IBM 'TrueNorth' Neuro-Synaptic Chip Promises Huge Changes -- Eventually 97
JakartaDean writes: Each of IBM's "TrueNorth" chips contains 5.4 billion transistors and runs on 70 milliwatts. The chips are designed to behave like neurons—the basic building blocks of biological brains. Dharmenda Modha, the head of IBM's cognitive computing group, says a system of 24 connected chips simulates 48 million neurons, roughly the same number rodents have.
Whereas conventional chips are wired to execute particular "instructions," the TrueNorth juggles "spikes," much simpler pieces of information analogous to the pulses of electricity in the brain. Spikes, for instance, can show the changes in someone's voice as they speak—or changes in color from pixel to pixel in a photo. "You can think of it as a one-bit message sent from one neuron to another." says one of the chip's chief designers. The chips are designed well not for training neural networks, but for executing them. This has significant implications for consumer AI: big companies with lots of resources could focus on the training, which individual TrueNorth chips in people's gadgets could handle the execution.
Whereas conventional chips are wired to execute particular "instructions," the TrueNorth juggles "spikes," much simpler pieces of information analogous to the pulses of electricity in the brain. Spikes, for instance, can show the changes in someone's voice as they speak—or changes in color from pixel to pixel in a photo. "You can think of it as a one-bit message sent from one neuron to another." says one of the chip's chief designers. The chips are designed well not for training neural networks, but for executing them. This has significant implications for consumer AI: big companies with lots of resources could focus on the training, which individual TrueNorth chips in people's gadgets could handle the execution.
Re:What Happens When One Transistor Goes Rogue? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Brain (Score:1)
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"At least they have a brain. Democrats are safe from brain-eating zombies."
But only if the food they eat is labeled for any ingredient or process they might be irrationally scared of.
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They were trained to be Republicans by their environment.
As such, they clearly deserve our pity. And possibly some nice soothing drugs.
Re:What Happens When One Transistor Goes Rogue? (Score:5, Insightful)
It never ceases to amuse and baffle me how even intelligent, educated Americans (such as slashdotters) allow themselves to be lured into vicious "Republican-Democrat" battles. Isn't it obvious that Demoblicans and Republicrats are just the two hands of the same power? Every minute and every quantum of attention and passion you devote to slanging off the "other" party is a minute and a quantum of attention wasted; because the American political circus has been carefully set up so that neither party can ever win decisively. Instead, you attentively watch a series of more or less random fluctuations in fortune, and whip yourself up into a rage about the character defects of the other party's politicians, all the while ignoring the psychopaths in your own chosen party. And you will never succeed in changing the government's policies by any exercise of your votes - just look at what Obama promised before BOTH of his elections, and how he gave you Dubya's third and fourth terms when you kindly elected him.
When will we see a serious discussion on Slashdot about the underlying political system that controls both parties, and excludes everyone else? Why doesn't anyone seem to care about the impossibility of voting for a political leader who doesn't want to conduct genocidal foreign wars? How about a government that reins in the banks and declines to follow the orders of billionaires? Why don't any of you seem even slightly interested in government of the people, by the people, for the people? (In case you hadn't noticed, what you currently have is government of the people, by the servants of the rich, for the rich).
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Because most people are stupid and humanity is a hopeless case. I wonder what the neadertals and denisovans were really like. Maybe the wrong homo won.
Re:What Happens When One Transistor Goes Rogue? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can lose a significant part of your brain yet change in cognitive abilities will be barely noticeable.
I'll drink to that!
Answer a question for me? (Score:1)
Neural networks are simulations of how brain works.
Apropos of nothing, since you're familiar with both neural nets and how the brain works, can you answer a quick question for me?
Neural nets have a left-to-right topology, where the inputs go in one side and the outputs leave the other side.
The brain doesn't do that - there's no "loop" in the brain where input neurons are processed on one side and output neurons exit the other.
This has always confused me about neural nets. If they simulate how the brain works, then how exactly *does* the brain work with inpu
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there's no "loop" in the brain where input neurons are processed on one side and output neurons exit the other.
Uhh, there are dedicated input and output parts of the nervous system...
If they simulate how the brain works
Neural nets in general are not simulations of how the brain works, but a set of algorithms originally inspired by the design of the brain. Some of them have been simplified or otherwise diverge, as they are developed for applications to other problems.
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You're asking "what is the system architecture of the brain?"
This would be a good thing to have mapped out. In fact, I'm surprised this isn't done already. Or is it?
Instead of working with amorphous blobs of neurons, the real advances in AI will come when specialized subsystems can be taught, then initialized at will with the "teaching." Those systems put together into a larger system similar to an actual brain will be what leads to general AI.
