Robots again

From: Doug Yowza <yowza_at_yowza.com>
Date: Mon Mar 16 06:14:33 1998

On Mon, 16 Mar 1998, David Wollmann wrote:

> I have always thought that digital computers would never allow us to
> achieve the ultimate goal of replicting a learning organism. Aren't we just
> simple conceptual pattern recognition machines? It seems like an analog
> computer, capable of integration of raw percepts and conceptualization at
> high speeds, could actually learn and become better and faster than man at
> thinking and working. If a computer could search a text file for a pattern
> using the same method as humans, i.e. looking for a shape as the first
> indicator of a match, rather than a discreet chacter pattern, it would be
> able to process text much faster than a digital machine.

If you believe Turing, there's nothing an analog computer can compute that
a digital one can't. A brain is many things: it's wet, it's analog, and
it's massively parallel. I don't think anybody believes that it's wetness
or analogness that matters, but clearly a high degree of parallel
processing seems important to solving perception problems quickly. This
is the basic inspiration that drove Danny Hillis to create the Connection
Machine, with 64,000 simple processors working in parallel.

But if you ignore the issue of speed, a single CPU should be able to
simulate the parallel processing done by eye balls, the visual cortex, and
whatever associative memory comes into play.

The early AI folk thought they could do brainstuff using straight-forward
algorithms. Maybe you can, but there's no biological analog that anybody
can find to support the idea that humans work that way.

So, the connectionists tried to create machines and structures modeled
after the brain, but they didn't get too far. Let's say that you build
an OS and a programming language that allows you to accurately model a
brain. If you stick a human brain in front of a newspaper, you get
nothing. So add some input devices and actuators. Now you stick a baby
in front of a newspaper -- still nothing. So let the baby run for a
while, experience a variety of sensations, make a whole bunch of
associations, stick it in front of many newpapers and many non-newspapers
for many years, and finally you get a pretty good character recognizer.

We're still a long way from being able to put a multi-billion node
connection machine onto a sturdy frame with millions of intricate wires,
actuators, and sensors, let it experience and manipulate the environment
for many years, and then get the thing to demonstrate emergent properties
that make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. But I don't see
any reason why it won't or can't happen.

And if you think that the prospect of human cloning is causing moral
pangs, wait until somebody creates the first artificial life form!

Ob classiccmp: Perceptron.

-- Doug
Received on Mon Mar 16 1998 - 06:14:33 GMT