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Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

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Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#81

Post by jlgreco »

btipling wrote: post #75
jlgreco wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely. There really is not a good reason to think that human level intelligence cannot be done algorithmicly. No reason to think, other than wishful thinking for some people for whatever reasons, that we are in a different computation class than Turing machines.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#82

Post by georgeorwell »

wildranter wrote: post #80
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…

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…

Just to clarify, my reasoning was no emotions -> no empathy -> psychopathy. Although I believe psychopathy -> no empathy, I don't believe no empathy -> no emotions.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#83

Post by surrealize »

pretoriusB wrote: post #79
surrealize wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The lack of certain emotional responses isn't the same as the lack of all emotion.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#84

Post by meric »

etrautmann wrote: post #74
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.

If I'm interested in learning more about cognition, should I study neuroscience, or some other field, or is it basically hopeless because no one knows anything important about it?

Would love to hear more of what you say on the subject. I couldn't find your email in your profile but my email is in my profile so if you have time I would definitely hear more about neuroscience over email!

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#85

Post by jamesjporter »

meric wrote: post #84
etrautmann wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I'm interested in learning more about cognition, should I study neuroscience, or some other field, or is it basically hopeless because no one knows anything important about it? Would love to hear more of what you say on the subject. I couldn't find your email in your profile but my email is in my profile so if you have time I would definitely hear more about neuroscience over email!

You should wait. I don't work in neuroscience per se, but I am a biologist and I have some friends who are (or have been) neuroscientists. The long and short of it is that the technology and underlying theoretical framework for understanding cognition just aren't in place yet. There's plenty of interesting research being done but the field hasn't had its "quantum leap" yet, as it were. (Examples of this from other fields are Newton's Principia, discovery of DNA structure/Central Dogma of Molecular Biology, etc.).

EDIT: I realized this sounds very discouraging to laymen trying to learn more about science. This was not my intention! By all means, go forth and learn! :) My point was simply that press releases / news often make it seem like science advances at a breakneck pace all the time, whereas reality is that it's fits and starts and often we haven't the slightest clue what we're doing.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#86

Post by luser001 »

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…

Pretty good point. Jeff Hawkins makes the same point in his book "On Intelligence", which I highly recommend.

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=on+intelligence+book&#...

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#87

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

pretoriusB wrote: post #79
surrealize wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's lack of empathy, failure to feel for others. It's not the same thing.

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#88

Post by arethuza »

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…

The "if we are lucky" scenario there is basically the Culture, where hyper intelligent machine intelligences rather enjoy looking after their human pals:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture

Re: Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

#90

Post by surrealize »

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.

Or, to restate it closer to what I meant:

With respect to an emotionless AI, the term "psychopath" is out of left field. The term "psychopath" is associated with danger because of certain dangerous human psychopaths. And those people had a whole set of motivations and impulses that wouldn't exist in an emotionless AI.

If you want to argue that an emotionless AI would be dangerous, go ahead, but the term "psychopath" is a poor fit to that case. It brings in too much extra baggage.

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