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> The competition in this space is great but I can't help but wonder what would happen if instead all these companies pooled their resources and went after the

> The competition in this space is great but I can't help but wonder what would happen if instead all these companies pooled their resources and went after the goal collectively. It would probably slow down. 9 women can't have a baby in 1 month. Besides that, the disagreements about approach, politics, or eventual competitive interests would probably bring things to a halt for a long time. I don't think the solutions to this problem are resource-constrained. Many companies would happily find more resources in order to be first to market with this technology.

p1esk 7y ago
Exactly. Look at Human Brain Project: $1B and 10 years later what exactly have they achieved? Just like you said - disagreements about approach, politics, or eventual competitive interests did bring things to a halt for a long time
- jacquesm 7y ago
  The human brain project was DOA from day #1. Unrealistic goals, no clear reason why more money would lead to better results and no concrete deliverables that anybody needed.
  - p1esk 7y ago
    Same can be said about level 5 autonomy!
    - h5rea4he 7y ago
      To me, the fatal flaw of HBP (or USA's competing HBI) is that they are akin to "cargo cult science", the idea that we can replicate the superficial structures to a significant enough degree that they system they impart will suddenly somehow become activated. But just like the Melanesians with their coconut-shell headsets, there won't be anyone listening on the other end...
      - p1esk 7y ago
        If we replicate a car with a sufficient accuracy it will start. I don’t see why this wouldn’t apply to any other piece of machinery, including a brain. HBP should have tried a simpler task first, e.g. replicate a fruit fly’s brain.
        mac01021 7y ago
        Having replicated the fruit fly's brain, what are you going to do? Replicate the rest of the fruit fly so that you can install the brain in it? And then replicate the world so that your software-simulated fruit fly has a natural context in which to operate? Or just stimulate the brain with random inputs not associated with any real-world stimulus?
        p1esk 7y ago
        I’m pretty sure simulating fly’s neural inputs would be a far easier task than simulating its brain. After verifying it works correctly we would proceed to simulating a more complex brain, say a frog. And so on.
        mac01021 7y ago
        To simulate the fly's neural input, you need to simulate the fly's entire environment, including fluid dynamics for the air around the fly, the physics of every object the fly interacts with, hormonal responses to changes in the flies blood concentration of various substances (O2, glucose, ...). This already strains our technical capabilities (at least for the amount of money we are willing to spend on it). For any animal whose behavior is the product of a lot of learning, and who deals with other such animals in daily life, you have to solve all the problems you had to solve for the fly and also deal with a much larger connectome and also deal with the fact that, until you can passably simulate mouse, you will never be able to simulate the way a mouse learns to behave in the presence of another mouse.
        p1esk 7y ago
oneshot908 7y ago
Also agreed, when hedge funds don't silo their quants, instead of seeing 50 different strategies from 50 quants, they get 50 variants of the same strategy, source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119482089/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119482089/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

p1esk 7y ago

Exactly. Look at Human Brain Project: $1B and 10 years later what exactly have they achieved? Just like you said - disagreements about approach, politics, or eventual competitive interests did bring things to a halt for a long time

jacquesm 7y ago
The human brain project was DOA from day #1. Unrealistic goals, no clear reason why more money would lead to better results and no concrete deliverables that anybody needed.
- p1esk 7y ago
  Same can be said about level 5 autonomy!
  - h5rea4he 7y ago
    To me, the fatal flaw of HBP (or USA's competing HBI) is that they are akin to "cargo cult science", the idea that we can replicate the superficial structures to a significant enough degree that they system they impart will suddenly somehow become activated. But just like the Melanesians with their coconut-shell headsets, there won't be anyone listening on the other end...
    - p1esk 7y ago
      If we replicate a car with a sufficient accuracy it will start. I don’t see why this wouldn’t apply to any other piece of machinery, including a brain. HBP should have tried a simpler task first, e.g. replicate a fruit fly’s brain.
      - mac01021 7y ago
        Having replicated the fruit fly's brain, what are you going to do? Replicate the rest of the fruit fly so that you can install the brain in it? And then replicate the world so that your software-simulated fruit fly has a natural context in which to operate? Or just stimulate the brain with random inputs not associated with any real-world stimulus?
        p1esk 7y ago
        I’m pretty sure simulating fly’s neural inputs would be a far easier task than simulating its brain. After verifying it works correctly we would proceed to simulating a more complex brain, say a frog. And so on.
        mac01021 7y ago
        To simulate the fly's neural input, you need to simulate the fly's entire environment, including fluid dynamics for the air around the fly, the physics of every object the fly interacts with, hormonal responses to changes in the flies blood concentration of various substances (O2, glucose, ...). This already strains our technical capabilities (at least for the amount of money we are willing to spend on it). For any animal whose behavior is the product of a lot of learning, and who deals with other such animals in daily life, you have to solve all the problems you had to solve for the fly and also deal with a much larger connectome and also deal with the fact that, until you can passably simulate mouse, you will never be able to simulate the way a mouse learns to behave in the presence of another mouse.
        p1esk 7y ago

oneshot908 7y ago

Also agreed, when hedge funds don't silo their quants, instead of seeing 50 different strategies from 50 quants, they get 50 variants of the same strategy, source: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119482089/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119482089/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...