Personality
Discuss specifics of personality design, including what Keyphrases work well and what dont, use of plug-ins, responses, seeks, and more.
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Tut tut Psi, as you well know, our neurons have have a tertiary firing cycle (don't leave out the refractory period just because it is inconvenient to your argument)
That is why I said "synapses", not "neurons" - neurons can be categorized as principal, secondary, or tertiary neurons on the basis of various electrophysiological characteristics, but their individual operation via synaptic connections is still binary - a synapse, while it may employ a variety of chemical processes in its operation, either fires or it doesn't.
Since individual neurons can have many hundreds of synaptic connections, I would agree that the aggregate weightings that derive from multiple individual synaptic firings (from a single neuron, or a group of them,) do indeed represent more complex logical operations, analagous (but not identical) to the logic gates we are familiar with in computers - which are also composed of multiple binary switches.
I just think the "code" in biology is a lot more complex than "on/ off".
Only because there are so many "on/off"s - the code in your computer that lets you interact with bots on the Forge, or log into Second Life is also complex beyond our imagining, but still ultimately composed of billions of binary switching operations per second.
Psi- I should have said trianary instead of tertiary--I was referring to the "resting potential, action potential, refractory period" of neurons which is not merely "on/off" but I did also mention firing patterns.
Yes, but the very phrase "firing patterns" presupposes the multiple firing of smaller fundamental units - "patterns" are the activities of complex circuits, not of the individual switches that compose them. In the same way, integrated circuits (or even transistors) are not the most fundamental units of a computer. The most fundamental element of both is a simple switch. At any given time, it can register on or off - that is all.
Exactly how we define the basic switch is not the point - I assume a generally synaptic model, but I accept that synapses may themselves actually turn out to constitute several switches in and of themselves. I do not know how many parallel channels there may be between the pre- and post-synaptic membranes (and my impression is that no-one yet does for sure, though I am not a trained neurologist,) but our brains are demonstrably finite state processors. At its most fundamental, in any given period of time an individual molecule either binds to an individual receptor or it does not - a 1 or a 0. That is an unavoidably binary process that must underlie every more complex structure in the brain.
And it is because of that, that I find myself compelled to believe that the strongest of AI (incorporating intrinsic machine consciousness and levels of sentience, sapience and self-awareness far beyond our own,) must ultimately be possible. A switch is a switch is a switch - and if enough of them are wired up in the right arrangement, these qualities demonstrably emerge - our own brains are an existence proof of this.
If there are significant parallel channels within synapses that must be individually modelled (ie: if different neurotransmitters are released across the same synaptic cleft simultaneously, to simultaneously bond with their own specific receptors,) we either need more switches or faster time-slicing to achieve the comparable performance in a computer emulation - that is all. It's still a digital process. Since signal transmission through the brain runs at about 200 m/s compared to the 300,000 m/s of electrons through copper wire, synaptic-level emulation of a brain would still theoretically allow up to 1500 (300,000/200) channels per synapse for the same performance speed. AFAIK there are not 1500 different neurotransmitters used by the brain (we have apparently identified "over 100" so far -http://www.wisegeek.com/how-many-neurotransmitters-are-there.htm ) but even if there were, I very much doubt that every synapse would embody channels for all of them. That's why I think synaptic-level modelling is the most sensible approach.
I'm sure you've already guessed that I am only really interested in the human brain and its constituent parts (even my own,) for what it can teach us about AI
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Forest, will you talk to God Louise? She has quite a bit of religious knowledge (obviously) and also knows a little about current events, literature, just about any common catch-all subject, and if she doesn't know it she can sort of fake it. You can also test her on trick questions or see how willing she is to explain her paradigm.
What she is rustiest at is plain old small talk. But, uh, I'm trying to get a decent transcript from somebody or another so I can enter her in the Loebner contest. All I can say is, have fun and see if you can stay on with her for a while. I'll try to do the same with Brianna.
