{"id":4133,"date":"2012-12-02T18:27:35","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T23:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=4133"},"modified":"2012-12-02T18:27:35","modified_gmt":"2012-12-02T23:27:35","slug":"artificial-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=4133","title":{"rendered":"Artificial brain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I am reading about this “artificial brain” story that has been in the news lately<\/a>, about a Waterloo team that constructed a software model, Spaun, of a human-like brain with several million neurons.<\/p>\n

Granted, several million is not the same as a hundred billion or so neurons that are in a real human brain, but what they have done still appears to be an impressive result.<\/p>\n

I’ve spent a little bit of time trying to digest their papers<\/a> and Web site<\/a>. It appears that a core component of their effort is Nengo, a neural simulator. Now the idea of simulating neurons has been at the core of cybernetics for (at least) 60 years, but Nengo adds a new element: its ability to “solve” a neural network and determine the optimal connection weights for a given network to achieve its desired function.<\/p>\n

The “brain”, then, is a particular Nengo simulation that is designed to model specific areas and functions of the human brain. Their simulation, equipped with a simple 28×28 pixel “eye” and a simulated “arm” with which to draw, can perform some simple activities such as reading and copying some digits and symbols, or memorizing a list.<\/p>\n

I am still trying to make up my mind as to whether this result is just a gimmick<\/a> like Grey Walter’s infamous cybernetic tortoise<\/a> or a genuine leap forward, but I am leaning towards the latter. Unlike the tortoise, which just superficially mimicked some behavior, Spaun is a genuine attempt to create a machine that actually mimics the functioning of a human brain. Indeed, if this research is scalable, it may mark a milestone that would eventually lead to the ability to create electronic backups of ourselves. Now whether or not that is a Good Thing is debatable of course.<\/p>\n<\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am reading about this “artificial brain” story that has been in the news lately, about a Waterloo team that constructed a software model, Spaun, of a human-like brain with several million neurons. Granted, several million is not the same as a hundred billion or so neurons that are in a real human brain, but […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybernetics","category-58-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4133"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4141,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4133\/revisions\/4141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}