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Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? (2018)

nautil.us

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Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? (2018)

#31

Post by JBiserkov »

The_rationalist wrote: post #23
tegeek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing Human Brain with a CPU is misconception. In the past when we didn't have digital computers we used to compare Brain with other machines. And now with a CPU. A Brain from a primitive neuron to higher level is not comparable to any machine at all including the CPU.

Comparing Human Brain with a CPU is misconception. no it is not. Yeah architecturally they are very different and CPU are arguably more programmable / general and less efficient. What does matter is whether CPUs are theoretically able to achieve all the things that a brain can do (and even more) And indeed CPUs as turing complete, programmable machine are a strict superset of what brains can do. The gap between what…

I agree. For some reason 2) and 3) reminded me of the book "The mating mind" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Miller_(psychologist)...

Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? (2018)

#32

Post by [deleted] »

sddfd wrote: post #14

I feel uncomfortable at the ubiquitous, silent assumption that what is marketed as AI is a computer implementation of a brain. I see how the term neuronal network reinforces this believe, but we (especially the researchers among us) should allow for the possibility that we are missing something.

[deleted]

Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? (2018)

#33

Post by papito »

sddfd wrote: post #14

I feel uncomfortable at the ubiquitous, silent assumption that what is marketed as AI is a computer implementation of a brain. I see how the term neuronal network reinforces this believe, but we (especially the researchers among us) should allow for the possibility that we are missing something.

Neural networks also have no ability to create new information based on their own mistakes. What is a mistake? When does something look "off" but still very interesting?

For example, you can feed a neural net all the recipes of burgers to create a perfect burger. Great. But how does the same net invent the burger?

The burger, like many foods or accidental art, was invented as a result of scarcity, circumstance, experimentation, or just fortunate error. That sort of imperfection is very hard to achieve with AI, because it is designed to be either perfect or fail.

Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? (2018)

#34

Post by [deleted] »

nicoburns wrote: post #24
est31 wrote: post #9

One kind of efficiency which hasn't been talked about is the energy loss of things like state switching and keeping the current state enabled. I think that brains build on much more efficient primitives than the silicon transistors computer chips use and thus can perform far more computations for far less energy than a desktop CPU. Another difference between CPUs and brains is that brains are much less general purpos…

You might be right about brains being better at certain kinds of tasks, but I don't think it's right to think of them as having only one processing mode. Someone else mentioned "Thinking, Fast and Slow", and I find it fascinating how closely the two thinking modes in that book seem to map to CPU (mostly serial) and GPU (parallel) processing. It also claims that people have natural preferences for each mode of thinkin…

[deleted]

Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? (2018)

#35

Post by nil-sec »

The_rationalist wrote: post #23
tegeek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing Human Brain with a CPU is misconception. In the past when we didn't have digital computers we used to compare Brain with other machines. And now with a CPU. A Brain from a primitive neuron to higher level is not comparable to any machine at all including the CPU.

Comparing Human Brain with a CPU is misconception. no it is not. Yeah architecturally they are very different and CPU are arguably more programmable / general and less efficient. What does matter is whether CPUs are theoretically able to achieve all the things that a brain can do (and even more) And indeed CPUs as turing complete, programmable machine are a strict superset of what brains can do. The gap between what…

Turing completeness isn’t necessarily an interesting thing to have in common. Many (very simple) models of computation are Turing complete but have vastly different properties. Take for example a cellular automata, a Turing machine, Wang tiles, (cyclic) Tag systems, Fractrans, Register machines, string rewriting systems. All of these are Turing complete. Yet they are miles apart in how they carry out computation. In order to understand and do what the brain is doing we have to figure out the brains model of computation. It will also be Turing complete but it will look very different than a Turing machine.

Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? (2018)

#36

Post by grenoire »

sddfd wrote: post #14

I feel uncomfortable at the ubiquitous, silent assumption that what is marketed as AI is a computer implementation of a brain. I see how the term neuronal network reinforces this believe, but we (especially the researchers among us) should allow for the possibility that we are missing something.

I am definitely not an expert on this topic but my impression is that the research is not really focusing on structured abstractions of sensory input, or making these abstractions stateful. Shapes, colours, music, and whatnot are clearly stored and retrieved in our brains, which is something NN research is not looking at (enough).

Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? (2018)

#37

Post by gambiting »

papito wrote: post #33
sddfd wrote: post #14

I feel uncomfortable at the ubiquitous, silent assumption that what is marketed as AI is a computer implementation of a brain. I see how the term neuronal network reinforces this believe, but we (especially the researchers among us) should allow for the possibility that we are missing something.

Neural networks also have no ability to create new information based on their own mistakes. What is a mistake? When does something look "off" but still very interesting? For example, you can feed a neural net all the recipes of burgers to create a perfect burger. Great. But how does the same net invent the burger? The burger, like many foods or accidental art, was invented as a result of scarcity, circumstance, exper…

>>For example, you can feed a neural net all the recipes of burgers to create a perfect burger. Great. But how does the same net invent the burger?

Wait....but it just....did? It took the information about all possible burger recipes and invented a new one out of these. Like, a human could only invent a new burger if they knew anything about burgers in the first place, at the very least that it's a bun with some filling in between, otherwise you'd have no context to invent anything.

Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? (2018)

#38

Post by dkersten »

martin-adams wrote: post #27
dkersten wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I think its very widely known that our ANN’s are only very rough approximations of how the brain actually works, I think the people who say its a computer implementation of the brain are either laypeople who don’t know much about machine learning or the brain, are people marketing the hype for personal gain or people without neuroscience knowledge who have bought into the hype. I also recently heard an argum…

Interestingly, there are some studies that imply that intense thinking about doing an activity (such as a gym workout[1] or hitting a baseball) can improve your physical skills than if you didn't think about it. So this is supporting the notation that you can rewire your brain by thinking, as well as tactile input. [1] http://nautil.us/blog/just-imagining-a-workout-can-make-you-...

That’s not really what I’m referring to (or at least, only a little). Once you have a mental model of something, you can for sure think on it or build on it without interaction, but to initially set up our mental models (as children or whatever), I believe it takes interaction. Once we have a base, we can think abstractly about it and learn, but building that base..

Or, put another way, its my belief that you can “_improve_ your physical skills” by thinking, but to buildthe skill in the first place, interaction is necessary.

But even if its not true and interaction isn’t strictly necessary, I think (wrongly oerhaps) that few people would disagree that usually learning by doing is far superior that only learning by thinking/reading/listening/watching. So even if not neccesary, its at least more efficient (doing both together is probably most efficient).

Re: Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? (2018)

#40

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

The_rationalist wrote: post #23
tegeek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing Human Brain with a CPU is misconception. In the past when we didn't have digital computers we used to compare Brain with other machines. And now with a CPU. A Brain from a primitive neuron to higher level is not comparable to any machine at all including the CPU.

Comparing Human Brain with a CPU is misconception. no it is not. Yeah architecturally they are very different and CPU are arguably more programmable / general and less efficient. What does matter is whether CPUs are theoretically able to achieve all the things that a brain can do (and even more) And indeed CPUs as turing complete, programmable machine are a strict superset of what brains can do. The gap between what…

The human brain isn't Turing-complete.

Turing completeness implies infinite recursion, which the brain obviously can't do.

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