Can We Build a Human Brain Into a Microchip? 598
destinyland writes "Can we imprint the circuitry of the human brain onto a silicon chip? It requires a computational capacity of 36.8 petaflops — a thousand trillion floating point operations per second — but a team of European scientists has already simulated 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections. And their brain-chip is scaleable, with plans to create a superchip mimicking 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses. Unfortunately, the human brain has 22 billion neurons and 220 trillion synapses. Just remember Ray Kurzweil's argument: once a machine can achieve a human level of intelligence — it can also exceed it."
Undue Credit to Kurzweil (Score:5, Interesting)
Just remember Ray Kurzweil's argument: once a machine can achieve a human level of intelligence â" it can also exceed it.
Ray Kurzweil is a brilliant computer scientist and brought us many improvements -- maybe even the invention of -- the electronic musical keyboard.
But that is not his argument. I laughed when I read that as the concept was presented to me in sci-fi novels before Kurzweil's time. The earliest I (or Wikipedia) can trace the intelligence explosion [wikipedia.org] theory back to is Irving John Good who, in 1965, said [archive.org]:
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.
This was popularized by Vernor Vinge which is where I recalled reading about it. There are many reasons to celebrate Raymond Kurzweil [wikipedia.org]. In my opinion, his is "work" in nutrition and his near-religion called futurology are not in those reasons. He has become a vocal proponent of a dream to become god-like. I do not share that dream and I wish him the best of luck in his endeavors. I just cringe every time I read of the "singularity being near" or the ability to live forever coming about. If it's going to happen, just sit back and let it happen. I feel he has done a great disservice to the field of artificial intelligence by promising unrealistic things in interviews to the lay person. Disappointment is a sure fire way to get yourself branded as a snake oil salesman religious nut.
Predictions for the future are for sci-fi books and movies, don't get into the habit of being a scientist in an interview with a reputable magazine or web site telling them what is about to happen. Example:
Kurzweil projects that between now and 2050 technology will become so advanced that medical advances will allow people to radically extend their lifespans while preserving and even improving quality of life as they age. The aging process could at first be slowed, then halted, and then reversed as newer and better medical technologies became available. Kurzweil argues that much of this will be a fruit of advances in medical nanotechnology, which will allow microscopic machines to travel through one's body and repair all types of damage at the cellular level.
And that's easily criticized:
Biologist P.Z. Myers has criticized Kurzweil's predictions as being based on "New Age spiritualism" rather than science and says that Kurzweil does not understand basic biology. Myers also claims that Kurzweil picks and chooses events that appear to demonstrate his claim of exponential technological increase leading up to a singularity, and ignores events that do not.
Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
How about the converse (Score:4, Interesting)
Exceeding (Score:2, Interesting)
I could use a built in graphing calculator or spell check.
One word (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not just the parallelism (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the reconfigurable nature of the human brain that's unique and powerful. If all you did was take one person, listed all of the skills of that person -- all of the things he knew; all of the skills in smell, touch, sight and taste; all of the cognitive reasoning ability -- then you could create a chip to simulate those skills. Algorithms for image recognition, feature extraction, speech recognition, etc. are all available that are very very close to what humans can do.
But the thing that separates humans is that it didn't take hundreds of years of mathematical development to come up with these algorithms. The human brain develops these algorithms through changes in its structure from birth. At about age 10, speech recognition specialized and tailored to the dialect, language and tones that the person hears has developed on its own.
That type of structural formation and learning is what would need to happen in silicon to make a truly intelligent machine. Neuron clusters emulated using transistors would need to be able to dynamically form connections to other neuron clusters. There'd have to be some type of distributed learning algorithm encoded in the operation of each individual neuron.
Speech recognition is easy. Image recognition is easy. Developing a distributed, scalable, self-modifying architecture that can learn all of those and more on its own with nothing more than training samples is the difficult part.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sure we can... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Quality of simulation (Score:2, Interesting)
Not true.
Simulation of a brain* has shown behavious one would expect in an actual brain.
So yes, it does look like imitating the brain will cause intelligence.
This is very cool, and I hop it pans out to large Simulations.
It could mean that intellect comes from the organization of the brain, a by products of the evolutionary need for memory.
*limited set of emmulated neurons, really.
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Something like this will be possible one day, but my layperson's understanding of how the brain works is fundamentally different from how computers work.
According to Turing, all sufficiently complicated computing devices are equivalent. The architecture may be entirely different, but there's no reason in principle one cannot be simulated on the other.
At the very least, we know the brain obeys the laws of physics. A computer can simulate the laws of physics. Therefore, a computer can simulate the brain.
Re:There. Fixed that for you. (Score:1, Interesting)
Keep on trying though, there are other things that you will invent as the result.
