neurodudes

Interview with Steve Grand on building human level artificial intelligence at Machines Like Us. Really interesting. Via Chris Chatham at (the excellent) Developing Intelligence.

In particular, MLU asks why his current project to create an android was done as a physical robot rather than as a simulation. The answer, that you can cheat too much in a simulation, is familiar to those from the Brooksian school of embodied intelligence. He says that simulations still aren’t good enough to provide the kinds of physical constraints, like gravity and friction, etc, that you get when building real robots .

However, with the availability of free 3D simulation environments that handle physics, like Breve, we are getting a lot closer. Building a robot within a simulation like this, particularly where you don’t modify the code of the the simulation environment itself, is a terrific way to balance the competing interests of keeping yourself honest and avoiding the painstaking mechanical engineering required to construct complicated robots. This kind of environment allows you to build a body with primary sensory systems and primary motor outputs in a similar fashion as one would with real robots.

Why there aren’t more who have adopted this kind of “in silico embodiment” philosophy I think is the result of taking Brooks’ a bit too seriously. Brooks idea of embodiment is very well founded, but back in the day when he first made those statements, there really were no good ways to simulate the physics of an embodied creature very faithfully. Today that is not the case. Moreover, building real physical robots is great if you have a lot of time, or an engineering team, but it’s a huge investment that distracts from the real problem of understanding the nature of intelligence. The fact that the world has extremely few labs that can make that investment is one of the many reasons there aren’t more serious strong AI researchers any more.

Update: Steve apparently received a few comments along these lines and replies.

“It sounds like a science-fiction version of stupid pet tricks: by toggling a light switch, neuroscientists can set fruit flies a-leaping and mice a-twirling and stop worms in their squiggling tracks. But such feats, unveiled in the past two years, are proof that a new generation of genetic and optical technology can give researchers unprecedented power to turn on and off targeted sets of cells in the brain, and to do so by remote control…”

Reviews the use of photosensitive proteins in neuroscience and even gives a shout-out to Ed Boyden, of Stanford and MIT fame…

– Davie (who had the same advisor as Ed for about a day and is therefore 0.01% more famous by association)

The man had a normal job and is a married father of two children.

Nature news

Lionel Feuillet, Henry Dufour and Jean Pelletier. Brain of a white-collar worker. The Lancet, Volume 370, Issue 9583, 21 July 2007-27 July 2007, Page 262.

A patient who had been in a “minimally conscious state” for six years regained responsiveness after stimulation via electrodes implanted in the thalamus. Now he can “name objects on request, make precise hand gestures, and chew food without the aid of a feeding tube”.

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But it seems to have been close. The players claim that the program was quite challenging.

nytimes article

The website of the lab that wrote Polaris, with detailed blogs of the games.

Apparently, when not busy blowing our minds, bees occupy themselves by…

…brainwashing their youth

• Vergoz et al, 2007, Science
• commentary

…and/or mysteriously disappearing from the face of the earth

• Colony Collapse Disorder

Keeping an eye on species poised to take over the world,
Davie

The game of checkers has been solved.

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Recently, I was pointed to this article in the WSJ (“A Pentagon Agency Is Looking at Brains — And Raising Eyebrows“) by Sharon Begley. It touches on some noninvasive recording techniques for assessing affective state and cognitive enhancers like ampakine CX717 (previously mentioned on Neurodudes here and here).

It was the very last paragraph that caught my eye:

Ever since the atomic bomb, physicists have known that their work has potential military uses, and have spoken up about it. But on the morality of sending orders directly to the brain (of a soldier, employee, child, prisoner …), or of devices that read thoughts and intentions from afar, neuroscientists have been strangely silent. The time to speak up is before the genie is out of the bottle.

Whoa! To me, the physicists who spoke out early on against nuclear proliferation seemed (and still seem) both very courageous and prescient in their ideas. Are we neuroscientists dropping the ball? I would love to start a discussion on this subject and to hear your responses (both from neuro people and others) in the comments below.

I’ll start: I personally don’t think the arena of neural enhancement/intrusion (mind reading, mind control, cognitive enhancement, etc.) is comparable to the sheer destructive power of nuclear weapons. I do see in the near future the unfortunate potential for abuse of neurotechnology and violation of personal freedoms, but the threat does not seem as horrifying or deadly. Still, if neurotechnology allows governments greater control over their citizens, it seems reasonable that scientists who enable such technologies should intervene. Perhaps it is time for a neural bill of rights, which, similar to the freedoms granted by the US Bill of Rights, will clearly state what aspects of a person’s mental state or capacity cannot be infringed upon without permission from that person. Thoughts?

Andrew Arensburger presents a neat idea: use the metaphor of the lock-and-key hypothesis for enzymes to route data in genetic programming.

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The common ancestor of Bilateria ( ~= bilaterally symmetric animals ~= “most animals including vertebrates, arthropods, molluscs, etc” – - tolweb) is thought to have had a nervous system. Question: did it have a centralized nervous system? Or did centralization in the nervous system evolve separately in chordates and in other bilaterally symmetric animals?

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