Comments on: Artificial Intuition

By: horatiox

horatiox — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:43:38 +0000

The cyber-kinetics technology appears promising (certainly to handicapped people); at the same time, one could imagine various dystopian scenarios resulting from “unethical” applications.

The BCIs operate both ways (at least theoretically): a computer receives commands from the brain, or issues them. Consider militaristic uses: the Feds implant chips in the brains of soldiers, and then order them around on battlefields. (sounds like dozens of bad analog sci-fi stories).

The US military has recently expanded their robotics (micro spy-drones, etc.–now being used in Afghan, supposedly), and they probably have some dread neurotech. gear as well.

By: FoolsGold

FoolsGold — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:51:57 +0000

Smarter?
I wonder.
How smart were the product managers that introduced that WalkieTalkie discussed over at your technology site? It shuts off at maximum power to avoid overheating, but everyone who uses it is subjected to such a nonsensical feature. How connected to reality were those product managers? If their brains get connected to the internet will anyone care?
We have learned a great deal about Neural Networks and the purists amongst us will keep chiming in about its being Artificial Neural Networks that we are dealing with as we are only learning about Neural Networks which are what nature deals with. Ofcourse as we add spikes and jolts and jitter to such ANNs we find we are indeed getting closer to nature in both processing and in results.
Computers using logic used to get to page 300 by starting at page one and recursively performing simple arithmetic. Now they use ANNs to suggest to you that what you are looking for might be on page 300 and go straight to that page. Is this a more intuitive process?
Soft computing requires soft programming and such computers require common sense.
Artificial intuition? Sure. Too much of artificial intelligence seems to have been squandered somewhere along the way. That darned robotic vacuum cleaner can probably do a good job as a vacuum cleaner but why doesn’t it know to vacuum the rugs PRIOR to the cocktail party guests arriving? If I have to remind it… is it really any better than the maid that won’t do windows?
You seek a direct connection to the internet from your brain? I wonder what the brainwaves will look like as you get a new Blackberry and can’t even figure out how to access your voicemail on it before being timed out with your password access subroutine that someone forgot to make friendly for users that don’t have tiny fingers suitable for tiny keyboards. What use will Artificial Intuition be in a world of gadgets that frustrate us? That robot may not be tying our shoelaces in the middle of a busy intersection, but its probably doing some other darn fool task when we most need it. Perhaps its trying to connect our brains to the internet when we would prefer to connect with some orange juice and toast instead?

By: JoeDuck

JoeDuck — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:48:03 +0000

Glenn thanks for the NIA link – I had not heard of that device although it looks like it’s tapping more into facial muscle signals rather than actual emotional states. This review has more on the differences, both look very interesting to me as early verions of input devices that may revolutionize the way we interact with machines:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/multimedia/display/ocz-nia_7.html

Think about the fact we’ll eventually have direct relationship between our brains and the internet. We’ll be smarter then….much smarter.

By: JoeDuck

JoeDuck — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:05:02 +0000

Tommo fair enough but I’m pretty much sticking to the “thinkin’ ain’t such a big deal” argument at least until Blue Brain fails to bring us a thinking gadget even after it’s got a human neocortex model humming along. I think Kurtzweil’s calculations suggest that in terms of raw processing and memory power we are within about a decade of human levels of processing power. I think we’ll find consciousness and self awareness are more artifacts of our evolutionarily derived survival and existence rather than “really significant phenomena”

By: glenn

glenn — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:10:59 +0000

(11) Cool I am mostly in .net these days… c++, c#, java, javascript…

By: Tommo

Tommo — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:53:49 +0000

(9) Oh, whatever’s handy. Anything Turing-complete. I make up new ones sometimes when I’m bored.

Lately I’ve been working with the Mozilla Tamarin codebase, so it’s Java, C++, Javascript/ECMAScript, AS3, and ABC bytecode.

By: glenn

glenn — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:58:21 +0000

(8) Tommo what languages do you use?

By: Tommo

Tommo — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:59:29 +0000

DOH!

s/you need on Tuesdays in Dublin/you need to win at darts on Tuesdays in Dublin/

Q. And the conclusion of that rant was, Harwood?
A. With that much digital logic, I can do much more interesting stuff than create a lame simulation that can’t do much except be a cool stunt.

PS Compukers is frustratin’.

By: Tommo

Tommo — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:51:28 +0000

Hmm. Maybe if I wasn’t trying to actually program a computer I would be more coherent

My main point is simply that discrete transitorized logic is a very different type of information-manipulation dingus than our ol’ gloppers, and concepts of “intelligence” try to measure the silicon against the biological, which is not unlike measuring how many Quatloos you need on Tuesdays in Dublin.

The “the underpinnings are simple” argument also seems much too simplistic to me. The amounts of information being processed are just staggering to contemplate, and most of the information isn’t used in the service of consciousness in any linearly independent fashion. It is possible to build a simulation of this process, sure, and with enough brute force one could arrive at any desired epsilon away from a glopper — but I assert that the brute force required to get to any interesting epsilon is many orders of magnitude beyond anything we have on the engineering horizon. My comments about the slushbox simulation are my only real data point, I do admit.

And simple doesn’t mean easy. I have a program that uses very simple techniques that I can explain to an interested layman in about a half an hour. That program does things that I cannot do, even though I know how it does it.

By: glenn

glenn — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:18:46 +0000

(6) Joe you should try this one now…it is readily available.

http://www.techpin.com/ocz-nia-brain-controlled-gaming-headset-has-vista-64bit-drivers/