Artificial Brain '10 Years Away'

[NashVegas]

Source: BBC

A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed.

Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain.

He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses.

Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said.

..The project now has a software model of "tens of thousands" of neurons - each one of which is different - which has allowed them to digitally construct an artificial neocortical column.

Although each neuron is unique, the team has found the patterns of circuitry in different brains have common patterns.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8164060.stm

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oy

[Uben]

1. Good news for Bush and Rove!

There is hope afterall!

[Aslanspal]

3. That thar! was funny....I tell you what

hahahahahaha

[Wizard777]

35. But they'll probably want theirs in Red.

[MineralMan]

2. This just in: Demint selected as first recipient of artificial brain..

When asked about this selection, Demint remarked, "It'll be a new thing for me...having a brain..."

[Aslanspal]

5. Damn we are on a roll!!!!

hahahahaha

[Mythsaje]

4. "...why we can't communicate cross-species."

Uh, what? Sure we can, Doc. Haven't you ever watched The Dog Whisperer?

[havocmom]

6. My dog tells me a lot of things

and I had a cat that would run to a ringing phone and say 'harooooo, harooooo'

[Mythsaje]

8. Oh, yeah.

Dog language is mostly body language, with a little vocalization thrown in for emphasis (depending on the dog)... Cat language is pretty much the same, though they only use "meow" sounds when talking to humans.

It cracks me up that a scientist studying cognition would say something like this because it's just patently false. Cross-species communication just requires good faith effort.

[tblue37]

33. Many years ago, when I had a home daycare, I hired a young woman

to substitute for me for the two hours every other day that I was on campus teaching my English classes. After I ran her through the place, showing her everything she needed to know and explaining all about what each child would need, she asked me, "What about Luke?" (Luke was my long-haired tuxedo cat.)

I said, "Don't worry. If Luke needs anything from you, he will tell you exactly what he wants."

When I got home, she said, "Oh, my God! I thought you were joking! But that cat really does make everything clear when he wants something!"

Someday I will even write about the time when Luke told me he had an electrolyte imbalance and showed me how to treat it. No, not in words--but in very clear ways. That cat was a feline genius.

[Sebastian Doyle]

46. How do you cure kitteh electrolyte imbalance?

Tuna flavored Pedialyte? :shrug:

[tblue37]

47. Water and minerals--and he taught me how to give him what he needed.

He was missing for three days. When he came home, he was crawling on his belly, weak and obviously not well. I carried him into the apartment, and he scootched on his belly into the bathroom, where he dragged himself up by a low child's step stool I kept near the tub for my cats and ferrets to sit on to visit me while I bathed. Then he mrrrroowwwed loudly at me.

I could tell he wanted in the tub, so I put him in.

It was a cheap tub, not made of porcelain, but of some sort of pebbled plasticky stuff that was impossible to keep very clean. It collected mineral deposits from our very hard city water, and because it was a badly designed piece of crap, it never drained 100%. There were always little patches of water left in it after I had a bath.

Luke told me to put him in the tub, and he immediately begain to lick the patches of water. I offered him a bowl of water while he was in the tub, but he ignored the straight water and kept licking the mineral deposits, so I figured that was what he wanted as much as or more than water. So I then started putting small amounts of water on top of the mineral deposits, and he kept at it until finally he was able to stand up, though he was still very wobbly, and demand to be fed.

I know that deydration can cause electrolyte imbalance, and that involves mineral depletion as well as actual loss of water. I am guessing that he smelled the minerals in the tub and recognized that that was something he needed. At any rate, as soon as he was satisfied with licking the tub's mineral deposits, he told me to feed him, so I did.

He would also go to the fridge and go up on two hind legs and pat the handle to tell me to give him milk. He never did that for anything else, just milk.

When he wanted to play, he would bring a string and drop it in front of me. If I ignored him, he would pick it up in his mouth and tap at my knee. When he wanted to be brushed, he would go to the brush and put his foot on it and call me.

I have a story on my Pet Tales website about the time he actually pushed my (then) 8-year-old daughter off of me because he had decided that lying between my legs was his special place, and she was lying on top of me. He marched back and force yowling at her to get off, but she didn't, so he just jumped down and started pushing at her with his head until he finally got her to roll off. Then he curled up between my knees and mrrroowwwed at her in a way that clearly meant either "Yo mama!" or "MY MAMA!"

