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God I wish people would stop using the term "artificial" when they mean "metaphorical". An artificial organ is artificial if you can put it in the place where t

God I wish people would stop using the term "artificial" when they mean "metaphorical". An artificial organ is artificial if you can put it in the place where the original thing used to be, and it works. That's to say, it's equivalent in function. These 'synapses' aren't actually synapses and they don't emulate even a fraction of the processes you find in their biological namesakes.

sjtgraham 4y ago
Artificial just means made by humans.
- btilly 4y ago
  The point is that these are inspired by human synapses, but nowhere near equivalent to them. They do something much simpler. Comparing them with human synapses is like comparing cellphones to servers. Not exactly apples to apples.
- WhitneyLand 4y ago
  As the core part of some software I could make a game engine. Or I could do the same thing but name it an “artificial heart”, noting that it’s 10,000 times faster than a human heart. That makes sense because artificial just means made by humans?
  - myownpetard 4y ago
    It's more like calling an articulated robot with a manipulator a 'robotic arm', despite being infinitely simpler than a human arm and with much more limited functionality. I agree that the speed comparison seems like a very misguided metric though.
    - tiagod 4y ago
      Well, it's a robot in the shape of an arm. A robotic dog doesn't have to look or behave much like a dog to earn its name. You wouldn't call them artificial dogs nor artificial arms (unless they were being used as a prosthetic I guess, but then it's just a robotic prostethic arm)
- hebrox 4y ago
  I think we agree on that it’s made by humans. The discussion is about what is being made. Just because a tennis ball is round, we don’t call it an artificial sun.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > by humans Not necessarily, though primarily. The core point is in "crafting with an aim". It is interesting that the first recognized use of the term is for "artificial day", meaning "dawn to dusk", which is the period in the "natural day" (here the term already starts to suggest an opposition - "artificial vs natural") in which you can "purposefully craft" (light allows).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
tum92 4y ago
I had the same initial reaction, but after digging in a little I don’t think “artificial” is the worst description in the world here. I do think the innovation here is much more like an artificial neuron than an artificial synapse though. Fair warning, I’m no neuroscientist and I basically don’t know what neural networks are, but here’s what I’ve gathered. neuron1 -> neuron2 Neuron1 receives an input signal across a synapse, “processes” that signal, and then either does or does not pass along an output signal to neuron2. I’m sure this is an incredibly deep field of research with a lot of nuance, but I think it remains a reasonable approximation to say that neurons “fire” or not in a binary manner. A lot of the magic takes place within the neuron itself, where unimaginably complex biochemistry dictates how likely a neuron is to fire in response to an input signal. As far as I understand it, this is analogous to the application of a weight to an input in a neural network. A decent example along these lines is how opiates influence breathing. Neurons exist at a resting negative electrical state, which can be shifted to a sufficiently positive state in response to an input that the signal propagates down the neuron resulting in the passing on of that signal to the next neuron. Opiates drive that resting negative electrical state to be even more negative, and so in response to a normal “we’re running low on oxygen here!” input, a neuron will fail to become sufficiently positive to pass that signal along the chain. In NN parlance, it’s weight has been changed. This piece describes a memristor that replicates this weighting of inputs to produce outputs through a material that stores these weights in a material that can be adjusted electrically rather than through biochemistry. There was actually a paper[0](released just two days ago!) that uses memristors to meaningfully create an artificial neuron with biochemical synapses. Of course, there’s a lot of extra machinery involved to actually be biologically useful, but nonetheless this tech can be used as a very simplified drop-in. Of course, as you say it’s like step one in a 10 billion step process, but I don’t think it’s totally dishonest to call it an “artificial” neuron, or at least a component of one. Of course, bragging about how fast and small it is compared to a neuron and synapse is a bit like an elementary school teacher setting up a cool grow-lamp garden to teach kids about sunlight and photosynthesis and then bragging about how they produced an ultra-minutare sun that’s so efficient it runs off an outlet :) [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-022-00803-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-022-00803-0
- tsimionescu 4y ago
croes 4y ago
Tell that IKEA https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/cat/artificial-plants-flowers-20492/ https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/cat/artificial-plants-flowers-204... Artificial just means made by humans and at some part are a copy of the original, not a 100% replacement
- seydor 4y ago
  I have some of those and they have, in fact, replaced the originals
- tnzk 4y ago
  IKEA doesn't claim them to be 10x live longer than real thing.
  - croes 4y ago
    I bet, they "live" even longer
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
  Wow, the brand name is FEJKA: “to fake”…
cma 4y ago
> don't emulate even a fraction of the processes you find in their biological namesakes. It isn't expected that e.g. an artificial heart would emulate all processes of the heart. It just needs to cover the function of the heart to some degree, sometimes (usually?) they don't even have a beat.
martopix 4y ago
Artificial neural networks have been called like that since the 1940s. So that's just how they're called. I assure you that people in the field know the difference very well.
mdp2021 4y ago
> they don't emulate even a fraction of the processes you find in their biological namesakes That is correct. But they are not supposed to: natural nervous systems are just an inspiration. That perspective is only valid in _nervous systems emulations_ - which is just a subset of what we do. > using the term 'Artificial', in use, stands for "non natural, non spontaneous"; it means "done with an aim" (cpr. Sanskirt arth, artha, arthin, arya; Greek aretē, àristos). Those items are. They are called metaphorically - but evidently so - 'synapses', which means "joinings, interfastenings" (see in engineering 'haptic', "touching"), because they join the elements of a "neural network", where 'neuron' remains "a string" - a "connection significant of a relation". So: at some point some thought: "What if we obtain something through joining similar elements in a network... Yes, similarly to the other one". It fits, because the model is this model, a model of the natural thing. You have natural neural networks, their model ("just a network"), and such model (of the natural thing) is used as a model (for designing further things).
- kalium-xyz 4y ago
  In the article they proceed to compare the “artificial” size and performance to the “natural”. I think OP had more issues with that
disruptiveink 4y ago
What do you mean? > made by people, often as a copy of something natural There is absolutely no requirement for the "copy" to be functional. See: artificial flowers. Things like "artificial hearts" are the exception and not the norm.
- noduerme 4y ago
  I was thinking about this nit for awhile. Artificial flowers do fulfill one purpose of flowers, i.e. decoration. And the parent is right that most other "artificial" things serve to fill in for some original purpose of the natural thing. But the real point is they don't have to fill all the purposes, or even most of them. An artificial eye could be made of glass or it could be a camera a thousand miles away... in the first case, it's just there in someone's head for show, fulfilling the aesthetic purpose of an eye. In the second case it's there for the purpose of seeing something and fills no aesthetic need at all. So an artificial neuron could fill any one of many functions... it could even just be a big plastic model of a neuron in a doctor's office.
- KineticLensman 4y ago
  Artificial hearts pump blood similarly to how submarines swim: typically with some form of rotor.
noduerme 4y ago
In the spirit of the thing, you have to admit that "artificial intelligence" is already a widely accepted description of a variety of algorithms which will never literally replace human brains in human skulls... so by extension, any hardware built to run those algorithms could be described as an artificial brain full of artificial neurons, if only to differentiate it from an actual brain running artificial intelligence.
philipov 4y ago
Yes, my first thought on reading the title was "Hey, can I get those to replace my normal synapses? kappa"
xor99 4y ago
Yes, "synthetic analogy" or something similar would be more appropriate. I guess artificial synapse always means an approximation (e.g. if its similar it's only in some partial way: the device uses ionic transport etc). I think artificial synapse has become the nomenclature in the academic literature and they are just going along with that. The article makes a bit of a mess of it though.
rbanffy 4y ago
> they don't emulate even a fraction of the processes you find in their biological namesakes As long as they provide the same resulting behavior, it doesn't matter the processes are the same. If the processes were the same, it'd be an electrochemical process and would be 10K times slower.

