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Ok, I have this theory and it's probably kinda ignorant, so I welcome some criticism. It looks like biological intelligence is purely a product of having an el

by jbob2000 7y ago

Ok, I have this theory and it's probably kinda ignorant, so I welcome some criticism. It looks like biological intelligence is purely a product of having an electrical network with tons of connections. That's the brain, right? And less intelligent species have less connections, so we can probably draw a straight line from low intellect - low connectivity to high intellect - high connectivity. My argument is that intelligence is a product of the complexity of an electrical network. So will machine intelligence be purely a product of creating an electrical network with tons of connections? If I took billions of computers, wrote some basic logic for how they communicated with each other, and then wired it all up, would I get an intelligent being? If those suppositions hold true, then all we need to do to reach AGI is to continue to invest in the internet (as it is the most advanced electrical network we've made to date). Continue to add more computers and continue to remove hindrances to the operation of the network (censorship, rate limiting, political logic). Then it will just magically wake up one day and say "hello world".

tbenst 7y ago
A neuron uses far more than electricity to communicate. The number of neurotransmitters and receptor types alone is staggering. There’s a reason why biology evolved past using gap junctions. The computer science view of the brain compares how the brain works to FLOPS, much like how previous generations compared the brain to horsepower from the steam engine. Better analogy, but still naive.
- ben_w 7y ago
  This is an important thing that optimists often miss. If you naively apply simple estimates of how many flops it takes to simulate a mind… well, I have and it would be possible to put ~35,000 real-time human minds onto all the iPhones Apple sold this year: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/pocket-brains/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/pocket-brai... There’s also the problem that we don’t yet know how ignorant we are about our minds. I’m sure neuroscientists do at least have a rough idea by now of how much there is left to learn, but I’d be surprised if they are confident enough to be able to estimate the cost of the remaining required research to less than a factor of 10, especially as we necessarily started with the easy-to-learn knowledge.
- jbob2000 7y ago
  Aren't neurotransmitters and receptors just smaller forms of electrical connections? A neurotransmitter is a chemical that causes a reaction in the receptor. You could argue that a chemical reaction is a data exchange, and a data exchange is just a type of electrical connection. I'm getting a bit reductionist with my theory, admittedly...
deleted 7y ago
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tbenst 7y ago

A neuron uses far more than electricity to communicate. The number of neurotransmitters and receptor types alone is staggering. There’s a reason why biology evolved past using gap junctions. The computer science view of the brain compares how the brain works to FLOPS, much like how previous generations compared the brain to horsepower from the steam engine. Better analogy, but still naive.

ben_w 7y ago
This is an important thing that optimists often miss. If you naively apply simple estimates of how many flops it takes to simulate a mind… well, I have and it would be possible to put ~35,000 real-time human minds onto all the iPhones Apple sold this year: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/pocket-brains/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/pocket-brai... There’s also the problem that we don’t yet know how ignorant we are about our minds. I’m sure neuroscientists do at least have a rough idea by now of how much there is left to learn, but I’d be surprised if they are confident enough to be able to estimate the cost of the remaining required research to less than a factor of 10, especially as we necessarily started with the easy-to-learn knowledge.
jbob2000 7y ago
Aren't neurotransmitters and receptors just smaller forms of electrical connections? A neurotransmitter is a chemical that causes a reaction in the receptor. You could argue that a chemical reaction is a data exchange, and a data exchange is just a type of electrical connection. I'm getting a bit reductionist with my theory, admittedly...

deleted 7y ago

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