When I had the daycare kids out in the small parking lot to my apartment playing, I would watch for cars turning the corner, in case they were going to turn in to the parking lot Then I would yell, "Car! Car!" and all the kids would run to the side of the lot until it was safe. Luke would always run to the side, too, when I yelled, "Car! Car!" He knew thatw as what one did when that shout was forthcoming, though he probably assumed it was just a game we were playing.

He had all sorts of clever tricks. He was a delight.

[eShirl]

9. I hope nobody tells that to Koko the gorilla

http://www.koko.org/index.php

[havocmom]

23. Here's one about a chimp helping care for baby tigers

Slide show and video at link: http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/strange/news-article.aspx?storyid=123437&catid=82

Listen to the story about chimp that watched trainer care for cubs then doing same. Look at the pics, the expressions sure look like there is communication between chimp, human, tigers.

[hunter]

18. Has this guy ever had pets?

Our rats communicate just fine, thank you. Dogs, that's a given. Our African Gray communicates so well it's spooky. She has all day to figure us out and get what she wants. When talking isn't getting our attention, she'll throw screaming temper tantrums like a two year old.

Parrots are terrible pets, by the way, not because they don't communicate, but because they do, all damned day. Or else they are perfectly silent because they are out skulking about ripping your stuff to shreds.

[RedCloud]

21. Sounds like my Gary could be in love with your Gray!

That guy never shuts up either. All day long he has the dog whistles going, the microwave beep, the phone "Oh, It's for you." And about one hundred contextualized things.

[DUlover2909]

29. Try asking you dog what happened yesterday.

I think that's what they mean by communication.

[hunter]

37. Try asking someone you don't share a language with what happened yesterday...

I've had the privilege of knowing quite a few very bright dogs who have a fairly sophisticated understanding of human language. A bright dog easily comprehends dozens of nouns and verbs describing objects and actions we attach a common importance to. If dogs had the ability to speak they would, but they get by plenty well with body language.

One of our dogs has no problem remembering certain things that happened the day before. There are a couple of toys we play with, and these toys tend to end up in fairly random places. If I ask her to fetch a specific toy we were playing with the day before she can easily do it even if we are staying at my wife's parents house and the toy was left someplace outside on their acreage. If we weren't playing with it she'll look in our car.

With dogs you just have to work out a common language and once you do you'll have a pretty clear understanding of their intellectual capabilities.

I've also known some dogs who were quite dim. On an animal scale of intelligence they'd rate a little bit above "hamster." But the nice thing about dogs is that most of them are almost supernaturally happy when they are well cared for and accepted as part of a family. On days when all the humans in the house are grouchy it's nice to have someone around who reliably tries to cheer things up and comfort those who are hurt.

It's very difficult to imagine a computer with that kind of empathy. In normal everyday life the regurgitation of factoids -- a skill we mistakingly attribute to intelligence -- is useless. Life is not a multiple choice exam we must pass to graduate.

[DUlover2909]

41. touche! I think I spelled that right.

I love dogs my friend.

[Speck Tater]

7. When I was a Comp Sci undergrad in 1964, artificial brains were 10 years away too.

AI gurus have been saying, over and over and over, for the last 45 years that artificial brains are only 10 years away.

That refrain is getting awfully old. Their batting average so far is a big fat zero.

[Mythsaje]

11. That's not the artificial brain they're talking about...

At least, I don't think it is. This is more of a "model" brain to test theories on, not something capable of actually thinking.

[Silent3]

17. For a long time flat screen TVs were always 10 years away .

THAT finally happened, so one of these, maybe they're get there with AI too.

I won't be holding my breath, however. :)

[Zodiak]

44. What is funny is....

We do not even know how a REAL brain works much less be able to model it perfectly for AI.

This is just some scientist trying to make headlines, I'd wager. Some of us are real glory-hounds.

[struggle4progress]

49. This might qualify as LBN in the year 2525 -- but today, not much yet

[IDemo]

10. The AB-normal model has been in widespread use among conservatives already

[Mythsaje]

12. "Abby Normal? You brought me an ABNORMAL BRAIN?" n/t

[jmondine]

13. Now the birthers can get more than one between them

[KG]

14. 'artificial human brain' - aren't they setting the bar kinda low?

