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Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"

corticallabs.com

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Re: Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"

#71

Post by johnnyworker »

jagrsw wrote: post #13
anon-3988 wrote: post #10

If the goal is to mimic the human brain, how is this different than just...starting with a human brain? Either way, you will be subjugating a possibly conscious mind into servitude. I am sure they are "happy" (however you want to measure it) about it either way lol

> you will be subjugating a possibly conscious mind into servitude. Is the distinction between a protein-and-salt-water model versus an electronic-gates-and-memory model meaningful? From a computational standpoint, they both manipulate states and store data. Does substrate matter unless we're invoking metaphysical claims? Regarding the video ( https://twitter.com/Scobleizer/status/1716312250422796590 ), the device se…

> Is the distinction between a protein-and-salt-water model versus an electronic-gates-and-memory model meaningful?

I'd say the important part is "mind". That is what they claim they are setting out to create.

Our inability to answer questions like "Why do I exist? Why do I feel pain?" etc. conclusively is probably much less vexing than having a definite answer like "because someone made you to make profit off it and/or have an even bigger hammer to smash people and communities to bits with". Not to mention the following "changes made for the sake of change so someone can say they did a thing" that is already a blight on everything we make.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0CY4IThnmo&t=64s

^ We think we're Lisa, but I suspect we're Bart.

Re: Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"

#72

Post by v4dok »

falcor84 wrote: post #30
Version467 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood this. Even if we would have perfect mind-uploading capabilities, this doesn't help the billionaire who is afraid of death, right? It'd just be a copy of them. An immortal one, sure, but the original person would die just the same, no?

There's the philosophical argument that we have no continuity of consciousness in our meatbag bodies either - e.g. when you wake up, it's rebooting your consciousness from suspended memories.

There would be no way to find out if that would be true however. The person in the vat might say they are the same person but you don't know if they really are. Also what happens if you create a copy? Is that two people or is there some kind of shared consciousness? If it is, how do they communicate?

Re: Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"

#73

Post by anon-3988 »

anonymouszx wrote: post #69
anon-3988 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, the hypothesis that a Turing machine on its own could generate conscious experiences leads to many seemingly absurd scenarios. Notably, one has to ask how a simulation of supposedly conscious Turing machine using pen and paper could possibly be conscious, or indeed, why one would need to "run" a Turing machine for consciousness to arise and why a mere description of it would not suffice. Applying…

I'm not sure what you're getting at. There's a fundamental difference between such physical concepts, which I can ultimately describe mathematically (at various scales and levels of accuracy), and conscious experiences. For instance, I can sensibly ask "what's it like to be a cat?". But "what's it like to be a rock?", or "to be a hot rock?", or "a cold rock?" doesn't make much sense since there's presumably nothing t…

> I'm not sure what you're getting at. There's a fundamental difference between such physical concepts, which I can ultimately describe mathematically (at various scales and levels of accuracy), and conscious experiences.

You can describe heat mathematically the same way you can describe the interactions of every atoms in a brain mathematically but neither yields/explains why it is the way it is. It just is.

> For instance, I can sensibly ask "what's it like to be a cat?". But "what's it like to be a rock?", or "to be a hot rock?", or "a cold rock?" doesn't make much sense since there's presumably nothing that it's like to be a rock regardless of its temperature.

I don't understand this analogy. What you are doing is ultimately putting a mirror on yourself. You and I have no idea what it is like to be each other. In fact, I would argue you don't even know "what its like to be yourself from 1 day ago". You will ultimately be just reflecting your own current experience unto your supposedly previous self.

So, "what its like to be a rock". I don't know. Concsiousness is just that mysterious. If you lay out an array of iterations of my body. Where i=0 is my whole body, and i=1 is my body minus 1 atom, and this goes on up to N of my atoms. Then at what index does conscious stop and start? To say that a rock and an atom to not have a consciousness (however different/miniscule in experience they are) is to put hard wall at some index K on this array. I just don't think that's true.

Re: Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"

#74

Post by anon-3988 »

anonymouszx wrote: post #68
anon-3988 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So to summarise and answer your question more directly, I think there is something about our universe that allows for the generation of conscious experience and that our brains, likely on the neural level, have a bidirectional interaction with this something. What makes you think that this relationship is bidirectional? AFAIK and experience, the relationship is entirely unidirectional. I literally have no idea what…

brain-to-???: certain flows of information within our brains (somehow) trigger the creation of conscious experience ???-to-brain: our brains keep records of conscious experiences and these records are why we're able to have such conversations as these where ??? = Consciousness, the Universe, God, your spirit, your soul, or however you want to conceptualise it (I don't know or claim to know, although I would tend to a…

> ???-to-brain: our brains keep records of conscious experiences and these records are why we're able to have such conversations as these

There's no such thing at ???-to-brain. You have zero control over what you will sending to the brain. And whatever it is that is sending that message to the brain, that is not "you". It is just another phenomena of the universe. In fact, "you" don't have any control over what you are going to do next. When I "command" my brain to lift my hand up, I ultimately have no idea where that command is coming from.

