Towards Artificial Consciousness 291
jzoom555 writes "In an interview with Discover Magazine, Gerald Edelman, Nobel laureate and founder/director of The Neurosciences Institute, discusses the quality of consciousness and progress in building brain-based-devices. His lab recently published details on a brain model that is self-sustaining and 'has beta waves and gamma waves just like the regular cortex.'" Edelman's latest BBD contains a million simulated neurons and almost half a billion synapses, and is modeled on a cat's brain.
Uh-oh. (Score:5, Funny)
Eugene Izhikevitch [a mathematician at the Neurosciences Institute] and I have made a model with a million simulated neurons and almost half a billion synapses, all connected through neuronal anatomy equivalent to that of a cat brain. What we find, to our delight, is that it has intrinsic activity. Up until now our BBDs had activity only when they confronted the world, when they saw input signals. In between signals, they went dark. But this damn thing now fires on its own continually. The second thing is, it has beta waves and gamma waves just like the regular cortexâ"what you would see if you did an electroencephalogram. Third of all, it has a rest state. That is, when you donâ(TM)t stimulate it, the whole population of neurons stray back and forth, as has been described by scientists in human beings who arenâ(TM)t thinking of anything.
SKYCAT became self-aware on August 29th, 2009.
Re:How can you tell that something is conscious? (Score:4, Funny)
Now... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Slow takeoff. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Neat... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Neat... (Score:5, Funny)
except if the artificial intelligence is human-level then it will probably still get fed up with you
A Cat Brain (Score:4, Funny)
cool! Soon it will evolve to the point where it will ignore its owner and never make up its mind whether it wants to be inside or out.
Re:Why create a conscious AI? (Score:5, Funny)
Remember, computers are currently our tools. If we give them consciousness, would we then be treating them as slaves?
McDonald's employees have consciousness. How do we treat them?
Re:How can you tell that something is conscious? (Score:3, Funny)
One method they use is to put the virtual brain into a virtual body [bbc.co.uk] and watch what it does in virtual world. Personally I would like to see them install it on honda/sony robots and have them fight each other with cattle prods.
Re:Why create a conscious AI? (Score:4, Funny)
Kepp your machine away from me, I have a deal with my adult daughter that when the time comes she can put me in a home provided it has a cute nurse doing the sponge baths.
Re:Neat... (Score:1, Funny)
"Hey Robot! Sudo can you fix me some coffee"
Information overflow (Score:3, Funny)
If this proto-type-AI-dude gets out of control. Plug him into the Internet and he'll be experiencing Information overflow, and with some luck stuck revisiting p0nR-movies in a loop...
I doubt they have already taught it to filter out what is relevant information and what is not.
Re:Neat... (Score:3, Funny)
Turing test and SKYCAT (Score:2, Funny)