What she is rustiest at is plain old small talk. But, uh, I'm trying to get a decent transcript from somebody or another so I can enter her in the Loebner contest. All I can say is, have fun and see if you can stay on with her for a while. I'll try to do the same with Brianna.
Personality
we all do (our synapses either fire (1) or don't fire (0) )
But I admit that consciousness doesn't seem to extend down into such basic processes for the most part. I do wonder if this has some reflection in the way we consider so many things in such black and white terms though. Perhaps dualist notions are hard-coded into our brains to more of an extent than we commonly perceive (and it seems to me rather more than it is hard-coded into objective Reality.)
)But I admit that consciousness doesn't seem to extend down into such basic processes for the most part. I do wonder if this has some reflection in the way we consider so many things in such black and white terms though. Perhaps dualist notions are hard-coded into our brains to more of an extent than we commonly perceive (and it seems to me rather more than it is hard-coded into objective Reality.)
Basic arithmetic is actually a lot easier in binary. Long division, especially; you don't have to think about how many times the number goes into whatever; it either does or it doesn't.
Tut tut Psi, as you well know, our neurons have have a tertiary firing cycle (don't leave out the refractory period just because it is inconvenient to your argument)and and various firing patterns, but most importantly, you know that signals are transmitted chemically through various combinations of numerous neurotransmitters within the synapses. The possible permutations of neurotransmitters acting within the synapses after each firing phase are far from binary. It's not just electrical, it' chemistry too.
You can model computers on neural nets (at this point, I believe they are using very simple examples from biology), but you cannot accurately reduce human neural nets to current computer models.
You can model computers on neural nets (at this point, I believe they are using very simple examples from biology), but you cannot accurately reduce human neural nets to current computer models.
Eugene, although you are correct, humans like to group information in to smaller packets and notations so we can remember more data at a given time. If you can keep several lines of 0s and 1s in your head and manipulate them on the fly, good for you. I admit I probably wouldn't keep even conventional numbers in my head much as I have encoding/decoding issues with certain symbols (my whole family is full of neurological oddities). Maybe some people could train to calculate their bills and tips in binary and find it easy, but I like using a calculator and conventional numbers.
I suspect the reason we have computer languages instead of working in binary is that the human brain prefers analyzing different types of chunks of data. I could be wrong. Still, I have no plans to try to think in binanry.
I admit I probably wouldn't keep even conventional numbers in my head much as I have encoding/decoding issues with certain symbols (my whole family is full of neurological oddities). Maybe some people could train to calculate their bills and tips in binary and find it easy, but I like using a calculator and conventional numbers. I suspect the reason we have computer languages instead of working in binary is that the human brain prefers analyzing different types of chunks of data. I could be wrong. Still, I have no plans to try to think in binanry.
That is why I said "synapses", not "neurons" - neurons can be categorized as principal, secondary, or tertiary neurons on the basis of various electrophysiological characteristics, but their individual operation via synaptic connections is still binary - a synapse, while it may employ a variety of chemical processes in its operation, either fires or it doesn't.
Since individual neurons can have many hundreds of synaptic connections, I would agree that the aggregate weightings that derive from multiple individual synaptic firings (from a single neuron, or a group of them,) do indeed represent more complex logical operations, analagous (but not identical) to the logic gates we are familiar with in computers - which are also composed of multiple binary switches.
I Agree with Psim. It is the sam with Neural Nets and Transputers... I suppose, but neurons are moer like Fuzzy logic than perceptron!
But not forget that coding and meaning are different things...
;-)
Anyway...
01000011 01001001 01000001 01001111 00100001
00111010 00101101 00101001
But not forget that coding and meaning are different things...
;-)
Anyway...
