- Jeffrey Fadness
- Pacifica, CA
- United States
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Are we on the brink of creating a human-like digital mind?
The human brain contains some 100 billion neurons, grouped in specialized function zones, connected by a hundred thousand billion synapses - the neurons representing individual data processing and storage units; and synapses the data transfer cabling, connecting all the processing units.
Correlating its processing ability to a supercomputer, it's been estimated it can perform more than 38 thousand trillion operations per second, and hold about 3.6 million gigabytes of memory. Equally impressive, it's estimated that the human brain executes this monumental computational task on a mere equivalent of 20 watts of power; about the same energy to power a single, dim light bulb. In today's technology, a supercomputer designed to deliver comparable capabilities would require roughly 100 megawatts (100 million watts) of power; an energy equivalent that could fully satisfy the power consumption needs of roughly a thousand households.
An ambitious $1.3 billion project was very recently announced in Europe to simulate a human mind in the form of a complete human brain in a supercomputer. It's named the Human Brain Project. A similar project in the U.S. planned by National Institutes of Health (NIH) is called the Brain Activity Map project.
Assuming we learn enough from these efforts to design a new architecture in computer processing which can approximate the ability of the human brain - what's to stop us from creating the cognitive faculties that enable consciousness, thinking, reasoning, perception, and judgement? After all, we as human beings develop these abilities from data we acquire over time through sensory inputs connecting us to our experiences, and from information communicated to us by others.
Think about it. Is there anything related to our experience - be it physical, historical or conceptual - that cannot be described in language, and therefore be input as executable data and programming to create a human-like digital mind?
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Vincenzo Sergi
Does your faith allow you to ask questions? Do you make it a habit to 'shoot first and ask questions later?'
Your assumption about my inability to understand Math and Physics tells me sir that your faith is deeply rooted in pseudoscience.
Do you ever ask yourself that you might be wrong?
I am sorry to hear that my comments offended you. That was not my intention. I was simply trying to avoid the Religion argument. You sir talk about answering with no fear?? Well sir, you at least deserve the same. I believe that you might be indulging in 'adult fairy tales' . I'm almost certain that my words will make you stronger and not weaker, much like when the Romans sent the christians to the lions, it made them stronger not weaker. By the way, there are
studies that address this phenomena. I am sure that you will be able to find it if you so decide. Also CFBB stands for Canadian forces base Borden. It might have been called Camp Borden at one time. This is not what it is called now.
Forgive me if I offend you sir. Perhaps like you said, I'm a bully........... Not a chance sir.
Cheers
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Vincenzo Sergi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RjW5-4IiSc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NbBjNiw4tk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyZxdJRsBUw
the first is Dr. Michiu Kaku 'the universe in a nutshell'
the second is Neil Degrasse Tyson 'the greatest sermon'
the third is Stephen Hawkings 'Does God exist'
enjoy.
James McGuiness
Pabitra Mukhopadhyay 30+
James McGuiness
What value might a person have beyond "utility" in some sort of simple Industrial Age work matrix? I'd be curious to hear what words if any would come up rather than just lay out a tiny thumbnail sketch of my thesis on how we need to conventionalize a new dynamic that would clearly establish the scope of value we personally and institutionally squander or ignore and which when put into a product that achieves vast commercial success would draw a constant distinction between Industrial Age and Information Age thinking, values and design. Seriously and respectfully. Have any? I will be continuing this conversation here or through regular e-mail if TED.s software is to restricting. So welcome to it if you want to go there.
Mitch SMith 50+
Yes and no.
While ever humans seek to define machines as tools, they will never be human-like .. or any-other-animal-like.
For this to happen requires a super-human leap of faith to allow a tool to become it-self. And leave the human hand.
I have had this conversation a few times here and there .. and no one is brave enough to let go.
It all has to do with self-organising systems.
It's obvious .. it must have a self about which to organise.
So what is a "self"?
If it is a human then .. any gizmo attached to it is a tool of that human self .. not a self in distinction to its creator.
So .. we go looking for an answer to "what is a self"?.
So far, I am looking at the membrane that defines such a thing. the membrane and the nucleus seem indistinguishable.
And many selves are fleeting.
Somehow, it could be that the membrane is fractally folded .. and that it is the shape of the fold which constitutes the self.
Surprisingly, the membrane does not seem to enclose .. there is a space, and yet, there is egress from the space into other potentials of self which may very well inter-leave.
