4 ms·

“You do not have to emulate the entire brain,” he said. “But you do have to understand how the brain works and emulate the important parts.” Nonsense. What %

“You do not have to emulate the entire brain,” he said. “But you do have to understand how the brain works and emulate the important parts.” Nonsense. What % parts of a bird were necessary to understand for the first successful aircraft? It may be very helpful all the way to unnecessary, no one knows that yet.

blhack 8y ago
I'm not sure I'm following your point. What percentage of parts of a bird were necessary for the first successful flight? I don't know, less than 1%? Maybe less than 0.1%? But you do have to understand [generally] how a bird works to [generally] emulate its wings [and fly].
- fermienrico 8y ago
  For every biologically inspired invention, there are plenty more that were invented by understanding principles of engineering and science. Evolution has given us some incredible stuff, but there could exist simpler, more elegant solutions. A barn door will give you lift just not as efficient as a NACA airfoil shape. Evolutionary mimicry has its place in engineering, no doubt. But arrogantly stating that we must emulate biological systems is blatantly and demonstrably false. Otherwise, we wouldn't have nuclear power, superconductivity, lightbulb, sewing machines and computers.
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    Did the original source actually arrogantly state that? I suspect it had some nuance to it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
tragomaskhalos 8y ago
I think you are disagreeing with the rather absolute nature of Hawkins' statement while accepting that he may be on to something. My take is: we know that the brain works. OTOH the current ML-oriented focus in AI is apparently promising but leads to some surprising and disturbing anomalies - thinking in particular of how an image can be minutely "gamed" to fool a classifier into completely misidentifying it. So to me (as an outside amateur admittedly) it seems like we are missing some essential meta-information about how cognition really works, and that the known precedent of the brain is the obvious place to look.
- WhitneyLand 8y ago
  Sure, agree with everything you've said. Moreover, understanding how the brain truly works, think of how much value that could have for medicine, psychology, etc. The point is, history has shown over and over, it may be more or less helpful in building the best general AI we can. We just don't know. Making an unqualified declaration that it's required is hard not to see as hyperbole as this point in history. So is his one statement wrong, yes. Do I want to stop him? Heck no, giddy up. I hope he makes big breakthroughs.

blhack 8y ago

I'm not sure I'm following your point. What percentage of parts of a bird were necessary for the first successful flight? I don't know, less than 1%? Maybe less than 0.1%? But you do have to understand [generally] how a bird works to [generally] emulate its wings [and fly].

fermienrico 8y ago
For every biologically inspired invention, there are plenty more that were invented by understanding principles of engineering and science. Evolution has given us some incredible stuff, but there could exist simpler, more elegant solutions. A barn door will give you lift just not as efficient as a NACA airfoil shape. Evolutionary mimicry has its place in engineering, no doubt. But arrogantly stating that we must emulate biological systems is blatantly and demonstrably false. Otherwise, we wouldn't have nuclear power, superconductivity, lightbulb, sewing machines and computers.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  Did the original source actually arrogantly state that? I suspect it had some nuance to it.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

tragomaskhalos 8y ago

I think you are disagreeing with the rather absolute nature of Hawkins' statement while accepting that he may be on to something. My take is: we know that the brain works. OTOH the current ML-oriented focus in AI is apparently promising but leads to some surprising and disturbing anomalies - thinking in particular of how an image can be minutely "gamed" to fool a classifier into completely misidentifying it. So to me (as an outside amateur admittedly) it seems like we are missing some essential meta-information about how cognition really works, and that the known precedent of the brain is the obvious place to look.

WhitneyLand 8y ago
Sure, agree with everything you've said. Moreover, understanding how the brain truly works, think of how much value that could have for medicine, psychology, etc. The point is, history has shown over and over, it may be more or less helpful in building the best general AI we can. We just don't know. Making an unqualified declaration that it's required is hard not to see as hyperbole as this point in history. So is his one statement wrong, yes. Do I want to stop him? Heck no, giddy up. I hope he makes big breakthroughs.