Scientists create circuit board modeled on the human brain

a reply to: PhotonEffect

Good post. For those who haven't heard the gospel, hear it hear from an impartial Christian who give a good overview of what's going on:
www.youtube.com...
This is big, big stuff. I was introduced to the experiments being done with Chimeras through this video last night, and saw two articles pop up today using Chimeric work for medical progress - one using pig bladders to regrow muscles, and another one. This stuff is going on, its huge stuff at the highest levels of power, and the top minds are thinking about how this is going to reshape our future. This genie is absolutely out of the bottle.

edit: Link for pig genes being introduced to humans, can't remember the second story now.
www.cbsnews.com...

a reply to: tridentblue

This was the spirit of the thread, rather than getting embroiled in where one poster took it. I find this type of advancement frightening based on mankinds natural proclivity to take advantage of others and nature for individual gain. It has the potential to develop down the same road as genetic engineering where we make far more suppositions as to the successful application of a technology, than we consider its potential ill effects. For instance could hard wiring this type of tech to our anatomic brains create an entirely unseen organic effect down a couple generations..I'd say it's highly probable.

a reply to: BlueJacket

Anyway back to the premise of MY thread…

Its "A" thread dinkums, not yours per se. Others might have input, too.

Don't you hate that?

originally posted by: BlueJacket

I find this type of advancement frightening based on mankinds natural proclivity to take advantage of others and nature for individual gain. It has the potential to develop down the same road as genetic engineering where we make far more suppositions as to the successful application of a technology, than we consider its potential ill effects.

In what way? How does a low power neural net chip have ill effects?

For instance could hard wiring this type of tech to our anatomic brains create an entirely unseen organic effect down a couple generations..I'd say it's highly probable.

Why? Why would you say it was highly probable? Especially if it's 'entirely unseen', by which I assume you mean 'unforeseeable'?

originally posted by: Bedlam


In what way? How does a low power neural net chip have ill effects?

Choking hazard?

originally posted by: GetHyped

originally posted by: Bedlam


In what way? How does a low power neural net chip have ill effects?

Choking hazard?

Maybe if it misfires and you forget how to swallow.

originally posted by: BlueJacket
a reply to: frozenhotdogwater

Here are just a few things I have casually perused while considering the potential of this portion of the article:For instance, a chip as fast and efficient as the human brain could drive prosthetic limbs with the speed and complexity of our own actions. - Maybe the resident genius can explain what my OP means better though...Bedlam? You seem to know so much on the topic please share with us.

What I find amusing is that most of the posts on the thread have been you frothing about me pointing out the article's shortcomings. Post after post.

However, on the subject of neural nets in general, it's not tough to be as fast as human neurons. Most human neurons don't fire more than a few times a second. However, you've got a lot of them and you get the job done by means of massively parallel processing.

The reason for using neural nets at all in control of prostheses is that they can take a lot of ill-defined inputs such as what you'd get from motor nerves (more usually a piece of muscle left attached), other inputs from the limb such as position and orientation, and through training, the net will "learn" how to do what you want with the limb based on that. It's not always obvious how the network is doing any particular task, and with nets you generally don't care, other than to make sure it's learned what you want instead of something else - the classic story is the one where Boeing was training a neural net target recognizer to spot tanks hidden in undergrowth and instead it learned to spot 'afternoon', since all the photo passes had been done in the evening.

Neural nets are generally used in the broad class of approaches known as 'complexity reduction', where you use an approach to solve a task whose details aren't obvious or are very complex without explicitly solving the problem. A similar thing can be done with genetic programming or genetic algorithms.

originally posted by: GetHyped

originally posted by: Bedlam


In what way? How does a low power neural net chip have ill effects?

Choking hazard?

Well, you're not supposed to eat them. Unless your silicon level is low.

Well, I’m no expert, and I probably read pretty much the same or similar articles as the one presented in the OP. So, anyone caring to flame me is quite welcome. I don’t care

Anyway, it seems I read in one article that one of the features of this tech is that it integrates both analog and digital processing capabilities. So, it acts more brain-like. Analog computers and digital computers have both been around for a long time, but they don’t usually work in tandem as a single processing unit. I think that, as well as the energy saving properties which make it run cooler, are a couple of attractive features.

In the future if we are to develop any technology to mimic brain functioning it will require both analog and digital capabilities as a minimum.

That’s my 2 cents. Now, flame away...

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: Bedlam

Agreed. Whoopie for the automaton!

but really… air craft, "smart" warheads, radar and weapons in general are already faster than thought and quite robotic.

What the hell is it with people that want false reality? isn't the real world amazingly quick enough? Go find a humming bird…

It originally started with flight simulators. It saved the military millions if you could practice all sorts of things on the ground rather than burn up airplane fuel. Then home PC owners wanted to play at being Top Gun. That helped bring prices down. Now all that consumer hardware can do things like allow people to build their own miniature railways.
Doctors can use the techology to simulate doing operations and plan the best way to treat cancer.

originally posted by: netbound

Anyway, it seems I read in one article that one of the features of this tech is that it integrates both analog and digital processing capabilities. So, it acts more brain-like. Analog computers and digital computers have both been around for a long time, but they don’t usually work in tandem as a single processing unit. I think that, as well as the energy saving properties which make it run cooler, are a couple of attractive features.

In the future if we are to develop any technology to mimic brain functioning it will require both analog and digital capabilities as a minimum.

Many, far simpler, IC's process analog and digital information. For one example Server/gyro outputs' (wavforms: cos/sine) amplitude and phase differences are compared in a resolver and fed into some CPLD/processor/controller. Digital programmable devices have been interfacing with true analog inputs for decades, granted these inputs are 'digitized'. Enough bits and it'll approximate an analog response. I wonder how these chips receive input, or better yet how they 'learn'.

a reply to: stormcell

It originally started with flight simulators. It saved the military millions if you could practice all sorts of things on the ground rather than burn up airplane fuel. Then home PC owners wanted to play at being Top Gun. That helped bring prices down. Now all that consumer hardware can do things like allow people to build their own miniature railways.
Doctors can use the technology to simulate doing operations and plan the best way to treat cancer.

I was directing my comment more at the simulation of the human brain with electrical circuits, I think.

By the way, love the pic in your avatar. Is that the silver surfer riding backwards?

ETA: Oh, just a Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Maybe instead of sending people into battle fighting wars to be maimed and damaged in need of limb replacements and the like, they should develop soldier drones, only to keep the soldiers employed to operate them....But it will be found to be more efficient to eliminate the human factor altogether now, wouldn't it.

Some technology is dangerous until other things change to keep pace with it, to reduce undesired consequences like un-needed laborers and the resulting unemployment that soon follows.

Elysium comes to mind, that movie ya know?. I was surprised that they even had people running machines in that movie...