Re: [agi] About the brain-emulation route to AGI
On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 06:43:08PM -0800, Matt Mahoney wrote: I think AGI will be solved when computer scientists, psychologists, and neurologists work together to solve the problem with a combination of computer, human, and animal experiments. I agree. (Though I would just put computational neuroscientists and neuroscientists in your list. Psychology is too high-level to be a useful source of constraints). -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
[agi] About the brain-emulation route to AGI
This debate about the relative merits of the AGI and the Brain Emulation methods of building an intelligence seems confused to me. What exactly is meant by a brain emulation route anyway? Is it: A) Copy the exact structure and functioning of the brain's hardware, and along the way get a precise understanding of the functional architecture of the human brain, at all the various levels at which such an architecture needs to be understood. or B) Copy the exact structure and functioning of the brain's hardware, but ignore the architecture. ? An illustration of the difference: You know nothing about electronics, but you get hold of an extremely complex radio, and want to build one by exactly emulating your example. Do you try to do your emulation without ever trying to understand the functions of transistors? The functions of all the various hardware components? The general idea of transmission of radio signals? The modular structure of the radio set, with its tuning, frequency multiplexing, amplitude demodulation and other circuits? Do you ignore the functioning of the radio with respect to the humans who use it? The existence and distribution of radio signal sources? You could decide to care about all that stuff - that would be Route A - or you could ignore it and just emulate the thing by brute force, cubic micrometer by cubic micrometer - that would be Route B. I presume that the brain emulation community is not being so daft as to try B but honestly, when I read people talking about this, they often seem to be assuming a black and white division between A and B, and more often than not they ARE assuming that what brain emulation means is B - the dumb brute force method. I have to say that if B is what is meant, the idea seems insane. You only need to get one little transistor junction out of place in your simulation of the radio, and the entire thing might not work ... and if you know nothing about the functionality, you are up the proverbial creek. Ditto for the brain. How many errors can you afford to make before the brain simulation becomes just as useless as a broken radio? The point is WHO KNOWS?! It is funny that this is so little appreciated. For example, the B.E. people could slave away on their data collection, and then at the last minute realize that they also needed detailed information about the spatial distribution of every single dendritic bouton on every neuron but that detail turns out to be one order of magnitude beyond what any imaginable science can deliver. Who knows if this is an issue, without a detailed functional understanding of the brain. But if B is not the intended route, then it must be some variety of A. Which then begs the question: how far toward A are they supposed to be going? Everything in these arguments about AGI vs Brain Emulation depends on exactly how far the B.E. people are going to go toward understanding functionality. If they go the whole way - basically using B.E. as a set of clues about how to do AGI - all they are doing is AGI *plus* a bunch of brain sleuthing. Sure, the neuron maps might help. But they will have to be just as smart about their AGI models as they are about their neuron maps. You cannot understand the functional architecture of the brain without having a general understanding of the same kinds of things that AGI/Cognitive Science people have to know. Which makes the B.E. approach anything but an alternative to AGI. They will have to know all about the information processing systems in the human mind, and probably also about the general subject of [different kinds of intelligent information processing systems], which is another way of refering to AGI/Cognitive Science. Now, let's finish by asking what the neuroscience people are actually doing in practice, right now. Are they trying build sophisticated models of neural functionality, understanding not just the low-level signal transmission but the many, many layers of structure on top of that bottom level? I would say: no! First, they have a habit of making diabolically simplistic statements about the relationship between circuits and function (Brain Scientists Discover the Brain Region That Determines Altruism / Musical Tastes / Potty Training Ability / Whether You Like Blondes!). Second, when you look at the theoretical structures they are using to build their higher level functional understanding of the brain systems, what do we find?... a resurgence of interest in reinforcement learning, which is an idea that was thrown out by the cognitive science community decades ago because it was stupidly naive. In general, I am amazed at the naivete and arrogance of neuroscience folks when it comes to cognitive science. Not all, but an alarming number of them. (The same criticism can be applied to narrow AI people, but that is a different story). Brain Emulation is
