We treat actual biological animals a lot worse in some cases so until we bump up the number of neurons significantly higher above what the lowest tier is below us I don't think we should stop the experiments.
I'm scared about biological computing
21–30 of 271 posts
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#22I think this is the same ethical questions of veganism and our use/abuse of biological systems. This is an excerpt from "The Pig that Wants to be Eaten" by Julian Baggini > After forty years of vegetarianism, Max Berger was about to sit down to a feast of pork sausages, crispy bacon and pan-fried chicken breast. Max had always missed the taste of meat, but his principles were stronger than his culinary cravings. But…
is this from Baggini or Adams?
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really do suck at DOOM - and I did read the paper about BNNs, so I anticipated how it works, doesn't make it any less interesting [0] Playing DOOM is playing DOOM - if it's through your keyboard or mouse of progressing through the game states to move forward - hope that makes sense. 0 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.11632
The point is that it doesn't really make sense to say they're "seeing" anything. You said So… are the neurons on that chip seeing? We all desperately want to say no. But I can confidently say "no, that's totally childish, the neurons are clearly not seeing anything." And in fact it's not even especially clear that they're "playing DOOM" vs. hitting a biased random number generator in response to carefully preprocesse…
Have to say. I kind of agree with both of you.
But 'seeing' in humans is also a bit manipulated.
Does it really matter to the argument if it is seeing 'red', or just that it is 'sensing input'.
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#24I think this is the same ethical questions of veganism and our use/abuse of biological systems. This is an excerpt from "The Pig that Wants to be Eaten" by Julian Baggini > After forty years of vegetarianism, Max Berger was about to sit down to a feast of pork sausages, crispy bacon and pan-fried chicken breast. Max had always missed the taste of meat, but his principles were stronger than his culinary cravings. But…
What is the source line at the end representing there? I've read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and while it definitely contains (and I see it as a major cultural anchor for) animals bred to desire being eaten and be able to say so, it doesn't contain that particular scene (at least in the version I read). Is that line Baggini noting that his scene was inspired by the Adams book?
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#25Be careful about how you interpret that paper. It looks really impressive -- real neurons in a petri dish seem to successfully (if amateurishly) murk a few imps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRV8fSw6HaE
But there's more to the setup than you might assume from a casual reading. Here's the code used for that demo:
https://github.com/SeanCole02/doom-neuron
So there is an entire pytorch stack wrapped around the mysterious little blob of neurons -- they aren't just wired straight into WASD. There is a conventional convnet-based encoder, running on a GPU, in the critical path. The README tries to argue that the "neurons are doing the learning" but to my dilettante, critical eye it really looks as though there is a hell of a lot of learning happening in the convnet also.
Are the neurons learning to play doom, or are they learning to inject ever so slightly more effective noise into the critical path? Would this work just as well if we replaced the neurons with some other non-markovian sludge? The authors do ablation experiments to try to get to the bottom of this but I can't really tell how compelling the results are (due to my own ignorance/stupidity of course)
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#26Reminds me of an ethical dilemma in the game "Detroit: Become Human". I found myself philosophically asking what it means to be alive, what it means to be conscious, and if something without biological bones, blood and a brain can feel the same-level of consciousness as humans, or greater.
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#27An underappreciated source of nonsense in 21st century discourse is people watching YouTube instead of reading things. It doesn't appear this author read anything, preferring to be spooked and misled by a YouTube video. trained them to play DOOM - honestly better than I do. Maybe the author really really sucks at DOOM, but I think this is a false embellishment: >> While the neurons can play the game better than a ran…
I really do suck at DOOM - and I did read the paper about BNNs, so I anticipated how it works, doesn't make it any less interesting [0] Playing DOOM is playing DOOM - if it's through your keyboard or mouse of progressing through the game states to move forward - hope that makes sense. 0 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.11632
Suppose someone builds a framework that maps Doom to a large succession of Tic-Tac-Toe games.
Would the person tasked with placing X and O marks still be "playing Doom"?
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#28Anyone who believes AI running on silicon could in principle be conscious has to believe that biological computers are conscious, right? Why aren't those people voicing more concerns?
If ai running on silicon can be conscious - does it imply that the same calculation done by a human with pen and paper is also conscious?
Your brain is a network. How does your entangled fatty tissue achieved consciousness?
I think that until we can answer this question in the authoritative way ruling out non-brain based consciousness concept is not particularly well thought thought - after all plants exhibit communication and response mechanisms that are similar to those in animals - without brain.
So what's your theory of consciousness and how does it preclude absolutely everything except wetware you generously include? :)
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#29An underappreciated source of nonsense in 21st century discourse is people watching YouTube instead of reading things. It doesn't appear this author read anything, preferring to be spooked and misled by a YouTube video. trained them to play DOOM - honestly better than I do. Maybe the author really really sucks at DOOM, but I think this is a false embellishment: >> While the neurons can play the game better than a ran…
I feel that "YouTube makes you an idiot" is a misdiagnosis. And one I hear frequently. Books can make you an idiot too- I think of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" or "Grit" or any number of pseudo-science best seller books. These books end up capturing the public imagination in big ways too- Grit caused some government policy in the US around when it was popular. The difference, I suppose, is that YouTube works faster by having…
Why is Grit pseudoscience? I haven't read it.
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel that "YouTube makes you an idiot" is a misdiagnosis. And one I hear frequently. Books can make you an idiot too- I think of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" or "Grit" or any number of pseudo-science best seller books. These books end up capturing the public imagination in big ways too- Grit caused some government policy in the US around when it was popular. The difference, I suppose, is that YouTube works faster by having…
The nice thing about books vs. YouTube is that it's much easier to critically interrogate books while you're reading them. That was the difference with my dad: he thought about what he read. He repeats what he listens to on YouTube. I hate the proliferation of audiobooks too, by the way. It's the exact same problem.
To be fair, even reading 'good' books won't make you smart. I think the key is to be critical, which should be thought at a young age. Ikram Antaki dedicated most of her last years in teaching this in Mexico.
Anecdote: When I started studying economics I really agreed with a lot of what I read from economists like David Ricardo, Marx, Smith, etc. Then, I studied what other economist had to say and I could see how they disagreed with the former. This made me realize that I agreed with those people because their arguments 'made sense' to me, but that doesn't mean that what they said is completely true. This is something that has stayed with me, I always wonder how can something be wrong.