Richard, Please describe some of the counterexamples, that you can easily come up with, that make a mockery of Tononi's conclusion.
Ed Porter -----Original Message----- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:r...@lightlink.com] Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 8:54 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] SyNAPSE might not be a joke ---- was ---- Building a machine that can learn from experience Ed Porter wrote: > I don't think this AGI list should be so quick to dismiss a $4.9 million > dollar grant to create an AGI. It will not necessarily be "vaporware." > I think we should view it as a good sign. > > > > Even if it is for a project that runs the risk, like many DARPA projects > (like most scientific funding in general) of not necessarily placing its > money where it might do the most good --- it is likely to at least > produce some interesting results --- and it just might make some very > important advances in our field. > > > > The article from http://www.physorg.com/news148754667.html said: > > > > ".a $4.9 million grant.for the first phase of DARPA's Systems of > Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project. > > > > Tononi and scientists from Columbia University and IBM will work on the > "software" for the thinking computer, while nanotechnology and > supercomputing experts from Cornell, Stanford and the University of > California-Merced will create the "hardware." Dharmendra Modha of IBM is > the principal investigator. > > > > The idea is to create a computer capable of sorting through multiple > streams of changing data, to look for patterns and make logical decisions. > > > > There's another requirement: The finished cognitive computer should be > as small as a the brain of a small mammal and use as little power as a > 100-watt light bulb. It's a major challenge. But it's what our brains do > every day. > > > > I have just spent several hours reading a Tononi paper, "An information > integration theory of consciousness" and skimmed several parts of his > book "A Universe of Consciousness" he wrote with Edleman, whom Ben has > referred to often in his writings. (I have attached my mark up of the > article, which if you read just the yellow highlighted text, or (for > more detail) the red, you can get a quick understanding of. You can > also view it in MSWord outline mode if you like.) > > > > This paper largely agrees with my notion, stated multiple times on this > list, that consciousness is an incredibly complex computation that > interacts with itself in a very rich manner that makes it aware of itself. For the record, this looks like the paper that I listened to Tononi talk about a couple of years ago -- the one I mentioned in my last message. It is, for want of a better word, nonsense. And since people take me to task for being so dismissive, let me add that it is the central thesis of the paper that is "nonsense": if you ask yourself very carefully what it is he is claiming, you can easily come up with counterexammples that make a mockery of his conclusion. Richard Loosemore ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ 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 RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
