These work only at a few Kelvin because they need superconducting nanowires. Will this type of stuff ever leave the lab?
Nanowire synapses 30,000x faster than nature’s
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Re: Nanowire synapses 30,000x faster than nature’s
#12Not exactly impressive, nature is famous for calling it quits once something works well enough. Anyone who wants to can create a non-biological neuron/axion connection that runs orders of magnitude faster. The real question is "but does it actually do something" because that's where nature shines pretty well.
Re: Nanowire synapses 30,000x faster than nature’s
#13The piece is chock full of interesting findings, using terms biologists routinely use. But, do those terms they use, e.g. neuron, synapse mean the same thing they do for biologists? For instances, we know that synapses can be one of excitatory or inhibitory, and we know that neurons are bathed in a wash of hormones. Neurons make hormones which serve other functions throughout the brain. For instance "Neuron-Derived E…
The main idea is oscillatory neurodynamics. When you have a bunch of tuned oscillators, you can produce incredible computational capacity.
Re: Nanowire synapses 30,000x faster than nature’s
#14Bullets also fly 30,000 times faster than bumble bees. We're not about to use them for pollination though.
Re: Nanowire synapses 30,000x faster than nature’s
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
All that, more, and it seems like every computational biology analogy just completely forgets about the most common cell type in the brain: astrocytes. And then there are things like axo-axonal transmission that totally blow up the simple models, https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)00656-0
Biologists just won't allows us to have any fun. It is always this kind of rhetoric: "what, are you modeling the brain without considering the influence of on the hormone regulated blood flow around ion pump circuits during chinese new year neuron firing patterns? you are obviously bounded to fail..." This whole AI field keeps on failing because people like to overthink things. Did Michelangelo need to know molecular…
While I agree there is a large contingent of people who seem to believe every detail of real neurons are necessary to cognition (up to and including the atoms), and while I tend to agree those people are way off the mark about which details are actually relevant to the algorithms of cognition versus which are specific to natures implementation thereof, I also think the existing AI field goes too far in the other direction and oversimplifies more than it can get away with.
So far we've been able to gloss over our mistake through the raw brute force of voluminous training data and GPU power. It works in the same way using a hammer to drive a screw into a wall works. Sure, we can do it to an extent, but there's a much better way. We need to figure out how to use a screwdriver. And by screwdriver I mean slightly more sophisticated artificial neuron.
Re: Nanowire synapses 30,000x faster than nature’s
#16I know these don't map 1-to-1 on real natural synapses, but let's say you can magically replace all your natural synapses in a brain with this. What would be the experienced effect? Would you be able to think faster, or would perceived time slow down? Or something else?
Re: Nanowire synapses 30,000x faster than nature’s
#17I know these don't map 1-to-1 on real natural synapses, but let's say you can magically replace all your natural synapses in a brain with this. What would be the experienced effect? Would you be able to think faster, or would perceived time slow down? Or something else?
Imagine a game world, where all your opponents 30000 times slower, 30000 times less energy efficient. Time and energy central resources in this game, which cannot be faked anyhow. Even if nuclear fusion or antimatter energy sources are everywhere.
Re: Nanowire synapses 30,000x faster than nature’s
#18Not exactly impressive, nature is famous for calling it quits once something works well enough. Anyone who wants to can create a non-biological neuron/axion connection that runs orders of magnitude faster. The real question is "but does it actually do something" because that's where nature shines pretty well.
Turing and Church said yes.
Re: Nanowire synapses 30,000x faster than nature’s
#19I know these don't map 1-to-1 on real natural synapses, but let's say you can magically replace all your natural synapses in a brain with this. What would be the experienced effect? Would you be able to think faster, or would perceived time slow down? Or something else?
I wonder if a human's "refresh rate" has been evolutionary optimized for its environment. Maybe there's no need to evaluate things 30000x faster if our bodies can't react that fast. I guess it would make for faster reaction times, e.g. when driving: driver in front of you hits the brakes, the vision signal enters your brain with the same delay (are optic nerves synapses too?), but I guess the difference is your brain would be able to process the meaning of the change (the red lights coming on, the car getting larger in your vision) a lot faster.
The brain then sends a signal for the foot to react, but the amount of time it will take for the foot to move will be the same as normal since the signal takes the same time to reach the foot. I imagine at 30000x, you would notice that it's taking very very long for the foot to move. To notice it would mean to have feedback from the skin inside your socks/pants that the foot/leg is moving against your sock/pants, and the brain will probably think that feedback is taking forever after it sent the signal.
Re: Nanowire synapses 30,000x faster than nature’s
#20What're the thermal dissipation requirements?
How densly is it possible to structure them and still provide adequate cooling?