Re:I hope this technology comes to fruition (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
According to Turing, all sufficiently complicated computing devices are equivalent ...
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that was said of binary systems? Can you prove to me that the lowest form of information in the brain is the bit? Are neurons only 'on or off'? Is it just discharge or not discharge? I am no neurologist but I believe that small non-binary charges can be held by neurons that may influence thought. Neurons are fairly complex cells that have many complex dendrites -- some being multipolar instead of bipolar.
At the very least, we know the brain obeys the laws of physics.
Unfortunately we have a very incomplete set of laws for physics.
This may shock you but I assure you that there are things going on in the human brain that no physicist, biologist or biophysicist can explain. Hell, we can't even draw a definite line between what is chemical/physical and what is purely neurological function. There may not even be a line to draw. Although we are making advances, we are still in the dark about a lot of basic things in the human mind let alone discovering the detailed inner workings of the thing we call 'consciousness.' Can you tell me why it is that enlarged regions of our brain make us so much more 'intelligent' than mice or whales?
I hope for a huge breakthrough but it is nothing more than childish hope. My gut feeling is that we are much much farther from the 'intelligence explosion' than the futurologists think.
Re:There. Fixed that for you. (Score:2, Interesting)
God gave us the capacity to create life. That's pretty evident. There's nothing in the Bible to suggest that we are restricted to standard procreation.
God really doesn't address anything beyond the human, and until we're handed a set of instructions on the subject, I will continue to strive to create better and less evil intelligence. If that proves not to be human... then that's what it takes.
Re:Quality of simulation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There. Fixed that for you. (Score:1, Interesting)
"There is one element that we are not given the power of, and that is to breath life into it."
If conscious awareness is something that just happens in a sufficiently sophisticated system that has sensory inputs and can compare its own present state to its previous states in ways that are meaningful to itself, then there is no God, there are no souls, we are biomechanical constructs, we simply cease to be when we die, and you get "life" for free if you build one of these things.
So far, all available evidence points to that being the case. I'm not aware of any evidence to the contrary.
Tripping over a power cord may very well someday be classifiable as negligent homicide.
Re:I hope this technology comes to fruition (Score:5, Interesting)
The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's paradox, is a paradox that raises the question of whether an object which has had all its component parts replaced remains fundamentally the same object.
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a neuroscientist and I can tell you for sure that the basic form of the information in a brain is not a linear bit. But it does obey the laws of physics, and everything we know points to it following pretty mundane physics. The whole 'quantum state' theory of consciousness is pretty weak and unable to explain a lot of really basic phenomenon of the brain.
However, the real trick of human intelligence is not simply the number of neurons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons [wikipedia.org] but rather the particular pattern of the network which allows us to detect and manipulate extremely complex patterns which a significant amount of noise. I think we will get to the point one day where we can replicate a human level intelligence, but getting 20 billion things into a organized pattern is just that start of that process.
And, even then, we don't need to worry about an 'intelligence explosion' because a) there are probably some pretty hard laws on the relationship between size and complexity, which is almost certainly non-linear and b) the knowledge needed to create this human level intelligence won't be understandable to any single human. It has already take teams of people working together for combined millions of man hours to get to where we are today. Even if this computer we make was capable of thinking at the level of 2x human, it will take many machines a long time before progressing to the next level of understanding of a complex non-linear phenomenon such as intelligence.
Re:I hope this technology comes to fruition (Score:3, Interesting)
but will you want to scream and be unable to do so?
Also would you really want to be Borg? Not only will your brain deteriorate, but your body will as well. I've given some real thought to how the Borg likely started and this sums it up really. They added the ability to communicate with a central computer and each other electronically (it's faster afterall), and next thing you know the hive mind was born. /. even shows that hive mentality is possible in humans, this would simply enshrine it.
Mind you, so long as I was one of the first units produced I'm not sure I would mind it much. I think the initial cadre would be individuals for the most part (after the babbling idiots first produced when things go wrong and the bugs are worked out).
-nB
Nanotech (Score:3, Interesting)
Turing machines may be equivalent, but .. (Score:2, Interesting)
Turing machines may be equivalent, but their efficiency at various tasks isn't.
I think it would be a very interesting task that would increase the understanding of NP-complex problems (including simulations of turing machines on other turing machines) to see the efficiency cost graph.
Not even close (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, current estimates are more like 100 billion neurons and upwards of 300-500 trillion synaptic connections.
However, numbers aside, the human brain is not merely a complex collection of neurons and interconnected synapses. Complexity is only one very basic factor, another, more critical, factor is organization. We don't even know where to start in the organization of these artificial neural networks to emulate a human brain.
WARNING! COMPUTER ANALOGY: It's not the number and density of interconnected transistors that make a Xeon, it's the organization.
