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Scientists create functioning, virtual brain that can write, remember lists and

Gord_in_Toronto

Penultimate Amazing
Gord_in_Toronto
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"Large oaks from tiny acorns grow."

http://www.vancouversun.com/technol...tioning+virtual+brain+that/7630065/story.html

Chris Eliasmith has spent years contemplating how to build a brain.
He is about to publish a book with instructions, which describes the grey matter’s architecture and how the different components interact.
“Then I thought the only way people are going to believe me is if I demonstrate it,” says the University of Waterloo neuroscientist.
So Eliasmith’s team built Spaun, which was billed Thursday as “the world’s largest simulation of a functioning brain.”
Spaun can recognize numbers, remember lists and write them down. It even passes some basic aspects of an IQ test, the team reports in the journal Science.
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:cool:
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
"Large oaks from tiny acorns grow."

http://www.vancouversun.com/technol...tioning+virtual+brain+that/7630065/story.html


:cool:
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Mimicry does not entail identity. The belief in alive dolls is animism. Dolls and similar mimicists do not "remember" or "recognise". Dolls that mimic sleep by not moving or dolls that mimic chess solutions by pre-programming do not have an identity.
 
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Jonesboy said:
Mimicry does not entail identity. The belief in alive dolls is animism. Dolls and similar mimicists do not "remember" or "recognise". Dolls that mimic sleep by not moving or dolls that mimic chess solutions by pre-programming do not have an identity.
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That's nice.

Did you have any comment you wanted to make about the story in the OP?
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
"Large oaks from tiny acorns grow."

http://www.vancouversun.com/technol...tioning+virtual+brain+that/7630065/story.html


:cool:
Click to expand...

Wow "Spaun can recognize numbers, remember lists and write them down. It even passes some basic aspects of an IQ test, the team reports in the journal Science." That means it already can do more than many of the folk I know! Get it to be able to chew gum and walk and I'd say it's all over for humanity. :D
 
Darat said:
Wow "Spaun can recognize numbers, remember lists and write them down. It even passes some basic aspects of an IQ test, the team reports in the journal Science." That means it already can do more than many of the folk I know! Get it to be able to chew gum and walk and I'd say it's all over for humanity. :D
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This means my computer is a chess master. So it must have an identity. It sleeps when I switch it off.
 
Jones, you don't seem to be making any relevant comments.

The simulation is interesting because it's doing these things in a similar way to how a brain does them, not because anyone thinks it has an identity.

Today’s “smart” machines can play chess, backgammon and act as personal assistants, like Siri on Apple’s iPhone, but Eliasmith says the processes they use have little in common with the brain.
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Lithrael said:
Jones, you don't seem to be making any relevant comments.

The simulation is interesting because it's doing these things in a similar way to how a brain does them, not because anyone thinks it has an identity.
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You gave it the hallmarks of personal identity - "recognize", "remember", "passes" tests, etc.
 
Jonesboy said:
This means my computer is a chess master. So it must have an identity. It sleeps when I switch it off.
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It can chew gum and walk? Wow I didn't know we had got that far in creating our replacements. I'd keep an eye on it if I was you.
 
I guess Facebook has your straw problem too then, since it can recognize faces and bug you to tag them, and remember your birthday...
 
Jonesboy said:
You gave it the hallmarks of personal identity - "recognize", "remember", "passes" tests, etc.
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The wind can sing, a fire can rage, water can run, the earth can be depressed.

Rather than getting hung up on irrelevant semantics, did you have anything you wanted to contribute to the discussion?
 
Scientists create functioning, virtual brain that can write, remember lists and


...and fool people into believing just about anything.

Beelzebuddy had his two cents on this development over in the consciousness thread. He put it quite well:

Beelzebuddy said:
"Resemble" being the operative word here, and it'd be more accurate with "very distantly" before it.

"Functionally inspired by, but in no way even close to" would be better, actually.

Computational neuroscientists irritate the hell out of me.
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Beelzebuddy said:
I don't have to, they never backed up their assertion that it was.

The actual paper has much less bragging. It's just a prettied up ANN with the usual baseless assumptions; chiefly that the cerebral cortex, a phenomenally complicated computational system, can be represented by a single group of objects that only behave like neurons in the most degenerate cases. The systems-level organization also isn't remotely similar to what the brain does, in the same manner, but then at this point they never say it is.

Then all the documentation shows the ANN activity superimposed onto a brain with none of the above caveats that would otherwise lead you to realize it's a false equivocation.

Then the actual science journalism articles talk about it as an accurate model of the actual human brain.

Then I get my nerdrage on.
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annnnoid said:
Scientists create functioning, virtual brain that can write, remember lists and


...and fool people into believing just about anything.

Beelzebuddy had his two cents on this development over in the consciousness thread. He put it quite well:
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There have been a lot of similar claims in the last few years, robot learns to recognise self, robot learns to walk etc. I'd like to know just how much is programmed into these devices. The impression is always given that they just up and learn these traits but the article never addresses the question of why would they do that in the first place. I'm sure this type of work is valuable and will hopefully lead to AI but am suspicious the claims may be just a little overblown.
 
If it can construct a comprehensible Gantt chart it'd be ahead of the PM I'm currently not listening to.
 
Jonesboy said:
You gave it the hallmarks of personal identity - "recognize", "remember", "passes" tests, etc.
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Programmers often use words like that as metaphors for what the system is doing. However, I think it's not only possible, but necessary, that at some point very sophisticated AI's will have some sort of subjective experience that would imbue them with an identity. It's my belief that in order to sufficiently simulate consciousness in any situation, a system has to have consciousness.

You could argue that this consciousness is only illusary, but then you could argue the same thing about ours.
 
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