-----Original Message----- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Telmo Menezes Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2013 3:33 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Deep Blue vs The Tianhe-2 Supercomputer
On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 12:16 AM, Chris de Morsella <cdemorse...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Telmo -- Another crucial difference between the brain and current > computer architectures is the huge difference between the two in terms > of signal to noise ratios. The brain is a crackling and very noisy > place and is in this way is very unlike silicon chips where the signal > is very clear (at a large energy cost incidentally) We may experience > our minds as a splendid inner silence I wish! :) You and I both :) > -- well maybe not > all of us -- but the actual brain environment is highly chatty and is > cascading with signals talking over each other more like a lively > cocktail party really. > Computer architecture is the exact opposite in this regard, and this > suggests that the two architectures must be very different and work on > different principles or at least in very different manners. Completely agree. > The brain seems to excel at somehow -- through what sleight of hand? > -- pulling beautifully ordered reifications of sensorial perception > streams (like the illusion we create of the three dimensional world > arrayed in a stable manner around our point of perception that does > not experience sudden gaps but instead persists in majestic stability > even as the sensorial stream shuts down -- for example whenever we > move our eyeballs from one spot to > another) > And it does so in the midst of a veritable cacophony of countless > signals that would totally overwhelm any software we have and bring > any attempt we could possibly cobble together to try to manage it or > make sense of it to a grinding overloaded crashing halt. > This is a fundamental architectural difference between how logic is > built up, layer by layer, on a computer and how the brain does things. > They are profoundly different approaches to how things are done. >> Undoubtably. And it might not be a coincidence that these architectural differences are correlated with very distinct sets of strengths and weaknesses in terms of problem solving. Precisely! And also why, it is perhaps misguided to speak of it in such a binary manner -- not to imply you were at all :) The range of all possibilities is vaster than: AI or not AI -- or, more succinctly just dropping the artificial part for the moment and re-stating it as Intelligence / not Intelligence. Most probably there are many ways of intelligence and the intelligence that we are imbued with is not the end all and be all of all possible forms intelligence (in the abstract) could take. I certainly hope it isn't; what an utterly mundane universe that would make. Even just trying to nail down a definition of what intelligence is -- especially if we attempt to abstract the definition so as not to limit it overly to our own peculiar evolutionary path. (peculiar not in the sense of being bad or having a negative connation, but of being particular). I can't speak for others, but it is really hard for me whenever I try to grasp this particular slippery eel and try to fix it with some definite form or model perhaps. Even within our own minds we have multiple types of intelligence operating and not all of them are symbolic/verbal forms. Sometimes it seems to me, as if it is a somewhat ad hoc tool set that we hang this concept on and expect things to manifest similarly in other beings. Our sense of what intelligence is and is not, has to have been influenced and is to a large degree informed by the optic of our own evolutionary end point (where we are at now... not in the sense of forever remaining there) and whenever we speak of intelligence in an abstract manner we need to keep this in mind. Cheers, -Chris >>Telmo. > -Chris > > -----Original Message----- > From: everything-list@googlegroups.com > [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Telmo Menezes > Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2013 2:00 PM > To: everything-list@googlegroups.com > Subject: Re: Deep Blue vs The Tianhe-2 Supercomputer > > On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 9:05 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy > <multiplecit...@gmail.com> wrote: >> As I tried to comment in the other thread concerning chess: it's not >> just about power, it's also about quality of coding. Just one fresh >> opening, a novel variation or line in the mid game, a bug in the >> code, one position falsely assessed, and all computing power in the >> universe will still lose that game. To generalize this to all >> problems seems a bit quick. PGC > > I agree with the sentiment. Chess is a very narrow case though: the > min-max algorithm plus a brutal amount of computing power is surely > going to beat a human. The min-max algorithm is so simple that it is > not that hard to implement with zero defects. The issue, though, is > the following: we currently only know how to beat top human players > with brutal computational power. The part of the human brain devoted > to playing chess (even in a Grand > Master) cannot possibly match what we already do artificially in terms > of computing power. It must use smarter algorithms. Our brain cannot > possibly hold the gigantic search trees involved in min-max, it must > be doing something much more clever. We don't know what that is. > > We are now approaching a point where we can have supercomputers with > the same estimated computational power of a human brain, but we are > very far from replicating its capabilities. There's even a lot of > stuff insects do that we are not close to matching. I dare even say > bacteria. There are many fundamental algorithms yet to be discovered, that's for sure. > > Also, Moore's law is bound to hit a physical limit. It cannot be that > far now. It's already fishy, since it's being driven mostly by > multicore architectures. Moving from the sequential to the parallel > world is far from trivial in terms of software engineering. The brain > is massively parallel and asynchronous, and we are still very bad with > that sort of stuff. Maybe that's precisely where the missing good stuff lies. > > Incidentally, Richard Feynman was involved with a startup that tried > to create a new type of highly parallel computer. Here's an > interesting read about it: > > http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/ > > I love this part: > > "We were arguing about what the name of the company should be when > Richard walked in, saluted, and said, "Richard Feynman reporting for > duty. OK, boss, what's my assignment?" The assembled group of > not-quite-graduated MIT students was astounded. > > After a hurried private discussion ("I don't know, you hired him..."), > we informed Richard that his assignment would be to advise on the > application of parallel processing to scientific problems. > > "That sounds like a bunch of baloney," he said. "Give me something > real to do." > > So we sent him out to buy some office supplies." > > > Telmo. > >> >> On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 6:07 PM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> Suppose that in 1997 you had a very difficult problem to solve, so >>> difficult that it would take Deep Blue, the supercomputer that beat >>> the best human chess player in the world, 18 years to solve, what >>> should > you do? >>> You'd do better to let Moore's law do all the heavy lifting and >>> leave Deep Blue alone and sit on your hands from 1997 until just 2 >>> minutes ago, because that's how long it would take the 2013 >>> supercomputer >>> Tianhe-2 to solve the problem. And in 20 years your wristwatch will >>> be more powerful than Tianhe-2. >>> >>> John K Clark >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Everything List" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, >>> send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, >> send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send > an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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