Re: [agi] About the brain-emulation route to AGI
On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 01:11:57PM -0500, Richard Loosemore wrote: This debate about the relative merits of the AGI and the Brain Emulation methods of building an intelligence seems confused to me. What is the Brain Emulation method? Are you talking about computational neuroscience, or something? What exactly is meant by a brain emulation route anyway? I'm not entirely sure (I haven't read it all yet), but the very beginning of this post strikes me as a desperate search for a strawman to demolish. Is it: A) Copy the exact structure and functioning of the brain's hardware, and along the way get a precise understanding of the functional architecture of the human brain, at all the various levels at which such an architecture needs to be understood. or B) Copy the exact structure and functioning of the brain's hardware, but ignore the architecture. ? Why do you think these are mutually exclusive alternatives? What makes you think there is such a thing as architecture in the human sense sitting in there for you to copy a blueprint from? An illustration of the difference: You know nothing about electronics, but you get hold of an extremely complex radio, and want to build one by exactly emulating your example. Do you try to do your emulation Um, wrong comparison. CNS doesn't require any new physics. Some approaches start with atomically accurate models of compartments, which allows you to reach down to arbitrary low level of theory in order to fetch missing parameters. That's bottom up. Simultaneously, you have top-down empirical data from neuron and tissue activity. You can use both to eliminate the large but shrinking amount of unknown in the middle. without ever trying to understand the functions of transistors? The Do you think that an atomically accurate copy of a radio wouldn't work? functions of all the various hardware components? The general idea of transmission of radio signals? The modular structure of the radio set, But the brain is not a radio set. Specifically, it's not a human-designed artifact, and has different signatures. with its tuning, frequency multiplexing, amplitude demodulation and other circuits? Do you ignore the functioning of the radio with respect to the humans who use it? The existence and distribution of radio signal sources? I don't understand your last two sentences. (In fact, I was going huh? at a rate of about twice every sentence so far, but deconstructing your post at this level would do no good so I won't). You could decide to care about all that stuff - that would be Route A - or you could ignore it and just emulate the thing by brute force, cubic micrometer by cubic micrometer - that would be Route B. Of course some people do A, and some do B, and several others go for C and D. I presume that the brain emulation community is not being so daft as to try B but honestly, when I read people talking about this, they Actually, it is not at all daft to model a cubic micron or so of biology from first principles, if you can extract nonobservable parameters (such as a switching behaviour of a particular ion channel type, for instance) from a MD level simulation. Have you ever considered how to write a learning simulation that ascends, by incrementally building upper abstraction layers, and co-evolving hardware representation as it goes along? It's certainly demanding, but not nearly as demanding as a full-blown AGI by explicit coding. often seem to be assuming a black and white division between A and B, and more often than not they ARE assuming that what brain emulation means is B - the dumb brute force method. Maybe you're reading the wrong people. Or, misunderstand what they say. I have to say that if B is what is meant, the idea seems insane. You only need to get one little transistor junction out of place in your simulation of the radio, and the entire thing might not work ... and if you know nothing about the functionality, you are up the proverbial creek. Ditto for the brain. The brain is not a radio. It's designed to work in a noisy environment, so it's autohomeostating. You don't have to tune the oscillator precision down to ppb levels in order for it to work, or break down horribly. How many errors can you afford to make before the brain simulation becomes just as useless as a broken radio? The point is WHO KNOWS?! It Of course injecting errors into the simulation and look at trajectory spread is a common technique, so perhaps someone does know, after all. is funny that this is so little appreciated. For example, the B.E. people could slave away on their data collection, and then at the last minute realize that they also needed detailed information about the spatial distribution of every single dendritic bouton on every neuron How about submolecular resolution, on parts of specific samples? It might be useful to sample the ion channel
Re: [agi] About the brain-emulation route to AGI
http://mind.sourceforge.net/Mind.html is a True AI that emulates the human brain as hypothesized in the http://mind.sourceforge.net/theory5.html theory of mind. http://aimind-i.com is on off-shoot of the Mentifex Mind.Forth AI that is still on track to trigger a Technological Singularity by http://www.blogcharm.com/Singularity/25603/Timetable.html 2012. - This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
