MetaFilter posts tagged with ai and computers

a pink sliver of rat brain sat in a beaker

kliuless — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:21:07 -0800

The simulated brain - "The scientists behind Blue Brain hope to have a virtual human brain functioning in ten years... Dr. Markram began by collecting detailed information about the rat's NCC, down to the level of genes, proteins, molecules and the electrical signals that connect one neuron to another. These complex relationships were then turned into millions of equations, written in software. He then recorded real-world data -- the strength and path of each electrical signal -- directly from rat brains to test the accuracy of the software." Is it possible to digitally simulate a brain accurately? Can it only be analog? And are there quantum effects to be considered? (previously 1 2 3 4) + some other AI/brain robot projects:

Blue Brain is controversial, and its success is far from assured. Christof Koch of the California Institute of Technology, a scientist who studies consciousness, says the Swiss project provides vital data about how part of the brain works. But he says that Dr. Markram's approach is still missing algorithms, the biological programming that yields higher-level functions... Despite the challenges, the push to understand, replicate and even re-enact higher behaviors in the brain has become one of the hottest areas of neuroscience. With the help of a $4.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, IBM is working on a separate project with five U.S. universities to build a tiny, low-power microchip that simulates the behavior of one million neurons and ten billion synapses. The goal, says IBM, is to develop brainy computers that can better predict the behavior of complex systems, such as weather or the financial markets. The Chinese government has provided about $1.5 million to a team at Xiamen University to create artificial-brain robots with microcircuits that evolve, learn and adapt to real-world situations. Similarly, Jeff Krichmar and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, Calif., have built an artificial-brain robot that learns to sharpen its visual perception when moving around in a lab environment, another form of emergent behavior, a form of spontaneous self-organization. And researchers at Sensopac, a project backed by a grant of €6.7 million ($9.3 million) from the European Union, have built part of an artificial mouse brain.

BONUS MEMRISTORS - Memristor Minds, the Future of Artificial Intelligence - New Memristor Makes Low-Cost, High-Density Memory - Spintronic Memristors - The Mysterious Memristor - Understanding Memristors - "in which the memristor would be used as an analog device"*

Deep Geek: Understanding Memristors

NortonDC — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:54:57 -0800

The coming memristor revolution in electronics and how it works. The newly created memristor, only the fourth fundamental fundamental type of passive circuit element, has the promise of computing advances both prosaic (faster, cheaper and "bigger" flash drives) and momentous (relatively effortless mimicry of brain cells and their activity). This is the story of the memristor's genesis, told by R. Stanley Williams, the leader of the team that created the device. Being deeply geeky myself, I've read about memristors before, but reading this article and sidebar finally let me understand how the memristor works and what happens inside it. And that felt pretty damn good. The article is fantastic, but it does leave one key connection unmade. To create a practical memristor, the team "needed [a] mechanism by which we could change the effective spacing between two wires in our crossbar by 0.3 nm. If we could do that, we would have the 1000:1 [variation in conductivity] we needed... Where would we find a material that could change its physical dimensions like that?" They did create a way to vary that spacing, in a controllable, repeatable, and extremely fast-acting manner, but Williams doesn't directly explain how the internal actions of the switching layer meet that requirement. The payoff for that setup is missing. When electrical current pushes the conductive impurities in the layer of titanium dioxide toward the other wire, the conductive portion of the layer grows toward the other wire, and the insulating portion of the layer thins. That thinning is described, but the article never tells the reader that expansion of the conductive layer is that long-sought means of moving the wires. If you read the article and made that connection before I described it, then you might have felt as smug about it as I did. Williams gets to feel more smug.

Victim of The Brain

empath — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 05:44:26 -0800

Victim of the Brain A 'docudrama' about Godel, Escher and Bach author, Douglas Hofstadter, and philosopher Dan Dennett produced in 1988. I'm not sure how to describe it, other than incredibly strange and fascinating.

George: I've got rats in my tail pipe.

amberglow — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:58:32 -0800

Meet George -- 39, single, quirky sense of humour, looking for friends to chat with online. Last year, he won the Loebner Prize, to bots who can most successfully pass the Turing Test. More here from BBC. How long before we have our own Mefibots?

The concept of the Transhuman: human, the self, consciousness and their effects on the law

0bvious — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 17:43:01 -0800

The first Transhuman Conference On the Law of Transhuman Persons: Whether or not you believe humans are set to evolve into gods, or AI is destined to achieve self-awareness the idea of the Transhuman is a thought provoking concept. Philosophers have debated the nature of the self, of the human for millennia. Is it time to start drafting new laws to govern all possible sentient beings on this planet? or is it all just a science of fiction? a comfortable humanist illusion?

sherman — Sat, 08 Jun 2002 12:17:54 -0800

Meet Cyc. This endeavor to produce AI has been going on since 1984. In ’86 it asked if it were human; it later asked “if any other computers were engaged in such a project”. It’s strength lies in a database of assumptions and generalities, in the hopes that it will eventually “generalize as much as possible until further generalization would be false”. Is this going to be the breakthrough, or does it just seem really cool? (yes, via Slashdot)

otherchaz — Sat, 09 Feb 2002 19:04:27 -0800

Go for the gold! Concord 2002: Site of the upcoming Loebner Prize. Can reigning champion A.L.I.C.E. repeat her triumph? Chat bots from around the globe are scouting out their rivals on the AI competitive circuit and studying their crib notes.

Spanktacular — Wed, 29 Aug 2001 16:30:21 -0800

Given the recent cinematic floppery of late, I was pleasantly surprised when I came across an article about real-world Artificial Intelligence that was written in a solid down-to-Earth manner about some very technical concepts. If you're into AI it should be worth a look to you. How would you like to have a computer that learns and adapts? Heh...how'd you like your computer to pout because you won't buy the latest processor? ;}

scum — Fri, 01 Sep 2000 06:41:37 -0800

Clicking for consciousness Depressingly reductionist. It is wrong to think that if we can't tell the difference between a binary machine in a box and a person in a box we should behave as if there were no difference.