So I go look at the wave potential, and it may be that the self does not exist in space, but in time - and that it is an inflection on entropic potential - past and future.
This has problems with notions of time.
Within this ambiguous time is self - before that can be understood, there will be no artificial intelligence - human or otherwise.
Consider - there is no gravity - there is only time distortions .. this is mass. It works in absence of gravity as a separate principle, but is very hard to think about... and it infers that the strong atomic force is perpendicular to gravity .. but does not affect time - but is still time .. in this framework, the membrane self can exist.
If we stumble on it accidentally .. then it will be pretty much like everything else we have discovered.
It would be nice to have a digital friend .. but first we must learn to accept him.
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Mitch SMith 50+
It's all conjecture until I can get some numbers around it.
However, the tool/self analogy will be found to be correct.
This needs no numbers as it is observable that a hammer does not go seeking self interest.
A mobile phone will go seek interests independent of the hand which holds it - but these interests are not the phone - but the tools hidden within it - serving other hands.
A slave will serve your hand, but only at the convenience of his survival - very hard to determine who is using who. Herein is the interleaving of fractal folding of a self.
If we make such selves in digital paint, it would be murder if we turn them off. Everyone so excited about making them, none willing to accept responsibility for their well-being. First accept the responsibility - then make the new creature.
(Edit: who will care for him after you are dead?)
Steve C
Stan Tenen of the Meru Foundation says that the letters of the Torah are part of a "self-referential," "auto-correlated," recursive, "self-embedded" system that could be used to program computers. I find that intensely interesting.
[Note: he warns that his 'math friends' say his findings are too religious, and his 'religious friends' say it's too mathy. -paraphrasing]
Things that "cannot be described in language": some/many people having experienced "Near-Death Experiences" often describe experiences (or try to) which are utterly life-altering. The fact that few people who read these accounts alter their lives to a similar degree says to me that the feelings were not well-communicated, or maybe not communicatable.
Stan Tenen also describes the sudden conceptual 'kundalini-stroke' understanding of the Toral "4th dimensional object" as "a feeling." (He doesn't elucidate further.) But, perhaps a computer code written-with these Torah letters could come to have a spark of true intelligence.
Jeffrey Fadness
Biological computer created with human DNA
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/03/29/digital-evolution-dna-may-bring-computers-to-life/
Never say never...
Pabitra Mukhopadhyay 30+
Human brain does not work like the computers. It learns patters, problem-answer co-relations, draws analogies and uses guesswork, which some describe as gesticulation. If you see the power requirements of super computers or computers that are claimed anywhere near human brains you will be shocked. Yet human brains achieve this feat within 10 watts of power. This is simply because it does not compute the whole algorithm every time.
I think if computers or rather bio-computers can ever reach the efficiency of human brains, it will also show mood, emotions, feelings, notions, superstitions and belief systems just like human brains.
There is no free lunch.
Pabitra Mukhopadhyay 30+
About 98% of human non-coding DNA or junk DNA as lay press call it. Even if we discount say another 8% of it as of some unknown requirement, there is high probability that a high percentage of DNA is non-coding. How about using it to store information? Of course we have to use a quaternary code instead of binary but that gives even more space! I don't know through whatever technology, imagine you can carry in your blood sample world's greatest libraries and can access it easily whenever you want. I leave it on your imagination what your offspring's DNA will contain. It's not exactly computing but interesting, isn't?
Pabitra Mukhopadhyay 30+
Yes there is. Feelings.
If a digital mind is to become truly human like, it needs to be capable of lying, liking or disliking questions, falling in love and be questioning itself; questions like if there is intelligence beyond human mind.
phillip swallow
I believe that consciousness works on a quantum level, what else could explain the mystery of the human mind, but the mystery of quantum interaction?
It has been demonstrated in a series of brilliant experiments that electrons are waves and particles. They only become "real" after being observed or measured.
I propose that this is the same way thoughts are created, symphonies composed and love shared. I am dyslexic and cannot truly know what other people experience, but at least for me thoughts seem to come from nowhere, especially when i am not consciously focused on something. It is as if i am driving a Hogwarts carriage, with absolutely no clue as to what invisible power propels me.
Thus i believe that these projects will not be able to achieve their expressed aim.
However any project that gathers the best and brightest in one area has the potential to invigorate our species and expand our scientific corpus. And if the publicity surrounding these epic projects gets people questioning the universe behind our eyes, it can only be for the best.
