Sure, computers are vastly more powerful - millions/billions times or more.
And vastly better at even mildly complex, serial computations - the brain
gets v. tired, v.quickly.
But it looks to my crude eye like the brain is possibly a million or so
times more efficent in perceiving, identifying forms (if not superior,
period) because it's using a totally different system - something analog, as
I keep talking about, rather than digital. (And there seems to be a good
chance that memories are stored locally all over the brain - that perhaps
the same neuron clusters contain loads of memories - say loads of variations
on the same shape that is being recognised??) [And I wonder BTW whether
this power aspect [Richard?] has been considered in the Pylyshyn/Kosslyn
debate].
And that different perceptual system is central to AGI. right? It's the
system that produces the vast bulk of adaptive analogies - the capacity, for
example, to come up with a virtually infinite alternative ways of moving any
object - and endlessly redesign machines to move things.
So that's the system that either a copy or alternative has to be engineered
and designed for - and there's v. unlikely to be a digital solution, no? The
massive computation route is, to a considerable extent, a distraction in
this area.
MT: Clearly the brain works VASTLY differently and more efficiently than
current
computers - are you seriously disputing that?
Ben: It is very clear that in many respects the brain is much less
efficient than
current digital computers and software.
It is more energy-efficient by and large, as Read Montague has argued ...
but OTOH sometimes it is waaaay less algorithmically efficient
For instance, in spite of its generally high energy efficiency, my brain
wastes
a lot more energy calculating 969695775755/ 88844444 than my computer
does.
And e.g. visual cortex, while energy-efficient, is horribly
algorithmically
inefficient, involving e.g. masses of highly erroneous motion-sensing
neurons
whose results are averaged together to give reasonably accurate values..
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