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Apropos of nothing, since you're familiar with both neural nets and how the brain works
It's funny but the only reason I understand how brain works is because I know how computer neural nets work. There are many common aspects in both operation and shortcomings.
As far as your question goes, brain definitely has a distinct set of inputs (retinas, sensory, etc), but the output is known as "self awareness" and was not covered in my comp sci classes. It is likely that this development brings us one step closer to a working Skynet.
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The output of the brain actuates lots of muscles, and a few glands. The 'self awareness' is a part of the processing.
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The 'self awareness' is a part of the processing.
Why do you believe silly things without evidence? The answer to the self awareness question is a clear and unambiguous "we don't know".
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You cannot observe the self-awareness thing directly (yet, anyway) but you can deduce the process occurs by observing inputs and outputs.
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I certainly can. That's precisely what makes me self-aware.
You mean in others. As for the alleged deduction, it's depressingly weak.
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Not all artificial neural networks are strictly feed forward. There are other designs that incorporate feedback but they tend to be harder to train and use (you have to wait for them to settle), so you don't hear about them a lot in connection with practical applications. One of the major types that is not strictly feedforward but is used a lot is the recurrent ANN, which is used in speech and text recognition, and natural language processing. In that type of network, the output produced by the previous
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The brain is hugely complicated with many inputs and many outputs and many many loops within.
A neural net is a very simplified version of a brain with one set of inputs and one set of outputs, and a very limited number of loops within.
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This is a really great question.
Neural networks do not exist in nature anywhere for any species in the sense of the left-to-right pipeline framework you describe.
As with any simulation, there isn't going to be 100% parity with the real thing. It simulates neural networks in the sense that they are adaptive and produce pavlovian results, associative chains, etc.
Can't comment on to what extent the layout you describe (i.e. a traditional neural netw
Reinventing the math coprocessor (Score:2)
Sounds like IBM is pushing to make these almost a specialized chip for each machine. That sounds like your client's so fat it warps space-time approach in moderately thin-client world... There needs to be a major advantage before a math coprocessor for AI becomes viable at the consumer level...
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You mistake your wife for a hat.
Re:What Happens When One Transistor Goes Rogue? (Score:4, Funny)
That was how we ended up getting married. I thought she was a hat and promised to just put my head in.
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Problem is, if your positronic brain leaks you get an antimatter explosion.
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it's already connected some of these together.
but the network can't train itself. kinda strange anyways. for a neural net that can't train itself it looks kinda big. how much can they do with a single true north chip?
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So which shall it be? Cylons or Skynet?
Original Cylons or Reboot? In the end both Skynet and the Reboot Cylons ended up nuking humanity. So it is 6 of one or half a dozen of another.
Rat Overlords (Score:2)
You will be ruled by the King of Rats...
I think not.
Irony is not lost on silicon.
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I couldn't resist setting you up with the straight line. You're welcome and thank you for responding! :)
Correction to summary (Score:2)
TFA (and its accompanying picture) indicate that 48 (not 24) chips are wired together to simulate a rodent brain.
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Thanks for the improvement.
Re: Correction to summary (Score:5, Insightful)
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since nobody knows how neurons work
Knowing how something works is not a binary statement, where either we know nothing or everything. We know a lot about how neurons work, and they can be simulated on many levels. A common question for a lot of processes is what level of functionality is required to get a process to work. There are processes that work quite well with just a high level view of signalling between neurons, which is easy to simulate or make electronic versions of, while other processes depend more chemical interactions and ar
Re: Correction to summary (Score:2)
Any neuroscientist worth his salt will tell you that we do not know enough about neurons to accurately simulate them in software or hardware.
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Re: Correction to summary (Score:2)
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For the record, you originally said: 'They're not even simulating neurons, since nobody knows how neurons work.'
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Re: Correction to summary (Score:2)
"No, you're not."
See, dichotomies work all the time. Especially when you have facts to back them up.
All your handwaving about how much knowledge is enough for useful simulation is meaningless, because we aren't talking about useful simulation. We are talking about reproducing the intelligence of a rodent brain.
The other simulation examples you cite are all experiments based on knowledge we already have. You can't model something you don't understand, and
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>We are talking about reproducing the intelligence of a rodent brain.
No. We're not. We're talking about *simulating* a rodent's brain to the limits of our current understanding
I really doubt anyone expects it to be successful at simulating rodent behavior. That's not the point. Doing so would be pretty much useless anyway. The point is to see how it fails, and how it kind of succeeds, and thus gain insight into how much we don't know, and what directions future research should take. We have to start
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>We are talking about reproducing the intelligence of a rodent brain.