It is more like "brain ???? outside world" or "reality ??? reality" because we are just a witness to whatever the reality is doing.

Re: Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"

#75

Post by Dave3of5 »

jagrsw wrote: post #13
anon-3988 wrote: post #10

If the goal is to mimic the human brain, how is this different than just...starting with a human brain? Either way, you will be subjugating a possibly conscious mind into servitude. I am sure they are "happy" (however you want to measure it) about it either way lol

> you will be subjugating a possibly conscious mind into servitude. Is the distinction between a protein-and-salt-water model versus an electronic-gates-and-memory model meaningful? From a computational standpoint, they both manipulate states and store data. Does substrate matter unless we're invoking metaphysical claims? Regarding the video ( https://twitter.com/Scobleizer/status/1716312250422796590 ), the device se…

> From a computational standpoint, they both manipulate states and store data.

Ignoring the metaphysical question is really frustrates me when people treat the brain as just a more complex version of a computer. The human brain and a silicon based computer are two vastly different things you can't and should not compare them.

Re: Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"

#76

Post by epups »

px43 wrote: post #63
epups wrote: post #21

It's clear that you can get some actual neurons in a dish to behave as an artifical neuron network. It is a fascinating concept as a research question. What's not clear is what is the business value here - do they expect these natural networks to outperform ANNs for any foreseeable application?

Yeah, power-performance is a big one. The entire human brain runs at about 12 watts. Human neurons are several orders of magnitude more efficient for neural computing than anything that's been dreamt up in silicon. That might not always be the case, but I imagine there are still another several orders of magnitude at least that artificial neurons might fill as this technology evolves. Imagine something like a Raspber…

The brain might need only 12W, but I guarantee you that their setup maintaining 10 orders of magnitude fewer neurons in a dish is already using far more than that.

I get that brains are far more efficient than computers. What I'm wondering is how a business case can be made today for even considering an approach like this.

Re: Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"

#77

Post by JKCalhoun »

otikik wrote: post #54
TeMPOraL wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the billionaires . Boogeymen of our times. The scourge of all us crabs living here in this fine bucket.

It’s not a bucket. It’s a pot. And it’s heating up.

Haven't noticed.

Re: Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"

#78

Post by caskstrength »

falcor84 wrote: post #30
Version467 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood this. Even if we would have perfect mind-uploading capabilities, this doesn't help the billionaire who is afraid of death, right? It'd just be a copy of them. An immortal one, sure, but the original person would die just the same, no?

There's the philosophical argument that we have no continuity of consciousness in our meatbag bodies either - e.g. when you wake up, it's rebooting your consciousness from suspended memories.

But once they pay $$$ and turn on the uploaded consciousness won't they be like "Hey, why I'm still here in my meat body and not in Amazon Brain Cloud(c)"?

Re: Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"

#79

Post by anonymouszx »

anonymouszx wrote: post #68
anon-3988 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So to summarise and answer your question more directly, I think there is something about our universe that allows for the generation of conscious experience and that our brains, likely on the neural level, have a bidirectional interaction with this something. What makes you think that this relationship is bidirectional? AFAIK and experience, the relationship is entirely unidirectional. I literally have no idea what…

brain-to-???: certain flows of information within our brains (somehow) trigger the creation of conscious experience ???-to-brain: our brains keep records of conscious experiences and these records are why we're able to have such conversations as these where ??? = Consciousness, the Universe, God, your spirit, your soul, or however you want to conceptualise it (I don't know or claim to know, although I would tend to a…

>You have zero control over what you will sending to the brain.

I agree. I never said that ??? is "me" here.

To be honest, I've come to the daunting conclusion that the metaphysical self (as opposed to the psychological/physical self) is an illusion, resulting from our brains' memories. Consciousness wise, the me of tomorrow, or one hour from now, or one hour ago, etc., is just as distant from me now as you are from me now, or as a dinosaur millions of years ago is. And when you or anything else suffers greatly, this is just as much a concern as if I were to be told I will experience the same suffering in the future. Although my primate brain (thankfully) does not allow me to experience quite as much angst over others' suffering as my future self's.

As to how I come to this conclusion, just as most of us here would agree that we do not have eternal souls, since elements of our personality, memory, and so on, are by all indications stored inside our perishable brains, by the same line of reasoning, and applying Occams's Razor again, we should not have a separate "spirit" (even of the barest form) since our impression of our lives being individual and continuous is the result of the same brain structures. Shedding the idea of the "spirit" also has the nice benefit of solving the various paradoxes of Star Trek teleporters, atomic scale cloning of people, and so on.

There is also no reason to presume that our time exists at the level of consciousness, and the fact that general relativity precludes the existence of a canonical time ordering for the universe (Block Universe) also points me in that direction.

Re: Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"

#80

Post by api »

In the Rifters trilogy by Peter Watts this technology is referred to as “head cheese”. It’s used as a form of AI as it turns out silicon can never beat biology at analog reasoning. It ends up playing a role in the plot.

IRL If the masses of neurons start getting large this starts to be ethically questionable… in direct proportion to how large.

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