Lifeboat Foundation

For a humble, microscopic worm with only 302 neurons, C. elegans has had a lot of firsts. It was the first multicellular animal to have its whole genome sequenced. It was also the spark that lit the connectome fire—the revolutionary idea that mapping the entirety of connections among neurons will unveil secrets of our minds, memory, and consciousness. And if the connectomists are to be believed, a map of individual brains may be the blueprint that will one day hurtle AI into human-level intelligence, or reconstruct an entire human mind in digital form.

More than 30 years ago, a pioneering group of scientists painstakingly traced and reconstructed the roundworm’s neural wiring by hand. The “heroic” effort, unaided by modern computers and brain-mapping algorithms, resulted in the first connectome in 1986.

Yet the “mind of the worm” map had significant lapses. For one, it only focused on one sex, the hermaphrodite—a “female” equivalent that can self-fertilize. This makes it hard to tell which connections are universal for the species, and which are dependent on sex and reproduction. For another, because the effort relied entirely on human beings who get tired, bored, and mess up, the map wasn’t entirely accurate. Even with multiple rounds of subsequent refinements, errors could linger, which would royally screw up any interpretation of results using these maps.

Conventional computers need orders of magnitude more energy than the “computer” in our heads. Neural networks made of superconducting nanowires might come much closer to the real thing.

Law enforcement needs to be innovative and act now in order to keep face with near future criminal threats, warns ‘Do criminals dream of electric sheep’ paper.

Infusions of artificial intelligence (AI) are making robots smart, social, and capable of interacting with people of all ages in a variety of settings.

Lex Fridman, a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT AgeLab, had a conversation with Kai-Fu Lee on Chinese soul, Difference between cultures of AI engineering, Role of data in near-term impact of AI, Impact of AI on jobs, Facing mortality and other issues.

Lex Fridman, had a conversation with Kai-Fu Lee on Chinese soul, Difference between cultures of AI engineering, Role of data in near-term impact of AI, Impact of AI on jobs, Facing mortality.

“We’ve been keeping a very low profile, mostly intentionally,” said Doug Lenat, President and CEO of Cycorp. “No outside investments, no debts. We don’t write very many articles or go to conferences, but for the first time, we’re close to having this be applicable enough that we want to talk to you.”

IBM’s Watson and Apple’s Siri stirred up a hunger and awareness throughout the United States for something like a Star Trek computer that really worked — an artificially intelligent system that could receive instructions in plain, spoken language, make the appropriate inferences, and carry out its instructions without needing to have millions and millions of subroutines hard-coded into it.

As we’ve established, that stuff is very hard. But Cycorp’s goal is to codify general human knowledge and common sense so that computers might make use of it.

Robots are making their way into New York City’s restaurants.

A growing number of dining spots throughout town are using machines to prepare all manner of food and drink, in many cases replacing the employees who would normally handle the task. Think gizmos that can do everything from slice a sushi roll into eight uniform pieces to mix the perfect happy-hour cocktail.

I listened to the first hour. it takes time… and the right frame of mind, but it’s worth it.

Jeff Hawkins is the founder of Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience in 2002 and Numenta in 2005. In his 2004 book titled On Intelligence, and in his research before and after, he and his team have worked to reverse-engineer the neocortex and propose artificial intelligence architectures, approaches, and ideas that are inspired by the human brain. These ideas include Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) from 2004 and The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence from 2017. This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. Audio podcast version is available on https://lexfridman.com/ai/

Continue reading “Jeff Hawkins: Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence | Artificial Intelligence (AI) Podcast” »

Kenneth Cukier reviews “Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI,” a collection of essays edited by John Brockman.