Tim Tyler: Against whole brain emulation

A video discussing the viability of plans to construct intelligent machines by using techniques based on whole brain emulation.

Transcript: http://alife.co.uk/essays/against_whole_brain_emulation/

See also, my "On uploads" video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5myjWld1qN0

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• whole
• brain
• emulation

[particleion]

I completely agree that we not want to approach the creation of Ai through whole brain simulation... Yet when I view the possibility of IBM reaching a whole brain simulation first then we find our self with the possibility of "evil" corporation scenario!! I have contact Henry markram, in an attempt to ask if IBM would take the neuron simulation into a opensource distributive platfom.. Similiar to folding @ home yet with brain simulation...

[tmtyler]

IBM's effort is a publicity stunt. It seems stupid to me - reflecting very poorly on IBM - a company which I usually like a lot. However, their brain emulation efforts seem to be idiotic. Surely no real geeks are impressed. After all, the emulations are useless.

[darris321]

how do you feel about it for immortality?

I would like the idea for people to have their brains backed up on a computer.

[dhasenan]

WBE is an interesting way to get a *quick* working AI, without safety in an absolute sense but with much more safety than an arbitrary de novo AI (paperclip maximizer, or more realistically, a Hibbardian smile generator). It also gives an upgrade path whereby you can replace some subsystem when you think you have a better version, or rearchitect without rewriting everything. It also gives a more testable baseline for comparing other AIs.

Also, it's a cure for dying.

[XanaduZune]

I think simulating the brain's entire structure is very stupid and a farce. Even if you could do it perfectly, you STILL wouldn't understand at all how intelligence works!!! You would also have no ability to improve upon human intelligence! It seems everyone is avoiding trying to understand how to create true intelligence, when that was the whole point of AI in the first place. They mapped the human genome and they can copy it, but they don't know how DNA coding works.

[particleion]

@tmtyler I would not say it's completely useless, Once complete it may give us some insight into how a the stimuli converts brain activity in real time... Though its end usefullness may not be in the simulated brain itself but the ideas it inspires withing the Ai community.

[MarzioBalducci82]

i remember an asimov novel where the doc used an autistic brain to move a robot

[jjsajd]

This is a straw-man which is essentially a lot of rhetoric with no real argumentation. Brain emulation has its uses and actually there is a huge amount of money put into it. A little self education would go a long way.