Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain
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Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain
#2I find AI absolutely fascinating. I was having coffee earlier this week with someone working on this and he was telling me that although they have managed to accomplish this, there are still parts of what Spaun can accomplish that they can't quite explain.
Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain
#3Here's the paper in Science for anyone with an account:
https://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6111/1202.abstract?si...
I couldn't find a pdf that wasn't behind a paywall. Also, there are different details at popsci.com:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/meet-spaun-fir...
As for my own comments, I think it's actually a promising approach but that down the road it will be necessary to model emotions if human-like AI is the goal, and that this seems... harder. So much of our thought and behaviour is driven by emotion that I would say it was actually primary.
Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain
#4I highly doubt we know enough about the Brain to begin running realistic simulations of one. I am not even sure if scientist/mathematicians have identified a rigorous, mathematical definition of exactly what is intelligence. And yet we feel like we can correctly simulate a miniaturized version of Brain?
Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain
#5I highly doubt we know enough about the Brain to begin running realistic simulations of one. I am not even sure if scientist/mathematicians have identified a rigorous, mathematical definition of exactly what is intelligence. And yet we feel like we can correctly simulate a miniaturized version of Brain?
While I agree that this won't necessarily be accurate, I think this could very well lead us to a better and deeper knowledge of the brain regardless. Being able to do experiments here and see how they differ from the real world is quite awesome.
Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain
#6I highly doubt we know enough about the Brain to begin running realistic simulations of one. I am not even sure if scientist/mathematicians have identified a rigorous, mathematical definition of exactly what is intelligence. And yet we feel like we can correctly simulate a miniaturized version of Brain?
why would understanding intelligence be a prerequisite to running low level simulations of the brain?
we can simulate computers without understanding the software that runs on them.
Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain
#7[deleted]
Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain
#8According to the article "there are no connections in Spaun that aren't seen in the brain."
I'm assuming there are many connections in the brain that aren't implemented in Spaun.
Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain
#9I highly doubt we know enough about the Brain to begin running realistic simulations of one. I am not even sure if scientist/mathematicians have identified a rigorous, mathematical definition of exactly what is intelligence. And yet we feel like we can correctly simulate a miniaturized version of Brain?
why would understanding intelligence be a prerequisite to running low level simulations of the brain? we can simulate computers without understanding the software that runs on them.
Because in the brain, the hardware and the software are the same thing. To understand what processes the brain carries out would be to understand intelligence.
Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain
#10Here's the paper in Science for anyone with an account: https://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6111/1202.abstract?si... I couldn't find a pdf that wasn't behind a paywall. Also, there are different details at popsci.com: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/meet-spaun-fir... As for my own comments, I think it's actually a promising approach but that down the road it will be necessary to model emotions if hum…
Emotions are difficult, as they're (probably) as much physiological responses as they are cognitive ones. You could possibly simulate those, but I'd ask why bother?
Why would we need AI to be human-like at all? We already have a form of human intelligence, us!
It's like the android fixation with robotics... arguably the most useful robots don't look anything like us.
The human brain is a good starting point, but in the long run I think the most useful AIs will probably be the ones that DON'T think like us.