21–26 of 26 posts
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why do you assume that writing that sentence was computationally hard?
the closest computational equivalent to writing that sentence we have today involves executing a model with 1.5 billion parameters. (and I couldn't find an estimate of the energy cost of that)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
why do you assume that writing that sentence was computationally hard?
the closest computational equivalent to writing that sentence we have today involves executing a model with 1.5 billion parameters. (and I couldn't find an estimate of the energy cost of that)
that's only about 100x smaller than contemporary transistor features, so realistically there is a upper limit to the energy benefit of biocomputing structures which is about 10,000x, based on energy typically scales with size squared.
As someone who spent 10 years at the forefront of synthetic biology (and has programmed for 30+ years) I always found the biocomputing baffling. I would be willing to bet against Cellular Supremacy over any time frame, except evolutionary or geologic timeframes.
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I'm going to throw out (3) because it doesn't make any sense (to me), and we haven't found any evidence that this is true. (2) seems possible, but highly unlikely. (1) seems the most probable of the three options, and although I believe we have found evidence that biological systems exploit quantum effects in some instances, there doesn't seem to be any indication that brains (human or otherwise) use quantum effects…
I agree that #1 is by far the most likely. #3 would mean we (meaning natural science) are wrong about the nature of the universe. I included it mostly to get across the mystery we have here, namely that what brains do cognitively on so little power appears to be "impossible" by classical CS metrics. I think you are incorrect about precomputation though. The human genome is not very large. It's smaller than Windows 10…
I think this is reflective of a massive blindspot.
A program to print "hello world" isn't very large, but it doesn't compile itself or produce its own operating system or produce the hardware to run the OS to run the compiler...or produce the companies to produce the hardware and software...or produce the economy to produce the companies... Clearly there is information in the compiled program that is not in the source code or the language spec.
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We can build less accurate computers and analog computers. Neither of these even begin to approach what brains can do. A self-driving car's computer takes hundreds of watts to run, uses reduced precision and custom silicon wherever possible, and does not begin to approach the navigational ability of a mouse or bird whose brain consumes less than one watt of power. The human brain didn't evolve to perform consciously…
> A self-driving car's computer takes hundreds of watts to run, uses reduced precision and custom silicon wherever possible, and does not begin to approach the navigational ability of a mouse or bird whose brain consumes less than one watt of power. I would not trust the brain of a mouse or a bird to drive me in a car. Also the self-driving car computers which take hundreds of watts to run do not take advantage of cu…
Mouse and bird brains have evolved to operate mouse and bird bodies, not cars, and their learning ability isn't as powerful as a primate or a human so I doubt they could learn to drive a car as well as us or our specialized self-drive computers.
But... what they do manage in terms of controlling mouse and bird bodies is vastly more sophisticated and impressive than driving a car. A mouse runs around on four independently controlled legs and can tackle a vast array of terrains while dodging or chasing moving objects. Birds can navigate in 3d space while flying with articulated flapping wings with complex control surfaces operated by dozens of muscles.
Driving a car is ridiculously easy compared to anything like that. If mouse and bird brains had evolved to control cars I'd absolutely trust them to drive me around at least as much if not more than I trust a Tesla's autopilot. Driving is a simpler problem than operating a mouse body.
Don't get me wrong: our self-drive AIs are amazing engineering achievements. I'm just pointing out the impressive performance of tiny brains using fractions of a watt of power at much more difficult tasks.
The thing that blows my mind and makes me hypothesize quantum computing or even P=NP is the power requirements of those brains. It's "impossible." I'm not suggesting that we can't figure it out, just that we haven't yet and that it's probably going to take more or different approaches than we think it will take.
Immune systems were once considered so "impossible" that it led several researchers to abandon science in frustration, but we eventually got a good understanding of what was going on (and it's impressive!). Understanding immune systems had to wait for molecular genetics and modern evolutionary learning theory among other things. I suspect that really replicating brain-like performance will have to wait for something as far beyond our current state of the art as those were in the 1920s.
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I agree that #1 is by far the most likely. #3 would mean we (meaning natural science) are wrong about the nature of the universe. I included it mostly to get across the mystery we have here, namely that what brains do cognitively on so little power appears to be "impossible" by classical CS metrics. I think you are incorrect about precomputation though. The human genome is not very large. It's smaller than Windows 10…
> The human genome is not very large. This just means that the "algorithm of intelligence" is not terribly complicated. So we have hope of reverse engineering it.
