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| The white lines move... |
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Monday, September 5, 2011
¿Artificial? Intelligence
Last week my friend David Krakauer presented three lectures on Intelligence -- c.f. Cognitive Ubiquity -- in the SFI Ulam Lecture series. I thought the slides were online someplace but I can't find them; however the videos should be posted at santafe.edu sometime soon. He made some good, and some arguable, points and was quite entertaining in the process.
One of the good points is that what we call intelligence, if we can even define it, goes much deeper than the human cortex. He showed a video clip of a white blood cell "chasing" a bacterium through a forest of red cells where the white cell appeared to be behaving quite smartly in it's search-and-destroy mission. He then made the point that the low level components of computerized artificial intelligence have none of the characteristics of that "simple" white cell, e.g.: NAND gates don't adapt.
I think this is not an apt comparison. Where transistors are atoms, NAND gates are more comparable to simple molecules. Large Scale Integrated circuits -- memory chips and the like -- might measure up to the capabilities of a complex organic molecule, and micro-controllers could be compared to one or two neurons. To support my claim I present you with three series-connected neurons: Each neuron might (conservatively) have 1000 synapses which gives the whole system one-billion possible binary states. Show me a microchip that does that. Then realize that there are about 1011 neurons in the human brain and another (hand-waving-estimate) 1010 elsewhere in the body.
This is the scale of the problem we have.
But Wait! There's More!
Getting back to the hand-waving-estimate thing... A year or so ago I tried, unsuccessfully, to estimate the Shannon Information content of our nervous system in order to have a reasonable retort when folks asked me why my robots behaved so stupidly. I was not successful because I found it almost impossible to get good estimates of three -- to me -- important values:
Anyway, I put together a cheat sheet of what I found: here. And just so you don't have to follow -- and make sense of -- that link, here's the chase:
Input: 10^8 eye sensors; 10^7 touch, hearing, taste, and smell
Sight: 5*10^6 cones + 1.3*10^8 rods ~= 1.4*10^8 sensors
Touch: (swag) 3*10^6 sensors
Hearing: 8.8*10^2 sensor neurons
Taste: (swag) 1*10^6 sensors
Smell: 1.2*10^6 sensors
Output: Estimate, 300-700 muscles in a human body
I also guessed at 8 bits -- for convenience -- of synaptic weight, and put the neural firing rate at 50 per second, with each synapse doing a scale and each neuron doing a sum operation. That gave me, for the brain only:
It is also interesting to note that the number of touch sensors is in the same order of magnitude as the number of cones in the eye. Until now, much of the interest in neural signal processing has been in the visual cortex. But the motor cortex may have as many inputs and probably many more outputs. The visual system is pretty good at linear algebra, but the motor system solves simultaneous differential equations each time you toss a wad of paper at the trash can. So literally putting a robot out in the field may be a very fruitful line of research after all.
One of the good points is that what we call intelligence, if we can even define it, goes much deeper than the human cortex. He showed a video clip of a white blood cell "chasing" a bacterium through a forest of red cells where the white cell appeared to be behaving quite smartly in it's search-and-destroy mission. He then made the point that the low level components of computerized artificial intelligence have none of the characteristics of that "simple" white cell, e.g.: NAND gates don't adapt.
I think this is not an apt comparison. Where transistors are atoms, NAND gates are more comparable to simple molecules. Large Scale Integrated circuits -- memory chips and the like -- might measure up to the capabilities of a complex organic molecule, and micro-controllers could be compared to one or two neurons. To support my claim I present you with three series-connected neurons: Each neuron might (conservatively) have 1000 synapses which gives the whole system one-billion possible binary states. Show me a microchip that does that. Then realize that there are about 1011 neurons in the human brain and another (hand-waving-estimate) 1010 elsewhere in the body.
This is the scale of the problem we have.
But Wait! There's More!
Getting back to the hand-waving-estimate thing... A year or so ago I tried, unsuccessfully, to estimate the Shannon Information content of our nervous system in order to have a reasonable retort when folks asked me why my robots behaved so stupidly. I was not successful because I found it almost impossible to get good estimates of three -- to me -- important values:
- The number of Sensor Inputs;
- The number of Motor Outputs;
- The resolution of a "Synaptic Connection".