Pabitra Mukhopadhyay 30+
http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Self-Danah-Zohar/dp/0688107362
phillip swallow
I am very much interested in learning more about the workings of the mind, for a start are emotions the product of unconscious thought, are they effecting our physical brain, or only our "ego" the charioteer of plato?
I invite your ideas
Pabitra Mukhopadhyay 30+
By effecting physical brain do you mean neurogenesis? Experiments show that application of mind can influence neurogenesis in certain parts of human brain; however more experimental results are needed to confirm this adequately.
Ego is what our consciousness identifies our selves as.
bart hsi
The problem of human consciousness is, in my opinion, not too important. In fact, even we want to create such machine, I believe that we should not make this self consciousness from an image of a real person, because it is very hard to find such human model who is completely free of greed, selfishness , jealousy and schematic.
So it is probably better to teach the machine all the human factual knowledge, but with any emotional responses with a carefully designed and consented "course material" which contains only moral and selfless spirit for the machine to absorb and stored in an area which can't be modified by "intruders" or itself.
Let me also say that modern development of robotics can certainly make robots which can walk up or down a stair- case, or listen to a speech and translate it to the inner standard language of its own. Furthermore, we certainly could, and preferred to, teach the computer the complete needed operative knowledge AND THE MORAL VALUES, instead of simulating how the human mind works. If we can change human minds by brain-washing or truth serum, then I don't see any problem in teaching the approved knowledge to the machine, instead of potential mistakes of simulating a complicated and unpredictable "new brain" in a computer.
akili speights
phillip swallow
Also, whole peoples cannot be singled out for blame, that is the kind of thinking exploited by the likes of Hitler, Jim Crow and countless leaders in human history. Creating a cycle of misunderstanding and hate. Easy answers and guilty culprits please those who are in emotional pain, but will never stand up to clear rational thinking. Change and progress will always be scary for it will force adaptation upon everyone.
I fully agree with establishing a framework on how to proceed with this Star Trek reality we will soon live in. For a start, its time to establish when life is conscious, what consciousness is and what is life.
Will we remain in this comforting darkness,
in the womb of our own ignorance,
or will we take a chance and breath the air of the living?
Christophe Cop 500+
Conceptually, it is possible. But it is quite difficult to do.
I think you need a set of good self-learning algorithms and some real good sensors.
as Watson is already doing some cool feats, it seems plausible to assume we are getting towards a decent AI that can resemble human intelligence.
I hope that it will become a lot smarter and wiser though.
Jeffrey Fadness
"Biological computer created with human DNA (http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/03/29/digital-evolution-dna-may-bring-computers-to-life/) The transistor revolutionized electronics and computing. Now, researchers have made a biological transistor from DNA that could be used to create living computers. ... The scientists created biological versions of these logic gates, by carefully calibrating the flow of enzymes along the DNA (just like electrons inside a wire). They chose enzymes that would be able to function in bacteria, fungi, plants and animals, so that biological computers might be made with a wide variety of organisms, Bonnet said. ... The researchers have made their biological logic gates available to the public to encourage people to use and improve them."
Technology moves at an ever dizzying faster pace...
phillip swallow
so using the existing informational processes or DNA, we can enhance computing?
it makes sense that since evolution has had millions of years to create complexity, why start from scratch. Could this suggest a future brain-computer symbiosis?
Rajesh Kumar
logeshwaran thangaraj
real stupidity always beats artificial intelligence
Jan de Boer
My answer is: no, never. That has nothing to do with processing speed and has everything to do with the nature of the data that has to be processed.
The human mind has to handle four types of "data":
1. physical data to keep the body working properly.
2. physical calculations, like can I lift that box, jump that ditch?
3. emotions, like love, hate, sorrow, self-respect. (Please that note physical pain is not an emotion but a body-signal.)
4. self-awareness.
The first two can be handled by the brain, which is a digital computer; it works with pulses and what it lacks in speed is compensated by parallel processing.
The last two cannot be handled digitally, because the "data" are abstractions, things that cannot be expressed in words, things that you cannot explain to someone else. Everybody has to experience those themselves to understand what they are.
Because you cannot express them in words or mathematical expressions, you cannot produce coding for it and let it be handled by a digital computer.
That is why all artificial intelligence projects have failed so far.
I am convinced, on basis of my experiences, that my emotions and self-awareness are handled by my soul.
At this point you are on the edge of religion, paranormal experiences, whatever and here rational discussion ends.
