Having worked with IARPA before (including on computational neuroscience), I would caution against assuming that their opinions necessarily have any profound scientific foundation ;p .... There are some very smart and knowledgeable people involved, but also a lot of very complex bureaucracy which means that the best judgments don't always come out on top...
On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 1:46 AM, EdFromNH . <[email protected]> wrote: > Yes, learning the exact connectivity of the brain would be extremely > difficult. But that doesn't mean getting substantially better connectivity > information than we have now would not be extremely valuable. > > Yesterday I posted the following to this list. It shows IARPA thinks > getter more exact information about the brain could be helpful in designing > NN architectures. > > > "Interesting article from Kurzweil AI about IARPA funding of project to do > detailed study of brain's visual system. Studies like this could make > great advances in our ability to understand how to make powerful neural net > artificial intelligences. > > > " > http://www.kurzweilai.net/cmu-announces-research-project-to-reverse-engineer-brain-algorithms-funded-by-iarpa > " > > > On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 9:06 PM, TimTyler <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 2016-02-14 17:42, EdFromNH . wrote: >> >> I heard the author of this book on a Dallas/Fort Worth NPR interview show >>> called "Think". In it he poo-pooed the importance of learning the >>> connectome, saying the connectome wasn't really important, that what was >>> important was learning the brain's algorithm. >>> >>> It is stunningly dumb to minimize the importance of the connection >>> architecture of a neural net, particularly if you include connection >>> weights in the connectome [...] >>> >> >> It depends a bit on what you are trying to do. Most NN researchers left >> biological >> realism behind long ago when they adopted back propagation. No doubt >> there are >> some remaining secrets buried in the connectome - but the issue is the >> time and >> resources it will cost to find them that way - instead of via >> reinvention. The physical >> brain is quite a messy tangle; it's not too attractive a place to go >> fishing for insights. >> >> -- >> __________ >> |im Tyler http://timtyler.org/ >> >> >> >> ------------------------------------------- >> AGI >> Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now >> RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/8630185-a57a74e1 >> Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; >> Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com >> > > *AGI* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/212726-deec6279> | Modify > <https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> > Your Subscription <http://www.listbox.com> > -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
