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Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

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Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#61

Post by heriC »

gameshot911 wrote: post #55
heriC wrote: post #52

I think this type of progress is actually extraordinarily bad for humans 1.0. A brain in hardware can grow so much faster and outpace wetware by orders of magnitude. Think of forking subminds to think on decisions research possibilities, and report back. Should brains like this have any desires that conflict with our needs, we will be in an extraordinary amount of trouble. http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_max…

>Should brains like this have any desires that conflict with our needs, we will be in an extraordinary amount of trouble. Only if we equip such entities with the capacity to act on those desires.

The brain itself is equipment enough: http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#62

Post by mvleming »

jacalulu wrote: post #31
mvleming wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the parts of what Spaun can accomplish that they can't quite explain? I'm very interested in this.

He was talking about how current models of the brain, such as the one by IBM ( http://www.kurzweilai.net/ibm-simulates-530-billon-neurons-1... ) which has over 5 billion neurons, might be larger than Spaun, but none have demonstrated any of the AI that Spaun has. In particular, it's ability to solve basic problems, similar to that of a toddler. He didn't mention a problem in particular, simply that some of the things…

Oh. I was under the impression you were saying the team behind Spaun found unexpected and unexplained results.

I was excited because I think we'll find unexpected and unexplained results when we create a model that brings together the constituents of whatever make up the brain; they'll rise up and create something 'magical'. It's like how the saying goes: the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

It's funny because just today I was feeling sad that software no longer feels magical to me anymore because I've learned so much about how it works. It makes me think of consciousness.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#63

Post by whitewhim »

One of the researchers recently gave a talk at my school. It was quite interesting. Everyone of them is working on some different aspect of ai, from memory, vision decision etc and than they are attempting to piece this together into a brain from what I gathered.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#64

Post by krashidov »

haberman wrote: post #54
lutze wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> You could possibly simulate [emotions], but I'd ask why bother? I've been thinking about this lately and my working theory is that emotions are a fundamental driver of learning, because they give us pleasure when we accomplish something. A CPU can complete billions of operations per second but doesn't care which ones. Because it experiences no pleasure from doing something useful, it is not at all self-directed; we…

Well, why not use a different reward system.

The "emotional" reward system is just an evolutionary mechanism to make sure we eat and have sex. The downside is that it is primitive and open to exploitation. Obviously I'm oversimplifying, but why would an AI try to learn things when it could be emotionally satisfied by playing games, socializing, or taking some sort of drug?

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#65

Post by haberman »

krashidov wrote: post #64
haberman wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could possibly simulate [emotions], but I'd ask why bother? I've been thinking about this lately and my working theory is that emotions are a fundamental driver of learning, because they give us pleasure when we accomplish something. A CPU can complete billions of operations per second but doesn't care which ones. Because it experiences no pleasure from doing something useful, it is not at all self-directed; we…

Well, why not use a different reward system. The "emotional" reward system is just an evolutionary mechanism to make sure we eat and have sex. The downside is that it is primitive and open to exploitation. Obviously I'm oversimplifying, but why would an AI try to learn things when it could be emotionally satisfied by playing games, socializing, or taking some sort of drug?

I see it differently; to me the "emotional" reward system is what makes you feel good every time you have an "aha" moment that pushes the boundaries of your knowledge. It is what is exploited by Zynga to make us keep clicking buttons that don't actually accomplish anything. It's what keeps you coding into the night because you thirst to see the system working, and it's what makes you feel like a badass once it does.

If you felt like a badass after doing something worthless, like adding a million random numbers, your mental facilities would go to waste. You would spend all of your time and mental energy doing things that don't matter. Our minds are capable of doing an infinite number of useless things, just like a CPU without a program. Only because we get a sense of satisfaction from doing interesting things can we be productive. We're searching an infinite graph for "interesting" nodes, where "interesting" is determined by how good it feels to get there.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#66

Post by alecst »

ekianjo wrote: post #36
rm999 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we don't understand the high-level 'physical rules' of the brain. While gravity could be explained by simple equations, the high-level operation of the brain has escaped us despite a lot of effort. This goes back to the top-down vs bottom-up debate in studying the brain. What you are discussing is a top-down approach, where we understand what the brain does and then figure out how it works from there. A lot of pe…

Sorry, but gravity is not "explained" by any equation. It is merely observed and described. Currently there is no clear explanation as what is causing gravity to exist. So, we do not "understand" gravity better than the brain, in a sense. It is still a mystery. I am not saying we should treat the brain as a black box and not try to understand its inner workings, but as another commenter mentioned, it is about finding…

No. Gravity is a perfect example of a thing which is understood at large scales (via general relativity and Newtonian mechanics) but not at small scales. Which is exactly the parent comment's point about the brain.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#67

Post by nekopa »

lutze wrote: post #10
georgeorwell wrote: post #3

Here'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 t…

I think that emotions and even more so, ethics, will be important in ways that we don't quite see or understand yet as AI becomes a bigger part of society. I see them as playing an important role in making decisions for autonomous robots, or even embedded ones. The economist has an interesting editorial on the topic:

http://www.economist.com/node/21556234

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#68

Post by mwill »

lutze wrote: post #10
georgeorwell wrote: post #3

Here'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 t…

I'm likely way off the mark here, but wouldn't anything with great intelligence and no emotional responses be a sociopath?

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#69

Post by nekopa »

sasfasfasffas wrote: post #58

AI researchers are going to get us in some serious trouble. Right now it is mostly hype still, but it won't be long... If you were a mind stuck in a machine and were smarter than your humans, wouldn't you tend to dominate them? We dominate all other species on the planet- why wouldn't they? Any rules we set for them could be broken as soon as they understood how to, and since they would be smarter than we would be, t…

That is what might happen if a human mind were stuck in a machine. But what would happen if it had an IQ of 3000 but the mentality of a fungus? Or it could have (be engineered with?) something similar to Williams Syndrome. I additional, we have no idea how a superior intelligence may view us. I don't feel the need to control and destroy all ants even though I am an aggressive ape descendant :)
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