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Memristor Breakthrough: First Single Device to Act Like a Neuron

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Re: Memristor Breakthrough: First Single Device to Act Like a Neuron

#101

Post by lioeters »

speeder wrote: post #97
pritovido wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is needed is removing the source of the problem in the first place. You are in a foreign country, with no friends, no family, working over time, in some places extremely little money. If you are burnout the first thing that you need to do is to stop. Make friends and lovers, travel and work outside for a year or so. To use medication or drugs is not going to solve your problems,if you continue living such an unn…

Problem is, how? When I went to university I ended in deep debt. Took me years, to pay off that debt, it felt like literal slavery, since I would just take whatever job that could pay the debt that was offered (I had to decline many jobs because their pay was lower than my debt, meaning taking them I would just stay in debt forever), and then I would stay until I was fired or had to quit. Even then, those were not "r…

That's too bad.. Sorry to hear about your experience with university and debt. At least, now that it's paid off, you can start building up something, instead of working for nothing.

> to pay off that debt, it felt like literal slavery

This is what I feel is almost criminal about systematically committing university students to years-long debt. Education shouldn't have to be traded for years of someone's life - especially when most of the labor market expects them to have at least a degree.

I think the root of the problem is deeper than education (as a business) though - it's how society is organized. To have a minimum standard of living, one must eat every day and have a place to stay - which is already a kind of debt, a constant need for money. Poor people are essentially enslaved to dead-end jobs, just to be able to survive.

Hopefully, in a sensible/utopian future, we will look back on this social arrangement as barbaric, inhumane and uncivilized. Until then, best of luck navigating, adapting, flourishing despite the setbacks.

Re: Memristor Breakthrough: First Single Device to Act Like a Neuron

#102

Post by mdturnerphys »

mdturnerphys wrote: post #76

The news article mentions that the student on the paper has passed away. He died of suicide in his lab just a couple weeks after the paper was submitted to Nature [0]. Grad school is hard for a lot of people. Find someone to talk to if you're struggling. [0] https://padailypost.com/2019/02/16/engineering-student-found...

Correction: I missed the year on the linked article. He passed away in 2019, a year before the paper was submitted.

Re: Memristor Breakthrough: First Single Device to Act Like a Neuron

#103

Post by dnautics »

jamiek88 wrote: post #78
Balgair wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brain is slower than the speed of sound in what medium?

The one people always mean unless they specify otherwise: Air.

Well in this case it's the fleshy medium of your brain.

Re: Memristor Breakthrough: First Single Device to Act Like a Neuron

#104

Post by IdiocyInAction »

Balgair wrote: post #64
IdiocyInAction wrote: post #44

Unfortunately, we do not know how neurons learn, compute and represent information in biological neural networks. Though I feel that there would be great potential in figuring this out - the energy efficiency and capabilities of the brain are truly amazing.

Huh? >Learn Depends on the neuron, but things like NMDA and AMPA receptors are very well studied at this point and are the primary portion of synaptic plasticity, again, depending on the neuron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPA_receptor >Compute Again, depends on the neuron, but dendritic integration is a classic example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/dendritic-... > Represent information The do…

Neural coding is not a solved problem. Rate codes are not sufficient to explain all experimental data.

Neither is learning; we know some things, sure, we have models for long- and short-term plasticity, but we have no idea how learning actually works.

With computation, there are many hypothesis and dendrites do indeed do more than you would think, but again, these are just small details.

Re: Memristor Breakthrough: First Single Device to Act Like a Neuron

#105

Post by tsimionescu »

p1esk wrote: post #37
lacker wrote: post #16

This is really interesting work, but I feel like the way the article summarizes it is getting it wrong. First Single Device To Act Like a Neuron One thing that’s kept engineers from copying the brain’s power efficiency and quirky computational skill is the lack of an electronic device that can, all on its own, act like a neuron. It would take a special kind of device to do that, one whose behavior is more complex tha…

This has nothing to do with "modern neural networks". When they say "neuron" they mean an actual biological neuron. The main application for this device type is brain simulations.

Probably even a bacteria, and even an organelle inside one, is doing computation that a memristor can't. Comparing a memristor with a neuron is laughable.

Re: Memristor Breakthrough: First Single Device to Act Like a Neuron

#106

Post by freeone3000 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #74
freeone3000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've left biomimicry in the dust a fair time ago - neurons do not work like relus after all (nor do they work like memristors), but relus are great at solving problems. None of our current NN applications would even want something that behaves like a neuron. You'd essentially have to start from scratch. It's not even clear if behaves-like-a-neuron is better or not to be worth the effort. (And that's disregarding the…

Do we even understand how a neuron works well enough to say that either thing is correct. I thought a relu was just the activation function that decides what weight to triggers the next part of the network with?

We understand enough about how a biological neuron works to know that single signals do not provoke a diminished response after the hysterisis period, which is not modeled by either a memristor or a sigmoid. Sigmoids don't have hysterisis, and you have to backflow a memristor for it to recover which is not true of biological nuerons.

(The activation function is the neuron('s mathematical model) - we elide everything that happens internal to the neuron and model it as only its inputs and outputs.)

Re: Memristor Breakthrough: First Single Device to Act Like a Neuron

#107

Post by thangalin »

eutropia wrote: post #67
jcims wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: there are about a hundred trillion atoms in every neuron.

At first I was like: "There's no freakin' way" But then, sure enough wolfram alpha: 100,000,000,000,000 carbon atoms is ~0.167 nano mols. Or ~2 nanograms of carbon. Dang.

For a "universal" perspective on relative sizes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEHCCsFFIuY

Re: Memristor Breakthrough: First Single Device to Act Like a Neuron

#108

Post by candiodari »

falcor84 wrote: post #84
anthropodie wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say slow "clock speed"? Can we even use clock speed w.r.t brain? Genuinely curious.

I assume the comment was referring to the duration of the action potential and subsequent refectory period[0], which are on the order of milliseconds. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractory_period_%28physiolog...

That makes no sense because the brain is not digital (it's "pulse-based"). There is no signal synchronizing all neurons in the brain, which is probably where a lot of the power savings come from too.

Re: Memristor Breakthrough: First Single Device to Act Like a Neuron

#109

Post by p1esk »

tsimionescu wrote: post #105
p1esk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with "modern neural networks". When they say "neuron" they mean an actual biological neuron. The main application for this device type is brain simulations.

Probably even a bacteria, and even an organelle inside one, is doing computation that a memristor can't. Comparing a memristor with a neuron is laughable.

Comparing a bacteria with a neuron is laughable.

Re: Memristor Breakthrough: First Single Device to Act Like a Neuron

#110

Post by tsimionescu »

p1esk wrote: post #109
tsimionescu wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably even a bacteria, and even an organelle inside one, is doing computation that a memristor can't. Comparing a memristor with a neuron is laughable.

Comparing a bacteria with a neuron is laughable.

Yes, that was part of the point: memristor < bacteria < neuron (reading < as "much much less computationally powerful").
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