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12/04/09
".... but it goes to 11"
12/04/09
12/04/09
omfgwtfbbqepicwinwant!!!!!!!
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12/04/09
now go back under your bridge
12/03/09
It seems like we're getting so many its a step back not a step forward.
12/03/09
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12/02/09
Clearly Intel's Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner is operating far below his regular operating speed.
or, in layman speak: he's RETARDED.
12/02/09
12/02/09
He is not joking here or being stupid. Look at recent research into vision, speech synthesis, and other such things. One of the primary reasons we have not been good at this with single core processors is because they do not behave the way neurons do, and to program them to do so requires enormous processing power.
Using multiple cores allows for more flexible software which is more error prone, but leads to far more natural results. Note the earlier Gizmodo article about the competitors with the Blue Brain project and their approach to machine intelligence.
Or the recent research done on bees, showing that they have far more complex vision capabilities than we thought, in a brain which has vastly fewer neuronal connections than we thought were necessary for such complex vision.
Have some imagination and do some research, this guy wasn't just talking out of his ass. He is the CTO of Intel FFS, sure he may exaggerate for effect, but he isn't just making stuff up.
12/02/09
This person is absolutely talking out of his ass in order to market a brand. Exaggeration is a form of lying, but especially on this scale. See the following statements:
1) "according to current theories we will eventually be able to duplicate intelligence in some form. Although we're not quite sure how, or what form that intelligence will take".
2) "THINKING MACHINES ARE HERE, NOW. THEY NEED CHIPS. BUY OUR CHIPS".
12/02/09
I said the "competitors" with the Blue Brain project, not the cat-brain people. There was another article recently about research into super-efficient low-accuracy processing done by multiple cores, which emulates the way the brain works instead of attempting to rigidly simulate it as the Blue Brain project is doing. I'm talking about them.
The first statement you quote is accurate. As far as we know there is nothing special about the brain besides its complexity and structure. There is no magic going on in there. So there is no reason to believe we won't be able to recreate it eventually.
Also see my point about research into bee brains. They have very complex behavior and vision, yet they have vastly simpler brains than we expected for such behavior.
I'm not saying the machines we make will be "thinking" machines, but they will be expert vision/audio/whatever systems which come far closer to emulating our expert-systems. Our brains are really big and complex primarily because we have a big and complex body. For example whales have ginormous brains with crazy more neurons than we do, but this is because they need far stronger signals to control their massive muscles and bodies (also the pressure they go under may make neurons less accurate, so with more neurons the accuracy is increased on average, just like the earlier article I was talking about mentioned).
We already have facial recognition, gait recognition, color, shape, etc. We just haven't combined them all into a coherent system yet.
Where does he say the second thing?
12/02/09
And look: As far as we know there is nothing special about the brain besides its complexity and structure.
The "as far as we know" means very little in the realm of pure scientific thought. Until the actual device of something is understood fully, the entire project remains purely theoretical. But not a theory like gravity is a "theory", there really IS no concrete, operative theory of consciousness beyond "oh we'll just slap a trillion connections together and POOTYPOOFMAGICPOOT you'll get a mind".
If you're so into these fields, you should understand why saying things like "So there is no reason to believe we won't be able to recreate it eventually" is not sensible. There's no telling what barriers lie between the current science and that eventual outcome. Considering that most genuinely credible artificial intelligence researchers put us still at the infancy of knowledge regarding the functions, structures and operations of biological consciousness, it's just silly to say we're almost there. It's reductive and disrespectful to both science and the human mind. I'm sure eventually we'll get there, but that's most likely in decades, or more likely in hundreds of years.
But do you know who DOES say "we're at the threshold of new consciousness"? Who says it all the time, constantly, for profit, like a vain, pernicious cancer of thought? FUTURISTS. Futurists who write books, futurists who have vested interests in the marketing of technology, futurists who maybe work for high tech companies and are paid to be futurists and given titles like "officer", which somehow gives them the right to say infuriatingly silly things about fascinating topics.
12/03/09
The cat brain thing is not the same science. The cat brain thing is drastically different from both the Blue Brain project and the third project I was talking about. There even was a post about how they aren't the same.
There actually are a number of strong hypotheses about consciousness, but you are correct that we cannot yet fully test them. However I am not a spiritual or mystical person, so I see no reason why the brain, of all things in this universe, would be somehow of a different nature that completely impedes us from replicating it.
Yes I know we can't do it now, but I'm not throwing out exact year predictions.
Also, I am talking about expert vision and audio systems, not conscious minds. If you claim to have read on this topic (a claim of mine as well), you should know that expert systems are quite different from conscious systems, despite having complex capabilities that many people think are only possible in conscious systems.
For example the program that recently almost passed the Turing Test, it was an expert system and definitely not conscious.
Furthermore even consciousness doesn't necessarily require vast complexity: [bit.ly]
12/02/09
12/02/09
The main issue with using multiple cores is that software has to be adapted to use those extra cores. This is either the programmers task or the compiler has to do this, but I think that adapting to multi core hardware is the real challenge for computing. Cramming more cores in, clearly is not a problem.
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12/02/09
Clearly I am a few cores short in my processing unit because I certainly do not understand that statement at all. Who knew that the answer to artificial intelligence was just a matter of having a whole lot of cores on a processor. Here I was thinking that software might be involved. Stupid me.
12/02/09
… Software or not.
12/02/09
SCC = Single-Chip Cloud Computing
SCC = ScareCrow Computing (If I only had a brain... ♪♫♪♫♪♫)
12/02/09
12/01/09
12/01/09
You just know Jobs is going to smirk after saying that on stage.
PS - I'm getting that i7 on 17" MacBook Pro, or else.