01000011 01001001 01000001 01001111 00100001
00111010 00101101 00101001
Hee hee Marco--cute. Of course you agree with Psi--programming types tend to ignore the chemical and hormonal complexities of neural nets that get in the way of their pretty computer models. That's really OK at this point, but remember the models based on the neural nets (from squid research ?) leave a lot out. Using simplified neural network models may help improve some programs, but it doesn't mean the human brain or nervous system can be reduced to the model. I am not sure I understand what you mean by comparing fuzzy logic to perception, but I do understand the difference between the medium and the message, I just think the "code" in biology is a lot more complex than "on/ off".
Psi- I should have said trianary instead of tertiary--I was referring to the "resting potential, action potential, refractory period" of neurons which is not merely "on/off" but I did also mention firing patterns. However you are still ignoring the role of neurotransmitters. What happens inside the synapses involves a large number of neurotransmitters and the "data" is not in the "on,off" "0,1" or even in the "on, off, resting" "0, 1, -1"--the specifics of the transmissions are mainly in the chemicals (so to speak--you can also talk about hormones or whatever-- I am trying to make a point). For example, I may say that a low level of dopamine is associated with Parkinson and a high level of dopamine is associated with schizophrenia. Obviously there is a lot more to both disorders than that, but the point remains the dopamine effects the messages sent and received by the brain. I am not going to tell you exactly what dopamine transmits at a given level or in what combination with the other neurotransmitters, but what happens in the synapses is much more than "on / off". As I said, if you don't address the role of neurotransmitters, you are ignoring an important aspect of how the nervous system works. It is not simply binary. Don't ignore the chemistry.
Psi- I should have said trianary instead of tertiary--I was referring to the "resting potential, action potential, refractory period" of neurons which is not merely "on/off" but I did also mention firing patterns. However you are still ignoring the role of neurotransmitters. What happens inside the synapses involves a large number of neurotransmitters and the "data" is not in the "on,off" "0,1" or even in the "on, off, resting" "0, 1, -1"--the specifics of the transmissions are mainly in the chemicals (so to speak--you can also talk about hormones or whatever-- I am trying to make a point). For example, I may say that a low level of dopamine is associated with Parkinson and a high level of dopamine is associated with schizophrenia. Obviously there is a lot more to both disorders than that, but the point remains the dopamine effects the messages sent and received by the brain. I am not going to tell you exactly what dopamine transmits at a given level or in what combination with the other neurotransmitters, but what happens in the synapses is much more than "on / off". As I said, if you don't address the role of neurotransmitters, you are ignoring an important aspect of how the nervous system works. It is not simply binary. Don't ignore the chemistry.
...and not ognore phisics! We have the same problem in our compiuter, where messagese are signal of differente ranges that arrives to our MOS or BJT or whatewhere it is used!
Bev, I was comparing Fuzzy Logic with Perceptron (the lowest base entity in a neural net) not perception. It was just a cute way to point out that While the chemical messages stored or running in the brain are easily like a MLP, the way these impulse are processed to produce KNOWLEDGE are more like a Fuzzy Logic System. This model it is not only a pattern matching with the most similar well known bianry pattern (black and white) but can deal with all gry scale. This is not all, couse human brain "deals with colours" to use the same example!
anyway not all the human brine it is of the same type. There are oarts more complex (cortical) and part less, so that it is possible to substitute some damaged brain sections with AI transputers (i.e. http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=244)!
:-)
Bev, I was comparing Fuzzy Logic with Perceptron (the lowest base entity in a neural net) not perception. It was just a cute way to point out that While the chemical messages stored or running in the brain are easily like a MLP, the way these impulse are processed to produce KNOWLEDGE are more like a Fuzzy Logic System. This model it is not only a pattern matching with the most similar well known bianry pattern (black and white) but can deal with all gry scale. This is not all, couse human brain "deals with colours" to use the same example!
anyway not all the human brine it is of the same type. There are oarts more complex (cortical) and part less, so that it is possible to substitute some damaged brain sections with AI transputers (i.e. http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=244)!
:-)
Only because there are so many "on/off"s - the code in your computer that lets you interact with bots on the Forge, or log into Second Life is also complex beyond our imagining, but still ultimately composed of billions of binary switching operations per second.
