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New $1.6B supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

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Re: New $1.6B supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

#31

Post by tgflynn »

streptomycin wrote: post #25
kanzure wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a spider, but how about C. elegans? http://openworm.org/ https://github.com/openworm http://nemaload.davidad.org/ http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/neuro/nematodeuploadproject/

Those don't really work, though: http://lesswrong.com/lw/88g/whole_brain_emulation_looking_at... From the Human Brain Project http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/neuroscience.html Why not begin with simple organisms like C.elegans? There are two problems here. The first is feasibility; the second is the relevance of our results. Feasibility. Neuroscientists have mapped all of C.elegans’ 300 or so neurons. However, enormo…

It sounds like they're saying 300 neurons is too hard so let's do 10^11 instead.

Science usually proceeds somewhat incrementally from easier problems to harder problems and I'm not seeing the foundation here.

Weren't simple genomes sequenced long before it was proposed to sequence the human genome ?

Re: New $1.6B supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

#32

Post by JoeAltmaier »

I get it, its interesting to understand our intelligence. But model a human brain? Why? Its pretty cheap to make them (and fun). They don't work all that well in the end - they're all bound up with food and sex and fear.

Why not be even a little ambitious, and make something an order smarter? The human brain size is arbitrarily bound by the female pelvis size. Presumable the artifical one won't have that limit.

And separate it from concerns of survival, paranoia, love etc. Maybe it could think straight, solve a few problems for us.

Re: New $1.6B supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

#33

Post by munin »

DigitalSea wrote: post #30

A Terminator Skynet scenario is currently playing out in my head. I wonder how long after this human brain simulation runs it takes for it to become self aware and starts attacking us? In all seriousness, if this works this could potentially unlock so many mysteries and help solve & understand a plethora of medical issues like mental illness. We are living in extraordinary times.

if a brain in a box becomes sentient, its attempts to "attack" us would probably look a lot like this: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1847

Re: New $1.6B supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

#34

Post by cdcarter »

aheilbut wrote: post #9
martinced wrote: post #3

"...an international group of researchers has secured $1.6 billion..." An international group of researchers has scammed $1.6 billion away. And that's with EU taxpayers money. Do you really think that anyone involved in deciding to allow that kind of spending has any idea as to where we're at nowadays regarding AI? Did any of them read "On Intelligence" (its author knowing more than a thing or two about AI)? I'm sure…

There's more information about the project here: http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/files/HBP_flagship.pdf The project is not actually as absurd as it sounds -- the funding is over 10 years, and it's funding a large number of different research programs in molecular neuroscience (8%), cognitive neuroscience (12%), theoretical neuroscience (6%), neuroinformatics (7%), medical informatics…

It's beyond exciting that over a whole percent of the money is going to an ethics line.

Re: New $1.6B supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

#35

Post by gizmo686 »

gradys wrote: post #24
gizmo686 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their goal is not to create an AI, it is to create a model of the human brain. If you look at their website, you will notice the project is very much a neuroscience research project, not a computer science, AI, research project. The fact that the technical implantation of this project requires specially designed computers and highly algorithms (which will likely merit their own computer science papers), and the fact…

It seems to me that building a complete model of the human brain would necessarily be identical to creating a strong AI. If they build an incomplete model of a human brain then they have nonetheless created an (incomplete) strong AI.

If they manage to construct a complete model, they would have a strong AI. However, what they are trying to do is construct a model that incorporates everything we know about the human brain. From their, they can better observe how our model compairs to observed reality, and revise it accordingly. They can also test modifications to the model much easier. If they get to the point where their model is also a strong AI it would suggest that they have made great progress in understanding the human brain.

Re: New $1.6B supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

#36

Post by AndrewKemendo »

DigitalSea wrote: post #30

A Terminator Skynet scenario is currently playing out in my head. I wonder how long after this human brain simulation runs it takes for it to become self aware and starts attacking us? In all seriousness, if this works this could potentially unlock so many mysteries and help solve & understand a plethora of medical issues like mental illness. We are living in extraordinary times.

I wish this meme would die. It really just taints everything we are trying to do with Strong AI.

Re: New $1.6B supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

#37

Post by neuroguy »

tgflynn wrote: post #31
streptomycin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those don't really work, though: http://lesswrong.com/lw/88g/whole_brain_emulation_looking_at... From the Human Brain Project http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/neuroscience.html Why not begin with simple organisms like C.elegans? There are two problems here. The first is feasibility; the second is the relevance of our results. Feasibility. Neuroscientists have mapped all of C.elegans’ 300 or so neurons. However, enormo…

It sounds like they're saying 300 neurons is too hard so let's do 10^11 instead. Science usually proceeds somewhat incrementally from easier problems to harder problems and I'm not seeing the foundation here. Weren't simple genomes sequenced long before it was proposed to sequence the human genome ?

The argument is partially like that, but the more complete version is: 1) We know a lot about brain cognition through psychology, AI etc 2) We know a lot about how people process from all the years of expermentation. 3) The big things we don't know, is exactly what the role of the cell is, or how it processes. For example, is it they synchronous firing of cells that allows us to experience? What is actually going on in all those billions of cells etc. 4) We know a lot about the electrical activity in the brain, some about the molecular and chemical processes etc, but what we don't have is an overarching way of putting all this together, so we know what we are looking at. 5) We don't know what C. Elgans think about or what causes them to do things, so we will have a harder time understanding what exactly makes them tick.

I apologize if there is repetition, unclear lines, or bad reasoning, I am in the middle of running some brain simulations, and had a minute while it ran.

Re: New $1.6B supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

#38

Post by neuroguy »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #13

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't matter how complex the simulation is if there is simply not enough underlying data? As far as I understand, we simply do not understand neuron activity at a low level enough to make such a thing feasible.

That is part of what we are trying to find out. We know a lot, but it isn't organized. Lets put together all that we have, and see what is still missing.

Re: New $1.6B supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

#39

Post by neuroguy »

kanzure wrote: post #7
haimez wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course he's sure. He's a hacker. A maker, man. If we were that close to simulating a human brain there would be implementations up on github already, waiting for a $1.6B supercomputer to become available to run it.

> If we were that close to simulating a human brain there would be implementations up on github already IIRC, the Blue Brain Project uses NEURON. hg clone http://www.neuron.yale.edu/hg/neuron/nrn

Indeed it does. If you want to see open source models of the brain check out: http://senselab.med.yale.edu/modeldb/ListByModelName.asp?c=1...

Re: New $1.6B supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

#40

Post by kanzure »

neuroguy wrote: post #39
kanzure wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we were that close to simulating a human brain there would be implementations up on github already IIRC, the Blue Brain Project uses NEURON. hg clone http://www.neuron.yale.edu/hg/neuron/nrn

Indeed it does. If you want to see open source models of the brain check out: http://senselab.med.yale.edu/modeldb/ListByModelName.asp?c=1...

Being outside of academia, I am not privy to the historical reasons that modeldb is the way it is. Something about it has always bothered me.. why on earth are all of these models in different languages? I mean, these aren't exactly CPAN modules or metasploit modules. How are these supposed to be combined reliably? And what about unit tests? what is going on here?

Edit: oh, man :( http://rudylab.wustl.edu/research/cell/methodology/cellmodel...

http://senselab.med.yale.edu/modeldb/ShowModel.asp?model=642...

https://github.com/OpenSourceBrain/Thalamocortical/blob/mast...

last two lines are "sleep(5)" and "exit()" ... that's not how you do python modules :(

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