Re:Not the whole brain...less is more (Score:3, Interesting)
The parts of the brain "geared toward bodily functions" is crucial to the functioning to the brain as a whole. The brain interaction with genitalia is just one example.
Your post brings up another good point though: Before the brain is thorougly constructed, the input streams into the brain need to be thoroughly understood as well.
And, where does the brain stop? The spinal column? The nervous system? Hormones?
This is so cool!
human? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
First... there is no requirement that the computer cannot be some x*n atoms.
Second... I'm not sure that this would be the case:
It's quite possible that, say, only 1% of the atoms in the brain are required for the brain activity we'd like to simulate. Off the top of my head (ha!) some examples would be those atoms involved in nutrient uptake, metabolism, and waste removal. I'm sure there're also atoms like those that give length to axons... those don't need 1:1 representation, a timed loop could represent them. Or all the neurotransmitters, those atoms could be instead represented by a few bits used as a counter.
Basically, my argument boils down to this: I don't think the goal would be to build a simulacrum of the brain. Just a simulation of the brain. This gives lots of room for making things more efficient (though maintaining accuracy would, of course, be necessary).
Re:Undue Credit to Kurzweil (PS) (Score:3, Interesting)
A disappointed public threatens research funding, but an unprepared public threatens chaos
And a simulated intelligence that doesn't truly think or feel may get "machine rights". I wish these guys would read Dune; the jihad was was not against the thinking machines, but against the men who used the thinking machines to enslave their fellow men.
And, when they can model a fly's brain and build an artificial fly, I'll be a hell of a lot more impresses than their simply "modeling" 200k out of BILLIONS of brain cells. Build a fly's brain that can control a real fly's functions and I might start to believe you.
I don't recall the paper but (Score:4, Interesting)
Around 2012 the tech will exist to map the whole human brain; not a living one, just the resolution needed to get all the cells and connections-- maybe 2015... and it'll probably have to be a dead brain that doesn't move. Brain scans already gets quite small on living human brains; but I heard this estimate about 6 years ago and it sounds reasonable.
Not understanding how the brain works will always be a problem; its a nonlinear approximation (of the number 42?) as far as our general understanding of it goes--- even if the brain is just an analog version of such a math problem, those problems almost instantly scale beyond our grasp with only a few variables involved (just think in terms of linear algebra problems and how basic they have to be to "solve;" which doesn't necessarily mean we really fully understand the answers we get. For example, infinity--we work with it, get the concept but we never will fully understand it. )
Computing power grows at certain rates; one can use that combined with an estimate of how many transistors it takes per simulated neuron (or something like that) and estimate at what point we will have the power to load the brain scan data in and start trying to simulate a model of a real brain. Using custom designed chips and circuitry only make shorten the estimate as does clever new ways to simulate processes.
I'm guessing around 2030 but its hard to say. Doesn't mean that when somebody tries it something will happen...may have to give the thing simulated I/O as well to get anything from it. My guess is politics will be the worst problem as this kind of research gets closer to science fiction.
Re:Undue Credit to Kurzweil (Score:3, Interesting)
I find the arguement puzzling that we would only have to design a machine that's "smarter" (however that's defined...) than a human. Then the machine could design still smarter machines, etc, etc, until you get an intilligence explosion.
While that sounds plausable we have to remember that not a SINGLE person designed the machine. It was the work of hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, over time, designing and improving the individual components and software. No one person could have done such a feat on their own. My arguement in this case is that the machine would have to be smarter not than a single person, but than an entire group of people, all with different expertise and internal creative processes, combined, to result in an intilligence explosion. That's a very different conclusion.
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Neurons are fairly complex cells that have many complex dendrites -- some being multipolar instead of bipolar.
So our binary computing brain simulator would have Manic Depression? [wikipedia.org]
On a more serious note, you're right; we don't even know what sentience is. Maybe water is sentient; we are, after all, something like 70% water.
To misquote Chief Dan George's character in Little Big Man (because it's from memory and I haven't seen that movie in a while), "The Human Being [people of his tribe] think everything is alive. The people, the buffalo, the trees, even the rocks. But the white man thinks nothing is alive, and if he suspects something is alive he'll kill it."
Re:Complexity orders of magnitude bigger (Score:4, Interesting)
Protozoa are simple, they just have a number of triggers with some memory. It can be hard to determine all of them but once you're done, it should be simple to simulate them.
And neurons are studied quite well enough. So far we don't see any 'superintelligent' behavior from simple neurons. There are subtle things that we might have missed (like recently discovered neurotransmitter spillover), but are they essential?
Personally, I think that we might be able to simulate brain. It will probably require several more breakthroughs, but I'd bet it will be possible.