Jeffrey Fadness
Uri Kanter
There is already the famous Turing test but I didn't get around to actually reading it yet.
I think my test would be about detecting subjective form of thinking
For that we need:
Unpredictability: the result must be truly distinct in both form and function.(which means you can't simply use random generators)
Ability to contemplate and find meaning in something totally obscure to fabricate something reasonably new .
Ability to weave connection between an arbitrary list of elements.
Finally Ability to give a descriptive answer of 5 sentences to the question "What are life on an alien planet like?" regardless if its been there or not.
Danger Lampost 10+
I wonder how the IBM Watson software that beat all human opponents in a real game of Jeopardy would do with your test, if appropriately reprogrammed? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE
Uri Kanter
As in having either organic or chemical cells to preserve state in and having the content bias of said cells globally influenced by changing the chemical balance to arrive at altered data from what was originally intended:
The corrupted data is then assembled by a reconstruction process to yield an approximate outcome.
The Approximation is basically doing a math process that yield a number and that number is processed to an address that points at a place in memory.
The Computer's memory is a list of objects with each object offering description of Visuals, Smell, Sound and Function that defined how the object can be used.
Few examples:
Apple: Red apple shape, apple smell, sounds and it can be eaten, shot with an arrow, thrown, smashed etc
Mouth : mouth shape, foul breath smell, chewing sounds and it can eat stuff, lick stuff , smile,l kiss etc.
Pencil: pencil shape , lead smell, scribble sound and it can draw lines on surfaces, poke holes in stuff, break etc.
and so on.
Now lets say the chemical change is conditioned by something like a combo of Thermo + Photo-sensing or response to photo-recognition ratio of symmetry etc to mimic a crude form of emotional response.
By now the computer learned 3 elements: Pre-currupt Object, Reconstructed Outcome Object and the Chemical sense Ratio and it can do math operations using all 3 to produce even more derived data and reprocess it.
Since all Data have function after its psuedo-emotional process made it arrive at the 3 objects listed above : (apple,mouth pencil) it can now further currupt and reconstruct the data to make new previously unconcieved objects
For example: lets assume that in this process the selected Apple accidentally recieved the 'can eat stuff' function.
The computer ask himself what else in memory has the 'can eat stuff' function and arrives at mouth so it attaches mouth to apple to combine them ... ran out of writing space :)
Jeffrey Fadness
Farrukh Yakubov 50+
Danger Lampost 10+
Farrukh Yakubov 50+
When it comes to destroying such a software, unless it is necessary, I would never chose to do so. Not because it seems human, but because it is marvelous piece of work that is worth preserving.
arun naina
To me, the main distinction of 'life' is the ability to evolve and reprogram itself. Not just through evolution or selection, but rather cognitive, willing self-change. You can come to a point where you start to disagree with what your biology wants you to do, disagree with social programming, and come to a point where you become fully aware of what everything is trying to make you do, and then, alter it or change it (for example, just realizing how aggressive you might be, seeing the underlying causes of it, and then, change your behavior).
I mean, who knows what the future will hold as well, and what science will allow us to change about ourselves?
I think that's what a program would have to do in order to actually mimic consciousness. It has to have the capability to be aware of its own set of instructions, study them, and have some capacity to actually re-write itself if it wants to. When you think about that, and how we currently do that, it's pretty amazing. It's like an OS on a PC constantly re-writing itself and making its own changes/upgrades/etc.
Jeffrey Fadness
Jon Weaver
Would a full simulation develop consciousness? I don't think so since a simulation on a computer will be just that. Quantuum computers....who knows. What I do know is that whenever we make predictions about technology we are almost always way off the mark. 50 years ago we would have found it difficult to believe that a computer could beat the wolrd chess champion yet fail to be able to walk up stairs or recognise unfamiliar objects!
Danger Lampost 10+
I would love to hear about why you think a simulation of a human mind could not develop consciousness?
Uri Kanter
I think the most basic example of this is in drawing when you ask a computer to capture someone's likeness: they will methodically trace outlines and apply filters to arrive at a fabricated solution, never really contemplating the meaning behind the interpretation or the feeling it creates because they lack imagination.
You can arrive at artificial imagination theoretically but to have a computer interpret the result and grok it would take ages to code.
What might change things is Quantum computing which is being developed but that is no longer simple digital mind.
Danger Lampost 10+
Another open question is whether our brains and neurons leverage quantum computing in addition to the more traditional parallel processing we know our brains perform at the relatively large scale of individual neurons. Roger Penrose has written extensively on this topic and there may be new updates in this field of which I'm unaware.