Anyway, I put together a cheat sheet of what I found: here. And just so you don't have to follow -- and make sense of -- that link, here's the chase:
Input: 10^8 eye sensors; 10^7 touch, hearing, taste, and smell
Sight: 5*10^6 cones + 1.3*10^8 rods ~= 1.4*10^8 sensors
Touch: (swag) 3*10^6 sensors
Hearing: 8.8*10^2 sensor neurons
Taste: (swag) 1*10^6 sensors
Smell: 1.2*10^6 sensors
Output: Estimate, 300-700 muscles in a human body
I also guessed at 8 bits -- for convenience -- of synaptic weight, and put the neural firing rate at 50 per second, with each synapse doing a scale and each neuron doing a sum operation. That gave me, for the brain only:
- 7*10^14 bytes or 5.6 petaBit of state
- 3.5*10^16 or 35 petaFlop/second of calculation
It is also interesting to note that the number of touch sensors is in the same order of magnitude as the number of cones in the eye. Until now, much of the interest in neural signal processing has been in the visual cortex. But the motor cortex may have as many inputs and probably many more outputs. The visual system is pretty good at linear algebra, but the motor system solves simultaneous differential equations each time you toss a wad of paper at the trash can. So literally putting a robot out in the field may be a very fruitful line of research after all.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Dreamtime Encounter
Had a little run-in with a Succubus last night...
A figure appeared to me disguised as a college guidance councilor "helping" me find the location of classroom number 98 on a campus map in the student handbook. Of course, I couldn't find "campus map" in the index. I was making an attempt at "map, campus" when it attacked me. I was startled awake while simultaneously kissing and strangling the being.
I guess I can count myself fortunate that it was not this one:
A figure appeared to me disguised as a college guidance councilor "helping" me find the location of classroom number 98 on a campus map in the student handbook. Of course, I couldn't find "campus map" in the index. I was making an attempt at "map, campus" when it attacked me. I was startled awake while simultaneously kissing and strangling the being.
I guess I can count myself fortunate that it was not this one:
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| via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succubus |
Monday, August 22, 2011
Engaging Community
...Lets not say I don't try.
I entered and just dropped off a re-vamped Anemone (click for details) at the Santa Fe Arts Commission annual (non-)poster competition:
in which I can pretty much guarantee no one has ever seen anything like. The grand opening and prize announcement is at the Santa Fe Community Gallery - 201 West Marcy Street - this Friday, August 26, 2011 from 5pm - 7pm. Bt|B2
I have also applied to show in various venues and/or be an Arfist in Residence during the ISEA conference in ABQ next year. And am putzing along on making a proposal to put Big Barbie in the Railyard Art Project, as well as making up a kickstarter.com page to gauge interest in the finishment of March Time once and for all Time.
But probably, it's not that simple...
I entered and just dropped off a re-vamped Anemone (click for details) at the Santa Fe Arts Commission annual (non-)poster competition:
 |
| Anemone, NM |
in which I can pretty much guarantee no one has ever seen anything like. The grand opening and prize announcement is at the Santa Fe Community Gallery - 201 West Marcy Street - this Friday, August 26, 2011 from 5pm - 7pm. Bt|B2
I have also applied to show in various venues and/or be an Arfist in Residence during the ISEA conference in ABQ next year. And am putzing along on making a proposal to put Big Barbie in the Railyard Art Project, as well as making up a kickstarter.com page to gauge interest in the finishment of March Time once and for all Time.
But probably, it's not that simple...
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Humming Along
If y'all happens to be in the B.Area next Friday Aug 26, visit the civic center post office for a hummingbird mural opening by Johanna Poethig and bird music by, amongst ..., Chris Brown and Tim Perkis. We don't seem to be having anything like that here in the other white S.F. Just the usual runup to Injun Market:
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Restating the Obvious
A year, or two, later I hereby re-submit my proposal for the Dada Centennial. Go here and maybe add to the fun: http://www.etantdonnes.com/Dada100/
What if, for the 100th anniversary of Dada in 2015,
we did something completely different?
Still, of course, shocking to the burghers, who
now expect amusing shouts and excursions from Dadaistas.
But hasn't that already been done?
None of that neo-wheeo stuff we've all seen before, but rather,
something in keeping with the intent of the original.
What would it be?
Your mission, should you decide to accept, is to figure that out.
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