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I'm scared about biological computing

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Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#191

Post by AmbroseBierce »

stackghost wrote: post #140
noosphr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All opinions are my own: The whole point of the CNNs is to act like a auto encoder for input and an auto decoder for output. The only reason why this is done in the first place is because the number of electrodes in the dish is pitiful and has no chance of describing something as complex as Doom. They are there to create a latent space that can be fed through 60 odd electrodes and decode the neuron latent space into…

>What I wanted to do after dish brain pong, but never had the budget for, was using live animals as the computational substrate. What does the ethical due diligence process look like, for something like this?

Haha, you made me laugh quite a bit, like ethical due diligence was even a bleep in the mental model of someone who talks like that about sentiment life forms.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#192

Post by popcorncowboy »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #132
noosphr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All opinions are my own: The whole point of the CNNs is to act like a auto encoder for input and an auto decoder for output. The only reason why this is done in the first place is because the number of electrodes in the dish is pitiful and has no chance of describing something as complex as Doom. They are there to create a latent space that can be fed through 60 odd electrodes and decode the neuron latent space into…

This sounds nightmarish. Maybe we build a human centipede if we can get the VC funding next?

Or a Torment Nexus!!

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#193

Post by [deleted] »

noosphr wrote: post #127
pjs_ wrote: post #25

Be 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 myster…

All opinions are my own: The whole point of the CNNs is to act like a auto encoder for input and an auto decoder for output. The only reason why this is done in the first place is because the number of electrodes in the dish is pitiful and has no chance of describing something as complex as Doom. They are there to create a latent space that can be fed through 60 odd electrodes and decode the neuron latent space into…

[deleted]

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#194

Post by 1718627440 »

zelon88 wrote: post #161

Biological computers are inevitable. We are the most compelling proof of concept of this that we have. Our entire civilization may be a prototype of one already. From my perspective, I belive things will happen in the following order; 1. AI will eventually take over all silicon chip design. Human designs pale in comparison. Moores Law, which currently indicates that humans are reaching the practical limitations of th…

I doubt that undirected statistical systems perform better than expert systems. The latter are already in use, nobody designs new chips exclusively with pen and paper. Also the current limits of computation are more due to atomic size and information speed, less due to humans just not working fast enough.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#195

Post by 1718627440 »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #84

We will never draw the line because morality among humans is coupled with looking human-like. For most people, their morals have aesthetic prerequisites, neurons in a lab don't mean as much as neurons in a meat case (especially if that meat case is physically attractive)

It also depends on compassion aka. the ability to imagine how it feels if you are the one. When there is a possibility of people being used to extract neurons, they will care.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#196

Post by 1718627440 »

Gooblebrai wrote: post #180
akomtu wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't. However there is a coordinated effort to push this pseudo-philosophy on masses. On the one hand it degrades the idea of human consciousness or soul, calling it a fiction. On the other hand it props the AI, calling its pile of transistors almost brain-like.

> it degrades the idea of human consciousness or soul, calling it a fiction I guess they usually mean that is fiction the part of the story where is said that it is separated from the brain

It kind of needs to be separate, otherwise it is just consciousness.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#197

Post by jakkos »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #122
philips wrote: post #2

I 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…

At the end of the day vegans play the same game as meat eaters where some line is drawn. For meat eaters it is with livestock meats and for pescatarians that is no go, but fish are alright. And for vegans that is all off limits. Except of course the life we deem base enough to not care it is being eaten alive. Slaughter all the lettuce you want. There are no lettuce advocates. All this to say the moral arguments are…

> play the same game .. where some line is drawn

> Things could be better but they also could be worse

> the moral arguments are sort of silly and illogical

You can use these to justify literally anything

> Slaughter all the lettuce you want

Yeah because we don't have compelling evidence that lettuce experiences anything comparable to conscious suffering, and the only alternative to not eating plants is dying

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#198

Post by keybored »

krater23 wrote: post #108
keybored wrote: post #61

I don’t believe that silicon has a soul (loosely speaking). For the same reason I don’t believe that some biomatter in a lab has a soul.

I don't believe in souls at all. When you believe in souls then you need to believe on afterlife. You need to believe things that no one can proof, see, meassure,... When you believe anything has a soul you entered religion and be in the same room than people which believe on their invisible friends.

Okay I don’t believe in the strictly-speaking idea of a soul with an afterlife yadda yadda for any entity at all. I should have said consciousness.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#199

Post by maybewhenthesun »

slibhb wrote: post #126
maybewhenthesun wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People having been saying for aeons that consciousness originates in the (mammalian) cortex and not in the brainstem. To justify killing all sorts of animals ;-) The whole thing makes one thing extremely clear: people are very good at moving goalposts. We've blasted past the 'turing test' for all practical purposes, but we moved the definition of 'true intelligence'. Consciousness and intelligence have long seen as h…

> If we eventually (we're not there yet, I think) create a true intelligent AI it will probably be a long time before people will accept that creating an intelligent being probably means it should have 'rights' as well. In my view, the best LLMs clearly pass the bar for intelligence. I highly doubt they have consciousness. So the revelation of LLMs is that consciousness is not necessary for intelligence.

But how do you know it's not conscious? It's a very poorly defined concept.

I know various people that to this day say that fish do not feel pain (because they want to catch them with a hook through their mouth without feeling guilty). That seems a ridiculous notion to me, as pain is extremely evolutionary useful and a fish displays all sorts of pain-like behaviour when hooked. But still, since we can't really look inside the fish' mind people can make themselves believe they don't feel pain.

If you ask the right AI if it's conscious, it's very well possible it will say yes. Because it was trained on the world literature maybe and behaves as learned. Is there a difference with us? I'm not so sure.

To me it's kinda weird the ethical implications for striving for AGI are so little talked about.

Re: I'm scared about biological computing

#200

Post by DrScientist »

zelon88 wrote: post #161

Biological computers are inevitable. We are the most compelling proof of concept of this that we have. Our entire civilization may be a prototype of one already. From my perspective, I belive things will happen in the following order; 1. AI will eventually take over all silicon chip design. Human designs pale in comparison. Moores Law, which currently indicates that humans are reaching the practical limitations of th…

> The new law, "Claude's Law" dictates that processing speed will increase by a factor of 10 every year.

Is the limit of currently in silico mainly the cleverness of the design or is it physics? While there will be scope for better designs I'm not sure it's at the level of a factor of 10 every year for 10 years.

But perhaps moving fully into 3D chips designs might give a significant boost if the cooling problem can be fixed.

Ultimately computers are just the universe set up in a specific way such that when the universe rolls forward it does a useful computation.

In terms of the best way to build such a machine - I don't think it's inevitable it's biological - biology has great energy efficiency, high levels of connectively, analog inputs and outputs, temporal dimensions and the ability to mix global and local signalling etc. However the actual max rate of neuron firing is relatively low.

You've also not mentioned quantum computing.

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