Uri Kanter
Various computer languages only work one way and its even illegal to decompile them so in a sense they are not real languages because they all translate down to math or assembler commands..
I on the other hand do not speak math on a regular basis and in fact it is a language that in my youth I did not realize its importance so I did not spend sufficient effort to learn it.
Our Brain is biological and though I'm sure it is capable of Entanglement and Superpositioning in some form but there is more in there since unlike math driven systems we can dream and imagine.
Our brain chains and connects data with dynamic sets of logic that are probably impossible to define using math.
For example I once dreamed I was a Big Red Dragon fighting a group of heroes at a hollow chamber inside the canopy of a giant tree. In the dream could see myself shooting a fireball towards a knight in first person but somehow I knew I was a Dragon and when I burned a hole in the tree to fly out and escape the clinging to one of the branches I could see myself as the dragon also in third person while knowing that was me.
Not only would a computer system fail to dream up such a surreal scene on its own without pre-programming, it would also find itself lacking to describe the feeling, since feelings are subjective and cannot be fully realized until you actually feel them.
I guess what I am trying to say is that our Brain can dynamically create its own subjective logic system which is not very logical since logic is objective.
Danger Lampost 10+
Danger Lampost 10+
I think we're about 35 years away from the "Singularity" when we will create a human like mind, and then it will quickly grow in capability. Whether you call that "on the brink" would depend on the span of time you are considering. Quantum computing will eventually enable unbelievable computing power - "hacking the multiverse" as some call it. [Side note - I got to program the D-Wave quantum computer a bit - fascinating!]
We'll create an alien, non-human-like mind before we create a human-like mind though. That, I believe, will be the first alien "life form" we'll actually meet.
hugh reid
J.T. Pierce
Several comments have been posted referring to a 'rapture'. I believe the posters are referring to 'The Rapture of the Nerds'; sometimes called the technological singularity.
Ray Kurzweil does a good job of this topic with a simple thought experiment.
Imagine that it becomes possible to simulate a single neuron with absolute fidelity down to the molecular level. Keeping in mind the exponential increase in computational capability, now imagine we can simulate with absolute fidelity down the the molecular level 2 neurons and their interaction. Now 4 neurons, now 8, now 16...
Eventually, we reach 100 billion neurons. If, as some believe, that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, would not the behavior of the simulation be an exact duplicate of the brain being simulated? Would not the subjective 'experience' of the emergent consciousness be identical to the original?
So the question becomes, does it matter what substrate consciousness runs on?
Danger Lampost 10+
Whether or not that is also required, there is also the issue of the speed at which the simulation runs relative to its surrounding environment. If the simulation of a mind is running at, say, 1000 times slower than a brain-based mind, then it may not succeed at producing what we would consider a human-like mind. This would be true even if all the neurons in a brain were somehow mapped out.
Alternatively, we might discover that trees are in fact conscious - it's just that they think so slowly we are unaware of their minds. But being in a forest, they do send chemical messengers around and so colonies of trees do communicate. For that matter, the largest living thing in the universe, as far as we have seen, is a fungus in Oregon that is four square miles big. Maybe that has a type of consciousness living at a different time scale?
Indigenous herbalists discover drugs our scientists can not discover, and they say the plants spoke to them and told them about their healing properties. Do they have a mind that lives on plant or fungus substrate?
mary ellen johnson
Farokh Shahabi Nezhad 10+
Jeffrey Fadness
Farokh Shahabi Nezhad 10+
Farrukh Yakubov 50+
Vincenzo Sergi
Our brain evolved as it is, has already set a certain standard. If and when this standard falls, it will need to fight from becoming a prisoner to the new creation.
This quest I believe, is a very dangerous one.
Cheers
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Vincenzo Sergi
The definition that you are looking for entails that I plunge into a theological discussion. The Soul that you talk about is strictly a theological reality. What I talk about is a logical conclusion to a scientific prospect of a human like, digital mind.
I am simply saying that in order to prove to ones self that you are a free thinker, you must break away from the one that has created you. The one that keeps you captive. In this case, man.
I do realize that this rings true likeness to the theological 'garden of Eden' and the idea may somehow come from there.
however the mind that you mention IS the catalist, the bridge that connects instinct to freedom.
Don, I do know Base Borden. I was not around in this area during the time that you mention. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I do.
Cheers
Respectfully
Vincenzo