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We already have machines that are generally intelligent and require as much energy as a few light bulbs. Why wouldn’t it be eventually possible to replicate the

by exitb 3y ago

We already have machines that are generally intelligent and require as much energy as a few light bulbs. Why wouldn’t it be eventually possible to replicate them in silicon?

aumerle 3y ago
"eventually" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
vbezhenar 3y ago
There are plenty of animals with brain. We weren’t able to use them for their cognitive abilities so far. So even if we would replicate the hardware, software might prove challenging.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
  This sort of thinking might be part of the problem. Why are we analogous to software running on hardware?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
Phiwise_ 3y ago
Over a hundred years ago, Babbage might have said: >We already have machines that are generally intelligent and require as much energy as a few coalgas lights. Why wouldn’t it be eventually possible to replicate them in brass and steam? My understanding of the argument of this article is that the conceptual design that replicates intelligence is what the industry has failed to generate today. Simply stating that it might be possible to create is failing to engage; the massive increase in compute power from Babbage to McCarthy didn't give us AGI, because they didn't figure out the right design to reason about anything in even a hundred times a human's energy consumption. If from McCarthy to today we still haven't actually found the proper recipe it just might be worth considering the point the article's making in spite of our other advancements since then.
omnicognate 3y ago
Because they aren't machines, we don't understand how they work and it's very much an open question whether we ever will. OpenWorm tried and failed the get the fully documented behaviours of the C. Elegans nematode (for which we know the complete connectome and the full lineage of every one of the 959 cells of its body) to emerge from simulations of its 302 neurons. We don't understand how an individual neuron works. We don't even understand what an individual neuron really does and the brain contains 100 billion of them. The hubris involved in looking at biological nervous systems and thinking "how hard can it be? Give me a big data centre and 5 years!" is staggering.
- card_zero 3y ago
  Everybody said the exact same thing while I was busy writing it out. Neat.
- exitb 3y ago
  I’m specifically speaking out against the bit data center approach and only saying that it’s demonstrably possible to do general intelligence on a small, low power machine. Probably shouldn’t have mentioned the silicon though.
card_zero 3y ago
These meat machines aren't necessarily computers, that may be only our best available metaphor (previous metaphors for the brain have I think included telephone exchanges, steam engines and plumbing), and although in principle silicon can simulate anything, in practice not so much: there have been various projects to simulate C. elegans, such as OpenWorm, and they fail because the worm depends on the physics of its environment (possibly including the environment inside the worm) and it's all more subtle than just its nervous system. So yeah, it's reasonable that it might eventually be possible to replicate the human brain in something, once we have the slightest clue how and what.
fmbb 3y ago
> Why wouldn’t it be eventually possible to replicate them in silicon? I mean if you simulate all the chemical processes in some being then yeah probably you get close (assuming you get everything right), let’s assume there is no unknown in how the atoms in our bodies interact. Sounds like an expensive project. If you are _not_ talking about a perfect emulation/simulation of such a machine, I will pose your question back to you: why _would_ it be possible to do something we don’t know what it is? Seems rather contrived to say “we can do this thing we don’t know what it is”.
az09mugen 3y ago
That's exactly this 'generally intelligent' that confuses minds. People believe chat gpt has a consciousness but it does not at all. It's just a model of statistics. The first step toward AGI first of all is consciousness on silicon. And with the current models, the only thing I see is : "let's add more neurons, give it more data to train, and let's hope a mind will come out of these neurons". It helps understand the human brain, and help humanity and all, but I'm sure we are missing some 'theorical ingredients' to get a recipe for a full working AGI.

by exitb 3y ago

We already have machines that are generally intelligent and require as much energy as a few light bulbs. Why wouldn’t it be eventually possible to replicate them in silicon?

aumerle 3y ago

"eventually" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

vbezhenar 3y ago

There are plenty of animals with brain. We weren’t able to use them for their cognitive abilities so far. So even if we would replicate the hardware, software might prove challenging.

2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
This sort of thinking might be part of the problem. Why are we analogous to software running on hardware?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

Phiwise_ 3y ago

Over a hundred years ago, Babbage might have said: >We already have machines that are generally intelligent and require as much energy as a few coalgas lights. Why wouldn’t it be eventually possible to replicate them in brass and steam? My understanding of the argument of this article is that the conceptual design that replicates intelligence is what the industry has failed to generate today. Simply stating that it might be possible to create is failing to engage; the massive increase in compute power from Babbage to McCarthy didn't give us AGI, because they didn't figure out the right design to reason about anything in even a hundred times a human's energy consumption. If from McCarthy to today we still haven't actually found the proper recipe it just might be worth considering the point the article's making in spite of our other advancements since then.

omnicognate 3y ago

Because they aren't machines, we don't understand how they work and it's very much an open question whether we ever will. OpenWorm tried and failed the get the fully documented behaviours of the C. Elegans nematode (for which we know the complete connectome and the full lineage of every one of the 959 cells of its body) to emerge from simulations of its 302 neurons. We don't understand how an individual neuron works. We don't even understand what an individual neuron really does and the brain contains 100 billion of them. The hubris involved in looking at biological nervous systems and thinking "how hard can it be? Give me a big data centre and 5 years!" is staggering.

card_zero 3y ago
Everybody said the exact same thing while I was busy writing it out. Neat.
exitb 3y ago
I’m specifically speaking out against the bit data center approach and only saying that it’s demonstrably possible to do general intelligence on a small, low power machine. Probably shouldn’t have mentioned the silicon though.

card_zero 3y ago

These meat machines aren't necessarily computers, that may be only our best available metaphor (previous metaphors for the brain have I think included telephone exchanges, steam engines and plumbing), and although in principle silicon can simulate anything, in practice not so much: there have been various projects to simulate C. elegans, such as OpenWorm, and they fail because the worm depends on the physics of its environment (possibly including the environment inside the worm) and it's all more subtle than just its nervous system. So yeah, it's reasonable that it might eventually be possible to replicate the human brain in something, once we have the slightest clue how and what.

fmbb 3y ago

> Why wouldn’t it be eventually possible to replicate them in silicon? I mean if you simulate all the chemical processes in some being then yeah probably you get close (assuming you get everything right), let’s assume there is no unknown in how the atoms in our bodies interact. Sounds like an expensive project. If you are _not_ talking about a perfect emulation/simulation of such a machine, I will pose your question back to you: why _would_ it be possible to do something we don’t know what it is? Seems rather contrived to say “we can do this thing we don’t know what it is”.

az09mugen 3y ago

That's exactly this 'generally intelligent' that confuses minds. People believe chat gpt has a consciousness but it does not at all. It's just a model of statistics. The first step toward AGI first of all is consciousness on silicon. And with the current models, the only thing I see is : "let's add more neurons, give it more data to train, and let's hope a mind will come out of these neurons". It helps understand the human brain, and help humanity and all, but I'm sure we are missing some 'theorical ingredients' to get a recipe for a full working AGI.