sjtgraham 4y ago

Artificial just means made by humans.

btilly 4y ago
The point is that these are inspired by human synapses, but nowhere near equivalent to them. They do something much simpler. Comparing them with human synapses is like comparing cellphones to servers. Not exactly apples to apples.
WhitneyLand 4y ago
As the core part of some software I could make a game engine. Or I could do the same thing but name it an “artificial heart”, noting that it’s 10,000 times faster than a human heart. That makes sense because artificial just means made by humans?
- myownpetard 4y ago
  It's more like calling an articulated robot with a manipulator a 'robotic arm', despite being infinitely simpler than a human arm and with much more limited functionality. I agree that the speed comparison seems like a very misguided metric though.
  - tiagod 4y ago
    Well, it's a robot in the shape of an arm. A robotic dog doesn't have to look or behave much like a dog to earn its name. You wouldn't call them artificial dogs nor artificial arms (unless they were being used as a prosthetic I guess, but then it's just a robotic prostethic arm)
hebrox 4y ago
I think we agree on that it’s made by humans. The discussion is about what is being made. Just because a tennis ball is round, we don’t call it an artificial sun.
mdp2021 4y ago
> by humans Not necessarily, though primarily. The core point is in "crafting with an aim". It is interesting that the first recognized use of the term is for "artificial day", meaning "dawn to dusk", which is the period in the "natural day" (here the term already starts to suggest an opposition - "artificial vs natural") in which you can "purposefully craft" (light allows).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