No. We're not. We're talking about *simulating* a rodent's brain to the limits of our current understanding
Sorry, no. The Wired article title in "IBM’s ‘Rodent Brain’ Chip Could Make Our Phones Hyper-Smart". The title is derived from IBM scientist Dharmendra Modha's description of what IBM built: "You’re looking at a small rodent,”
The claim, at least by Wired, is that IBM has simulated the intelligence of a "small rodent."
The point is that AI researchers and the media keep recklessly spewing outrageous, but unjustified, claims about what they've achieved.
They need to stop
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>The claim, at least by Wired...
And there's the answer to your complaint. Why would you assume the Wired article has more than a passing resemblance to reality? The first rule of science journalism is "assume the journalist has no clue what they're talking about". You read between the lines, viewing sensationalist speculation through the lens of science-based cynicism, and then research primary sources if you're still interested.
Deep Dreaming Patents (Score:1)
Look, they noticed that neural networks have made a comeback, so they dusted off one of the old neural network on a chip designs, packed in a few more elements and hey-presto, NEW PATENT OPPORTUNITY to capture any of the profits that the current investigations in neural nets might produce.
So the stuff of 1999, becomes the patents of 2015!
http://people.ee.duke.edu/~mbrooke/papers/1999/00833427.pdf
What I can bet is IBM won't make anything of this, beyond a patent, because making stuff costs money, employs peo
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> since nobody knows how neurons work
This would just rob the verb 'know' from its meaning for everything other than pockets of mathematics. For it is the case that even physics isn't fully figured out, what with reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics, to name one gap, let alone chemistry, which sits atop of physics, not to mention biology, which sits atop of both.
There is a huge difference between a taxi driver not knowing how the neurons work, and a neuroscientist not knowing how the neur
Re: Correction to summary (Score:2)
My point is that there is not huge difference. In fact, I think the taxi driver is in a far better position, because he isn't lying to people telling them that he is close to reproducing rodent and cat intelligence from a simulation of not-neurons based on not-knowledge of intelligence and neural biology.
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Someone with a medical problem would better rely on the person whose knowledge about neurons, synapses, neurotransmitter reuptake or beta amyloid plaques is infinite relative to that of a cabbie, unless of course he needs to get to the hospital first :-)
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I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your overall point, just took issue with what you said earlier: 'nobody knows how neurons work' as it vacates the meaning of 'know'. Using your term, we didn't 'know' how gravity worked even after Newton's and Kepler's work, still we were able to construct accurate ballistics, because we still knew something. So your use of 'know' just represents some possibly unattainable level of knowledge in natural sciences, and with that definition, this word would be meaningless, s
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Using your term, we didn't 'know' how gravity worked even after Newton's and Kepler's work, still we were able to construct accurate ballistics, because we still knew something.
That example is not congruent with the AI claims made here.
First, we still do not know how gravity works. We have observed its effects and have drawn conclusions that were then formulated into physical "laws", but nobody understands the mechanisms of gravity.
Second, gravity is a very simple process compared with the processes of intelligent thought. We don't even know that thought occurs in the brain. The brain might just be an I/O interface to a completely different repository of intellect that we h
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Unfortunately you can't define what intelligence is, so these not-neurons in a not-brain network may well be producing it and you wouldn't know.
The burden of proof is not on me, but on those making assertions about IBM's chips achieving rodent brain capabilities. I don't need to prove anything, and demanding that AI researchers and the media support their claims with facts is not a strawman argument.
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It's like putting a barrel of nuts and bolts in a spinning cement mixer and hoping a car emerges, or maybe a bicycle. But billions of times less likely.
That's a stupid thing to say, because nobody actually knows what makes intelligence work; it might well be a combination of enough raw matter of intelligence, and enough sensory input to do something useful. But we know what makes fasteners work, and it's not putting them in a cement mixer and tumbling them.
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Or, you know, like building a robot arm out of metal and electrical motors and hoping it can lift things like a real arm made out of bones and protein.
Somewhere between the ridiculously optimistic AI researchers (who mostly got sense slapped into them in the sixties) and the cargo cult neuroscientists, there's a middle ground where lots of serious research is happening.
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Evidence for the singularity! By the time I get to read all comments about new tech, the transistor count doubles!
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That was my take on it, lol.
"Eventually"? (Score:2)
"IBM 'TrueNorth' Neuro-Synaptic Chip Promises Huge Changes -- Eventually"
So basically... the chips are thinking about it?
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Wow. Go IBM. (Score:1)
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Pffft.. So much easier to do it this way... (Score:1)
Just wire up the brains of a bunch of mice. No development cost. Just a little bit of feed and a pooper scooper...