. After all, it aims to explain the origin of species, which origin is said to arise out of chaos. Evolution in any other context is irrelevant.
Wolves and dogs are the same species. Wolves and dogs are interfertile, meaning they can breed and produce viable offspring. In other words, wolves can interbreed with any type of dog, and their offspring are capable of producing offspring themselves. While it's likely true that men domesticated dogs from wolves, no additional functions were added to create a dog. Rather, functions were subtracted from wolves to produce dogs.
An essential aspect of evolution is that it is a random processing, not the result of conscious decisions by another organism.
The study did not observe evolution. Not one single biological trait conferring a survival advantage was detected. All that was observed were two mutation of unknown origin. The authors surmise "paternal leakage", but nobody really knows the source of the mutations. The act of mutation itself was not observed. It was only detected by comparing samples over a long time span.
This is similar to what astronomers' do when they "blink" star fields -- switching between early and late images to make any change easy to pick up visually. When a change is picked up, the astronomer knows nothing about the cause, only that the change occurred.
But here we are, science and media over-reaching. The researchers themselves asserting that evolution is happening, and happening faster than before. We've never observed evolution yet -- some scientists only assume it from observed differences in the fossil record.
Why do scientists feel the need to over-reach in their conclusions? I can only guess. Funding, probably.
(Go to the roof, not the room. Why doesn't /. support editing?)
That's why I'm here to help you. Now for the next step. Find a tall building, go to the room and throw something soft off the edge. Graph the object's path. Compare with previous graph. That's a "plummet" vs a "gradual decline". If you still can't visualize the difference, then the final step is to gain personal experience. While still on the tall building...
A slow, gradual decline, obviously! 25% in one year would be a plummet. Draw the graph with pct as Y, years as X if you can't visualize it mentally.
More shrill radi-health wacko freaking out.
...you resort to name calling and litigation. This should "settle" the question of the foundation of misguided climate change alarmists: dogma, not science.
Sheesh! Are people really believing the brazen lying claims of these "researchers" claiming to be creating AI?
...three Category 4 hurricanes..."
Wrong. The Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale was only ivpnented in 1971. Satellite clocking of hurricane wind speeds -- the sole metric of that scale -- has only been available since 1977. Before then the only hurricane speed measurements were on land and ships.
Recorded history goes back much farther than that. Like 6,000 years, give or take.
Slashdot, please correct the story.
Using your term, we didn't 'know' how gravity worked even after Newton's and Kepler's work, still we were able to construct accurate ballistics, because we still knew something.
That example is not congruent with the AI claims made here.
First, we still do not know how gravity works. We have observed its effects and have drawn conclusions that were then formulated into physical "laws", but nobody understands the mechanisms of gravity.
Second, gravity is a very simple process compared with the processes of intelligent thought. We don't even know that thought occurs in the brain. The brain might just be an I/O interface to a completely different repository of intellect that we haven't discovered yet (e.g., what some people call the soul). Maybe, maybe not. We just don't know. Nobody has proven that intelligence resides in the brain. We've only poked at it and observed effects.
Given that level of uncertainty, nobody currently understands neurons and their role in intelligence to do anything more than wild, unprovable guesses.
I agree, except that all that's been achieved so far -- self-driving cars, speech recognition, etc -- is just automation, not intelligence. None of these artificial processes are intelligent, they are simply reliable at solving a small class of problems to a certain level.
Unfortunately you can't define what intelligence is, so these not-neurons in a not-brain network may well be producing it and you wouldn't know.
The burden of proof is not on me, but on those making assertions about IBM's chips achieving rodent brain capabilities. I don't need to prove anything, and demanding that AI researchers and the media support their claims with facts is not a strawman argument.
But we are not talking about people with medical problems. We are talking about claims of achieving the intellectual complexity of a rodent.
>We are talking about reproducing the intelligence of a rodent brain.
No. We're not. We're talking about *simulating* a rodent's brain to the limits of our current understanding
Sorry, no. The Wired article title in "IBM’s ‘Rodent Brain’ Chip Could Make Our Phones Hyper-Smart". The title is derived from IBM scientist Dharmendra Modha's description of what IBM built: "You’re looking at a small rodent,”
The claim, at least by Wired, is that IBM has simulated the intelligence of a "small rodent."
The point is that AI researchers and the media keep recklessly spewing outrageous, but unjustified, claims about what they've achieved.
They need to stop.
We know things about neurons, but we do not know how they work. Just as I know things about the Navy Seals, but I don't know how they works. The difference is that knowledge about how the Navy Seals work is possessed by some humans. Knowledge of how neurons work is possessed by no human.
There is a huge difference between a taxi driver not knowing how the neurons work, and a neuroscientist not knowing how the neurons work.
My point is that there is not huge difference. In fact, I think the taxi driver is in a far better position, because he isn't lying to people telling them that he is close to reproducing rodent and cat intelligence from a simulation of not-neurons based on not-knowledge of intelligence and neural biology.
"I am having lunch on the Moon this week!"
"No, you're not."
See, dichotomies work all the time. Especially when you have facts to back them up.
All your handwaving about how much knowledge is enough for useful simulation is meaningless, because we aren't talking about useful simulation. We are talking about reproducing the intelligence of a rodent brain.
The other simulation examples you cite are all experiments based on knowledge we already have. You can't model something you don't understand, and we do not understand ANYTHING about the relationship between neurons and intelligence. We don't know how memories are stored, or where they're stored. We don't know how decisions are made, or even if they're made in the physical brain at all. We know so little tht we can't even estimate how much more we need to know.
Nobody is building a mouse brain this week. Or this year. Or even this decade and I doubt this century.
Nobody said we know nothing. I said we don't know nearly enough.
Coward,
Any neuroscientist worth his salt will tell you that we do not know enough about neurons to accurately simulate them in software or hardware.
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.
I never said you annoyed me. Please don't put words in my typewriter.
Annoying people are just another class of humans that infringes on the happiness of the Normal. Annoyed should pay for that deficiency iPod their ticket. Tall people, though, should get a discount, since they weigh more without impinging on their neighbors' happiness. So anyone sitting next to a tall person should pay a surcharge. Short people are getting away with murder though, since they can still be quite wide while remaining in the "normal" weight category. So they must automatically pay a height insufficiency penalty. When two shorts or two talls are in one row, a formula can be devised based on the number and sequence of people in the row and, perhaps, their IQ.
The thing about nitpicking is that there is no clear boundary between the asinine and the absurd. The world has enough of it already. It's unwise to add more.
Then perhaps we should charge people with annoying personalities more too.