> PS. This makes me wonder whether and to what degree the structure of the brain's connectome might be a necessary prior for AGI. I've seen an analogy in hardw

> PS. This makes me wonder whether and to what degree the structure of the brain's connectome might be a necessary prior for AGI. I've seen an analogy in hardware that is potentially interesting to explore. There is a technique in A/D converters (ADC) where input signal noise can be reduced by RMS averaging the sequence of digital outputs. This increases the effective resolution of the ADC, while lowering the effective sampling frequency of the input signal. In the case that the input noise of a precision ADC is very low, the digital averaging has no effect on effective resolution. Surprisingly, in this case you can actually inject a "hand-crafted" noise source into the input, and still realize the resolution improvements from digital averaging. The key is to find the right amount of noise to randomize the quantization noise. In the case of the ADC, the structure of the quantizing hardware is known, as is the characteristics of quantization noise. This allows for a guassian noise to be injected with the input source (might be analogous to a "prior"). From there, one can balance the input injection noise with the output digital averaging to get an optimal increase in output resolution. This technique is explained well in this paper: http://www.analog.com/en/analog-dialogue/articles/adc-input-noise.html http://www.analog.com/en/analog-dialogue/articles/adc-input-...