[Turbineguy]

15. There are some

primitive prototypes in use now that allow people to breathe through their mouths and sound like Freepers. I'm series!

[Fearless]

16. We have them already. We call them Freepers.

[onehandle]

19. Man will be immortal by 2100. Replicants will be our forever future.

If man survives that long.

[bluedigger]

20. So I'm expected to just "make-do" in the meantime?

[JonQ]

22. I doubt it

I'm a big believer in the potential of technology for advancing us in ways that most people can't imagine. But, to effectively copy it we'd first have to fully understand how the human brain works, which we are far from at the moment. Otherwise psychology would be an actual science with predictable results and uniform treatment methods, it isn't, by far.

I'm sure we can make something with similiar computing and memory power, even the ability to learn from mistakes and hypothesize new solutions based on similiar, but unrelated prior experiences. And that would be very useful and could potentially teach us many things.

But it wouldn't be a perfect replica of the human brain.

[onehandle]

25. That's exactly right. I believe that A.I. would have to be perfected first.

And on a human scale, we would indeed have to know everything there is to know about the brain.

Dammit, I forget where, but I read a great article a few years ago that predicted 2075 or so as the breakthrough year.

It was very convincing.

[dorkulon]

30. Actually what they're doing is mapping the cells, so they can learn a lot about how it works

once they've built it. This will get us closer to psychology actually being a hard science as you suggested.

[NashVegas]

34. Do You Realize, If We Fully Understood the Brain, 'We' Would Take Control of the Brain

and most likely lose free will in the process?

[sakabatou]

48. And that's when Skynet became self-aware

[Odin2005]

24. I agree with them but I think their time frame is a bit optimistic.

I'll say 15 to 20 years.

[Libertas1776]

26. I don't think humans

will have the capability to replicate something as incredibly complex, masterfully intricate, and in its own right, beautiful as the human brain for quite some time. I think that job should be left up to mother nature. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't make great strides in understanding this amazing work of nature.

[sofa king]

27. Hmm. That makes my want to look up the last "artificial brain ten years away" story.

http://www.yoz.com/wired/3.01/features/hal.html">Here's one which laments the fact that artificial intelligence wasn't ten years away in 1967, 1977, 1987, or when it was written, in 1997. By a guy named "Simson Garfinkel." Really? Yes, really.

"When I started working on this article, I thought that real breakthroughs in AI were just five to ten years away. Today I still think we'll see some breakthroughs in that time, but I doubt they'll culminate in a sentient machine for another 30 years."

I still remember well the year after that article was written, when I loaded up Starcraft on my shitty AMD K6-2 machine (the original "Sanford box," of which this computer, "The Streetbeater," is a direct descendant). "Look at those little bastards running that maze," I marveled as a line of zerglings ran to their doom. "They're smarter than flatworms!"

And, I remain convinced, computers are indeed smarter than flatworms, but not much. Some futurists envision a scenario not far along in which artificial intelligences are orders of magnitude more intelligent than humans, and that makes sense because as soon as someone can program thought, a thinking computer will instantly have more knowledge than any human that ever lived.

But as far as I know, the mystery of how my thought got translated into this post is still a big, big mystery.

[Teaser]

28. just like nuclear fusion

.

[prayin4rain]

31. I'll believe it when I see it ! n/t

[Joe Bacon]

32. Holy Wayne Rogers!

Here comes...

[Doctor_J]

36. So if we can hold off on Palin becoming Prez until 2020...

maybe we'll be safe.

[stlsaxman]

38. "My brain hurts!" "It will have to come out!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M68GeL8PafE

[ItNerd4life]

39. Data? Data? Is that you? nt

[CRF450]

40. Its gonna be like that anime series Ghost In The Shell some decades soon!

[EFerrari]

42. There may still be hope for George Bush.

[Terry in Austin]

43. Dr. Hfuhruhurr will be pleased

"...a day when the brains of brilliant men can be kept alive in the bodies of dumb people."

Now he won't even have to bother with the "alive" part!

[CatholicEdHead]

45. This has all happened before

/BSG

[caseymoz]

50. More like sixty.

There's a new discovery about the brain that they haven't even come close to interpreting.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090323134311.htm

Until they understand this "dark matter" of the brain, they have totally got it wrong.