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Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

canada.com

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Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#71

Post by Jimmie »

heriC wrote: post #61
gameshot911 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

The test was run twice and the AI was released both times but the logs of the conversations weren't made public. Also all of the extra protocols weren't in place for either test meaning he could have bought the AI's release.

It's an interesting thought experiment but it's a bit ridiculous that the "tests" are mentioned on the page when they don't have any relevance to the rest of the idea.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#72

Post by rytis »

surrealize wrote: post #49
georgeorwell wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one argument is that if you had a human that just didn't feel emotions, you'd have a psychopath. Our capacity for empathy and the ability to share in each other's emotions stops us from doing harmful things that are in our 'rational self interest'. I'm not convinced that I want to live in a world with AI's that are as cognitively powerful as humans but are incapable of feeling emotions because I'm afraid they'd…

I'm not sure it's right to say that psychopaths are without emotion. I'd call self-interest and self-preservation emotional impulses. People naturally assume that AIs will exhibit those, but that assumption is driven by our experience with existing intelligences, which have all been shaped by natural selection.

And I'm not sure if self-interest and more importantly self-preservation can be seen as emotions. These two are baked in into every live organism even the most primitive ones. And it would be difficult to state that these organisms have emotions. Then again depends on how you define what emotion is.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#74

Post by etrautmann »

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…

We're DECADES away from this being relevant. As a PhD student in neuroscience, there is no one in our field who understands even basic neuroanatomy enough to be able to setup a model that implements cognition or awareness, or even knows what those concepts mean in any sort of operational way.

We can do some cool machine learning, but don't worry about the robopacalypse anytime soon.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#75

Post by btipling »

jlgreco wrote: post #57
lukevdp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the most advanced quantum computers today still grappling with basic arithmetic? What makes a quantum computer better at AI?

Some people believe that intelligence, at least of the calibre of human intelligence, must involve some quantum mechanism. This isn't a particularly well-supported idea, few people in academia today believe it to be the case (Roger Penrose being a prominent exception). The thing is, even Penrose isn't proposing anything mystical being done by quantum mechanics. He doesn't like the idea of an algorithmic mind, so he i…

Operating word being "believe", which is basically "guessing". Unless there's data and demonstrable things that work, this is hogwash.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#78

Post by etrautmann »

I worked on similar problems implementing a simulation of ~1M neurons using dedicated neuromorphic hardware. There are some neat things you can do from a machine learning perspective, but arguing that we can actually simulate a real brain (or even know which of the myriad complexities are important to include in your model) has the potential to convince the public that we're further along in our understanding of different brain areas than we actually are.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#79

Post by pretoriusB »

surrealize wrote: post #49
georgeorwell wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one argument is that if you had a human that just didn't feel emotions, you'd have a psychopath. Our capacity for empathy and the ability to share in each other's emotions stops us from doing harmful things that are in our 'rational self interest'. I'm not convinced that I want to live in a world with AI's that are as cognitively powerful as humans but are incapable of feeling emotions because I'm afraid they'd…

I'm not sure it's right to say that psychopaths are without emotion. I'd call self-interest and self-preservation emotional impulses. People naturally assume that AIs will exhibit those, but that assumption is driven by our experience with existing intelligences, which have all been shaped by natural selection.

>I'm not sure it's right to say that psychopaths are without emotion.

Well, it's has been shown in several psychological tests, including parts of the brain that show emotion not firing when shown trafic videos, etc.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#80

Post by wildranter »

georgeorwell wrote: post #14
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…

Well, one argument is that if you had a human that just didn't feel emotions, you'd have a psychopath. Our capacity for empathy and the ability to share in each other's emotions stops us from doing harmful things that are in our 'rational self interest'. I'm not convinced that I want to live in a world with AI's that are as cognitively powerful as humans but are incapable of feeling emotions because I'm afraid they'd…

Psychopaths have emotions, they just aren't mature enough to appreciate theM fully. [1] With that out of the way we can talk about emotions.

Most of them are simple cognitive responses. For instance, if you see a cute puppy you have at least to smile. At the other end of the spectrum we have the intricate web of woman's emotions. Hard to explan, and almost impossible to even grasp. As no one seems to understand this problem well we could leave it out of the specs for now.

[1] http://psychopathyawareness.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/the-psy...

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