[Diaspora] IBM makes supercomputer significantly smarter than cat

[Lon Sarver]

Thought you all might be interested in this:
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/11/ibm-makes-supercomputer-sign
ificantly-smarter-than-cat.ars


"IBM has announced a software simulation of a mammalian cerebral cortex
that's significantly more complex than the cortex of a cat. And, just
like the actual brain that it simulates, they still have to figure out
how it works."


According to the article, the machine running this simulation uses 144
TB of main memory and more than 147,000 CPUs to do it.  And the
simulation has only 4.5% of the neurons and connections that a human
brain would.


One significant thing about this is as an example of how close we're
getting to being able to simulate a live human brain in a machine; and
also how far we are from being able to do it in the same space as a live
brain fills.  Still, one day, it will happen.  We'll have the computing
power to do it, and someone will make the simulation, and then...


Well, that's where the adventure begins, isn't it?


Another thing I took away from the article was that simulations of this
complexity also present some of the same challenges that real brains do.
Specifically, they are just as mysterious when they're running.  There
is too much information running in the simulation for the human
researchers to comprehend all of what's going on at once.  They still
have to freeze the model, take it apart, and poke at it in limited ways
to get anything out of it.  Fortunately, the advantage of the simulation
is that you can do that without harming a live subject, and once you've
dissected the virtual brain you can put it together and re-start it.


What I'm getting at here is that researchers here-and-now, at TL0, are
already building virtual brains too complex for them to understand.
What would this experiment look like with TL1 tools?  TL3?


It's nice when the things that make the mind boggle about real life also
feed the gaming brain.


 


Lon Sarver,


Hayward, CA USA


 

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