tum92 4y ago

I had the same initial reaction, but after digging in a little I don’t think “artificial” is the worst description in the world here. I do think the innovation here is much more like an artificial neuron than an artificial synapse though. Fair warning, I’m no neuroscientist and I basically don’t know what neural networks are, but here’s what I’ve gathered. neuron1 -> neuron2 Neuron1 receives an input signal across a synapse, “processes” that signal, and then either does or does not pass along an output signal to neuron2. I’m sure this is an incredibly deep field of research with a lot of nuance, but I think it remains a reasonable approximation to say that neurons “fire” or not in a binary manner. A lot of the magic takes place within the neuron itself, where unimaginably complex biochemistry dictates how likely a neuron is to fire in response to an input signal. As far as I understand it, this is analogous to the application of a weight to an input in a neural network. A decent example along these lines is how opiates influence breathing. Neurons exist at a resting negative electrical state, which can be shifted to a sufficiently positive state in response to an input that the signal propagates down the neuron resulting in the passing on of that signal to the next neuron. Opiates drive that resting negative electrical state to be even more negative, and so in response to a normal “we’re running low on oxygen here!” input, a neuron will fail to become sufficiently positive to pass that signal along the chain. In NN parlance, it’s weight has been changed. This piece describes a memristor that replicates this weighting of inputs to produce outputs through a material that stores these weights in a material that can be adjusted electrically rather than through biochemistry. There was actually a paper[0](released just two days ago!) that uses memristors to meaningfully create an artificial neuron with biochemical synapses. Of course, there’s a lot of extra machinery involved to actually be biologically useful, but nonetheless this tech can be used as a very simplified drop-in. Of course, as you say it’s like step one in a 10 billion step process, but I don’t think it’s totally dishonest to call it an “artificial” neuron, or at least a component of one. Of course, bragging about how fast and small it is compared to a neuron and synapse is a bit like an elementary school teacher setting up a cool grow-lamp garden to teach kids about sunlight and photosynthesis and then bragging about how they produced an ultra-minutare sun that’s so efficient it runs off an outlet :) [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-022-00803-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-022-00803-0

tsimionescu 4y ago

croes 4y ago

Tell that IKEA https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/cat/artificial-plants-flowers-20492/ https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/cat/artificial-plants-flowers-204... Artificial just means made by humans and at some part are a copy of the original, not a 100% replacement

seydor 4y ago
I have some of those and they have, in fact, replaced the originals
tnzk 4y ago
IKEA doesn't claim them to be 10x live longer than real thing.
- croes 4y ago
  I bet, they "live" even longer
TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
Wow, the brand name is FEJKA: “to fake”…

cma 4y ago

> don't emulate even a fraction of the processes you find in their biological namesakes. It isn't expected that e.g. an artificial heart would emulate all processes of the heart. It just needs to cover the function of the heart to some degree, sometimes (usually?) they don't even have a beat.

martopix 4y ago

Artificial neural networks have been called like that since the 1940s. So that's just how they're called. I assure you that people in the field know the difference very well.

mdp2021 4y ago

> they don't emulate even a fraction of the processes you find in their biological namesakes That is correct. But they are not supposed to: natural nervous systems are just an inspiration. That perspective is only valid in _nervous systems emulations_ - which is just a subset of what we do. > using the term 'Artificial', in use, stands for "non natural, non spontaneous"; it means "done with an aim" (cpr. Sanskirt arth, artha, arthin, arya; Greek aretē, àristos). Those items are. They are called metaphorically - but evidently so - 'synapses', which means "joinings, interfastenings" (see in engineering 'haptic', "touching"), because they join the elements of a "neural network", where 'neuron' remains "a string" - a "connection significant of a relation". So: at some point some thought: "What if we obtain something through joining similar elements in a network... Yes, similarly to the other one". It fits, because the model is this model, a model of the natural thing. You have natural neural networks, their model ("just a network"), and such model (of the natural thing) is used as a model (for designing further things).

kalium-xyz 4y ago
In the article they proceed to compare the “artificial” size and performance to the “natural”. I think OP had more issues with that

disruptiveink 4y ago

What do you mean? > made by people, often as a copy of something natural There is absolutely no requirement for the "copy" to be functional. See: artificial flowers. Things like "artificial hearts" are the exception and not the norm.

noduerme 4y ago
I was thinking about this nit for awhile. Artificial flowers do fulfill one purpose of flowers, i.e. decoration. And the parent is right that most other "artificial" things serve to fill in for some original purpose of the natural thing. But the real point is they don't have to fill all the purposes, or even most of them. An artificial eye could be made of glass or it could be a camera a thousand miles away... in the first case, it's just there in someone's head for show, fulfilling the aesthetic purpose of an eye. In the second case it's there for the purpose of seeing something and fills no aesthetic need at all. So an artificial neuron could fill any one of many functions... it could even just be a big plastic model of a neuron in a doctor's office.
KineticLensman 4y ago
Artificial hearts pump blood similarly to how submarines swim: typically with some form of rotor.

noduerme 4y ago

In the spirit of the thing, you have to admit that "artificial intelligence" is already a widely accepted description of a variety of algorithms which will never literally replace human brains in human skulls... so by extension, any hardware built to run those algorithms could be described as an artificial brain full of artificial neurons, if only to differentiate it from an actual brain running artificial intelligence.

philipov 4y ago

Yes, my first thought on reading the title was "Hey, can I get those to replace my normal synapses? kappa"

xor99 4y ago

Yes, "synthetic analogy" or something similar would be more appropriate. I guess artificial synapse always means an approximation (e.g. if its similar it's only in some partial way: the device uses ionic transport etc). I think artificial synapse has become the nomenclature in the academic literature and they are just going along with that. The article makes a bit of a mess of it though.

rbanffy 4y ago

> they don't emulate even a fraction of the processes you find in their biological namesakes As long as they provide the same resulting behavior, it doesn't matter the processes are the same. If the processes were the same, it'd be an electrochemical process and would be 10K times slower.