SUPERCOMPUTERS DUPLICATE HALF A MOUSE BRAIN
How close is a
computer that can really think?
By Robert Reed
May 10, 2006
I really should
be more concerned with local issues here in Humboldt County, but a BBC
article published on April 27 was too interesting to ignore. The
title of the article is "Mouse brain simulated on computer". A
quick search on the web will bring it up. A team of three
researchers from the IBM Almade Research Lab and the University of
Nevada have managed to create a simulation of "half a mouse brain"
using the BlueGene L supercomputer.
According the
the BBC, they ran a "cortical simulator" on the supercomputer for only
10 seconds because of the complexity of the simulation. The
BlueGene L supercomputer has 4096 processors with 256 megabytes of ram
memory on each processor. It's like having 2048 dual core
computers all working together, with each one churning away the
computations and an unimaginable rate of speed.
Here's what
caught my attention. The contemporary modern supercomputer was
only able to duplicate half a mouse brain at one tenth of the speed of
real life.
Some earlier
similar research observed characteristics of thought patterns that were
observed in some real mice. Achieving this new level of being
able to simulate half a mouse brain gives the researchers some new
insights into how the brain works. It's nothing to sneeze
at. However, I stopped reading the article and allowed my warped
thought patterns to overtake my conscious thoughts on this peaceful
Sunday morning of news browsing.
Because I had
indulged in one extra cup of high caffeine coffee, I started thinking
about robots of the future. I was thinking that we have not come
as far as I had thought we were when it comes to research in making
computers think like humans. Long ago I lost my fear of a future
of computers and robots that could think like people. When that
happens, computers will start making dumb colossal mistakes just like
people.
It's like too
much computing power is a bad thing. There must be a point at which
artificial intelligence reaches a peak of perfection, and as it's
computing power and thought processes grow, it will go "over the hump"
and begin a long slow spiral of digression into human error-like
failures. If it thinks like a human, it has to screw up like a
human, right?
How many smart people have you seen make unimaginable errors
in judgment? How about those really smart people who were at the
wheel of Enron? They were supposed to be smart with powerful
brains. And they convinced others with powerful brains to follow
along, others such as the power brokers of Wall Street and countless
investors, all of whom are supposed to be really smart people.
When computers can feel greed, lust and power, look out. Half a
mouse brain is sounding better all the time.
There's another
side to the question of how much is enough. Is half a mouse brain more
than we humans now have? Some simple observations would suggest that
this is definately
the case.
A little more coffee brought a logical conclusion to
all of this.
Maybe if we just built some robots that had half a
mouse brain, it wouldn't be so bad. I can think of a some people
with brains like that. Quite a few as a matter of fact. I
think that many times I fail to achieve the intelligence level of half
a mouse brain. Mice can remember how to run a maze and where
things are. I can't find things that are right in front of my
face half the time.
My next thought
came in a flash. What about most of our politicians? Judging from
their actions and not their words, one would have to conclude that the
majority of them have far less than half a mouse brain. Political party
affiliation doesn't affect this apparent fact of life. Just look
at what most of them do.
Maybe we aren't as far behind in
building artificial intelligence after all.
When we reach a full whole
mouse brain, we might have something worth replacing some of our
political minds with. In fact the BBC article mentions that the
researchers are "tuning the simulation to make it run faster and to
make it more like a real mouse brain." This might be a goal worth
attaining. And anyone with half a brain would know when to put a stop
to all of it. What kind of brain? Your guess is as good as
mine.
(Robert Reed is a
columnist for The Eureka Reporter. Views and opinions expressed in this
column do not necessarily represent those of The Eureka Reporter, its
management or staff.)
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