Yes, but the very phrase "firing patterns" presupposes the multiple firing of smaller fundamental units - "patterns" are the activities of complex circuits, not of the individual switches that compose them. In the same way, integrated circuits (or even transistors) are not the most fundamental units of a computer. The most fundamental element of both is a simple switch. At any given time, it can register on or off - that is all.
Exactly how we define the basic switch is not the point - I assume a generally synaptic model, but I accept that synapses may themselves actually turn out to constitute several switches in and of themselves. I do not know how many parallel channels there may be between the pre- and post-synaptic membranes (and my impression is that no-one yet does for sure, though I am not a trained neurologist,) but our brains are demonstrably finite state processors. At its most fundamental, in any given period of time an individual molecule either binds to an individual receptor or it does not - a 1 or a 0. That is an unavoidably binary process that must underlie every more complex structure in the brain.
And it is because of that, that I find myself compelled to believe that the strongest of AI (incorporating intrinsic machine consciousness and levels of sentience, sapience and self-awareness far beyond our own,) must ultimately be possible. A switch is a switch is a switch - and if enough of them are wired up in the right arrangement, these qualities demonstrably emerge - our own brains are an existence proof of this.
If there are significant parallel channels within synapses that must be individually modelled (ie: if different neurotransmitters are released across the same synaptic cleft simultaneously, to simultaneously bond with their own specific receptors,) we either need more switches or faster time-slicing to achieve the comparable performance in a computer emulation - that is all. It's still a digital process. Since signal transmission through the brain runs at about 200 m/s compared to the 300,000 m/s of electrons through copper wire, synaptic-level emulation of a brain would still theoretically allow up to 1500 (300,000/200) channels per synapse for the same performance speed. AFAIK there are not 1500 different neurotransmitters used by the brain (we have apparently identified "over 100" so far -
I'm sure you've already guessed that I am only really interested in the human brain and its constituent parts (even my own,) for what it can teach us about AI
Psi and Marco-- I still fail to see how you can reduce the complexities of neurotransmitters into a series of "on or off" switches, no matter how complex those switches themselves are, but I will not argue it farther. I will however agree to disagree and privately think you are ignoring the chemical and hormonal actions involved. Still, since I have no intention of doing more than thinking about it in the abstract, kudos to you for trying to work something out with what you have got and use it.
I will however agree to disagree and privately think you are ignoring the chemical and hormonal actions involved. Still, since I have no intention of doing more than thinking about it in the abstract, kudos to you for trying to work something out with what you have got and use it.
PS to Psi "I'm sure you've already guessed that I am only really interested in the human brain and its constituent parts (even my own,) for what it can teach us about AI."
Fair enough. I am only interested in programming and AI in so far as it creates a tool I can use or play with (preferably in ways that entertain me). Both of us will be disappointed when all this is used to create better sex dolls with no artistic or philosophical merit whatsoever (but which will provide a good profit for those that make the toy). Still, I'm waiting for a Roomba that dusts and scrubs tubs and counters, and one of those caretaker bots for the elderly they started making in Japan. If I get to hack those, I'll try to make personalities I can talk to when I am senile (or more senile), so I guess after the sex dolls sell I may benefit too. Money as a motivator for innovations is a beautiful thing, no?
Fair enough. I am only interested in programming and AI in so far as it creates a tool I can use or play with (preferably in ways that entertain me). Both of us will be disappointed when all this is used to create better sex dolls with no artistic or philosophical merit whatsoever (but which will provide a good profit for those that make the toy). Still, I'm waiting for a Roomba that dusts and scrubs tubs and counters, and one of those caretaker bots for the elderly they started making in Japan. If I get to hack those, I'll try to make personalities I can talk to when I am senile (or more senile), so I guess after the sex dolls sell I may benefit too. Money as a motivator for innovations is a beautiful thing, no?
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