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You assume a-priori how the brain was formed. Perhaps the burden of proof could be in the reverse direction. Ever considered that ? If it was just a drawn out p

by nyrulez 12y ago

You assume a-priori how the brain was formed. Perhaps the burden of proof could be in the reverse direction. Ever considered that ? If it was just a drawn out process of trial and error, surely hundreds of top AI researchers with 10,000s of cores/petabytes of RAM at their disposal could have would have made massive strides with their non hit and trial, deliberate process. Surely copying something that is in front of you is easier than designing something like it from scratch ? I hope you agree. But we haven't been able to. And I don't imply that we will never be able to, at least hopefully copy or even enhance some of the interesting aspects. I find AI very exciting. But I would stop calling something we don't even understand "simple and generated from hit and trial".

nyrulez 12y ago
Edit: Look I didn't want to challenge your optimism. It is refreshing to believe that. But I have dealt with enough AI to know that most people have no idea what AI is. There is not much collaboration happening between the neuroscientists, philosophers and AI researchers. Unless a single organization brings them together under one roof, we are very far away from what most people would call biological intelligence.
nl 12y ago
Actually, we have made dramatic strides in AI. 2 years ago we couldn't classify multiple objects in a photo properly. Now we can, and within 2 years I would bet we will be approaching human performance on that task. Watson can do medical diagnosis better than most humans. We understand some parts of intelligence quite well, and others less so.
- nyrulez 12y ago
  Yes, you're right. Relatively speaking, we have come quite far from 10 years ago. Using Google Now, searching for objects on Google+, doing facial recognition better than the average human, winning Jeopardy are all amazing achievements. But as you have noted, we have been able to pin down some of the more methodical parts. I was mainly focusing on the fact that what the brain does is still amazing, and if we were to list all the different forms of intelligence it exhibits, we probably have a very long way to go. In no way is it simple and neither do we understand how it can do cognition, connect semantic concepts and reason about them so well as it does. Topics such as creativity, intuition, thinking, feeling that we witness human subjects exhibit are still fringe topics with much debate. So the original assertion that the brain is unnecessarily complex in its design and was simply a process of trial and error may be unfounded, until we can demonstrate better or even point to/simulate/emulate some mechanism that would give rise to a human's intelligence by hit and trial.
TheCoreh 12y ago
I understand your point, and do think is valid to some extent, but keep in mind hundreds of AI experts and thousands of cores for half a century still fall several orders of magnitude short of an entire universe running natural selection for 14 billion years. it could really be simple, given an absurd amount of resources... our replication process is actually much harder because we're trying to do it in a fraction of the time and "cost".

by nyrulez 12y ago

nyrulez 12y ago

Edit: Look I didn't want to challenge your optimism. It is refreshing to believe that. But I have dealt with enough AI to know that most people have no idea what AI is. There is not much collaboration happening between the neuroscientists, philosophers and AI researchers. Unless a single organization brings them together under one roof, we are very far away from what most people would call biological intelligence.

nl 12y ago

Actually, we have made dramatic strides in AI. 2 years ago we couldn't classify multiple objects in a photo properly. Now we can, and within 2 years I would bet we will be approaching human performance on that task. Watson can do medical diagnosis better than most humans. We understand some parts of intelligence quite well, and others less so.

nyrulez 12y ago
Yes, you're right. Relatively speaking, we have come quite far from 10 years ago. Using Google Now, searching for objects on Google+, doing facial recognition better than the average human, winning Jeopardy are all amazing achievements. But as you have noted, we have been able to pin down some of the more methodical parts. I was mainly focusing on the fact that what the brain does is still amazing, and if we were to list all the different forms of intelligence it exhibits, we probably have a very long way to go. In no way is it simple and neither do we understand how it can do cognition, connect semantic concepts and reason about them so well as it does. Topics such as creativity, intuition, thinking, feeling that we witness human subjects exhibit are still fringe topics with much debate. So the original assertion that the brain is unnecessarily complex in its design and was simply a process of trial and error may be unfounded, until we can demonstrate better or even point to/simulate/emulate some mechanism that would give rise to a human's intelligence by hit and trial.

TheCoreh 12y ago

I understand your point, and do think is valid to some extent, but keep in mind hundreds of AI experts and thousands of cores for half a century still fall several orders of magnitude short of an entire universe running natural selection for 14 billion years. it could really be simple, given an absurd amount of resources... our replication process is actually much harder because we're trying to do it in a fraction of the time and "cost".