Down Load The Brain?

[phank]

Mechanical/electronic computers are very simple - a given instruction results in a given action, every time. The computer program in our architectures consists of one determinate instruction followed by another followed by another.

Brains work differently. In the first place, they are not linear. There are lots and lots of neurons firing all the time, not one central processor. Decisions even at the lowest level (like deciding whether our ears sensed a noise) are arrived at by a process best described as voting - a few thousand synapses vote yes or no, and if there's a big enough majority, then our ears sensed a noise. And all decision making at every level is a matter of neural voting.

This architecture is really excellent at intuitions, at pattern matching, at seeing vague resemblances. And conversely, it's terrible at either rapid or accurate calculation. And to function at all, brain architecture requires a quite considerable base of experience. Software emulation probably can't be useful without also copying the physical architecture, but the architecture alone is useless without the experience base.

[Sparko]

at the current state of technology, scientists have emulated a worm's brain containing only 302 neurons (compared to several billion in a human). So far the bot is really good at bumping into walls.

[Jedidiah]

So far the bot is really good at bumping into walls.

I can do that.

[Carrikature]

at the current state of technology, scientists have emulated a worm's brain containing only 302 neurons (compared to several billion in a human). So far the bot is really good at bumping into walls.

Why would you expect a worm's brain to be capable of not bumping into walls? They aren't moving great distances, and they don't have much to avoid running into. Small wonder that their brains aren't capable of that level of self-direction in movement.

[Sparko]

Why would you expect a worm's brain to be capable of not bumping into walls? They aren't moving great distances, and they don't have much to avoid running into. Small wonder that their brains aren't capable of that level of self-direction in movement.

I don't expect it to do much at all. And I am right. The state of "brain emulation" is pretty much in its infancy, given how we can barely emulate a brain with 302 neurons. So doing the same with a human brain is VERY far off, if ever able to be done.

[phank]

Sounds like the kind of thing a quantum computer would be good at. But we're probably no closer to one of them either.