Comment on Supercomputer that simulates entire human brain will switch on in 2024

Mango@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  To actually simulate a brain you’d have to put its connections and weights in there and AFAIK that data simply doesn’t exist. Not even the connections.

  What this is is a computer capable of simulating neuronal nets of the size of the brain… and AFAIU only the synaptic network. There’s a hell a lot more going on in actual wetware, think neurotransmitters, plasticity, gene expression changing on the fly etc. To actually simulate a brain you’d either have to have a scan that’s rather inconceivable to get in the necessary detail, or you need to grow it virtually from virtual DNA, simulate the development of the whole body and an environment for it to develop properly as our genome expects environmental stimulus, a mould to grow in.

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  • 0ops@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s pretty much what I got from the article, that they managed to build a computer that theoretically has the horsepower to compare to a human brain, but specifically what they want to use it for was more vague in the article than the headline implies.

    Your last paragraph is spot on imo if they are going to straight-up simulate intelligence. People underestimate how much “training” we go through ourselves. Millions of years of evolution training our instincts encoded in dna + training through a body with dozens of senses (input data), that can manipulate itself and interact with the environment (output data) and observe the results (more input data) for at least a few years starting from embryo.

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    • barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Millions of years of evolution training our instincts encoded in dna

      Kinda OT regarding simulating something if you have the DNA, but evolution itself learned how to learn, it’s not just random chance: If you take the natural error rate during DNA transcription it’s quite high, error correction processes then take it down to practically nothing, and after that randomness is again introduced, in a controlled manner, to still allow mutations – our genome could in principle spit out clones with no mutations whatsoever but it doesn’t because being adaptive is beneficial for the species. That is, evolution is not a random walk through the possibilities, “throw shit at the wall and see what sticks”, but an algorithm deliberately employing randomness to introduce variety when it has reason to believe that it’s beneficial.

      And ironically evolutionary scientists don’t like to hear that, physiologists have a hard time getting through to them. “We don’t care whether that mechanism is theoretically unnecessary to explain that stuff evolves and adapts, it’s what’s happening in the actual body, here, have a microscope”. And while the genome using deliberate strategies to create mutations may indeed be strictly speaking unnecessary, from a computational POV it’s way more efficient: Makes no sense to fuck with mitochondrial DNA if your bird has trouble drinking nectar, better mess around with the beak.

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      • zzz@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That was… a very interesting thought experiment you just sent me on. I’d never considered this, but it immediately sounds plausible upon hearing it. Thanks for mentioning this “off topic” idea :D

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    • SineSwiper@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Which means this headline is extreme clickbait.

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  • prole@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    As soon as I saw the word “wetware” my mind started picturing all of this like some shit you’d see in a Cronenberg film lol

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    • Mango@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Haha, yep. My thoughts followed that same exact path while reading that.

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      • prole@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I, for one, look forward to our hideously deformed, puss-dripping, biological computer overlord

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  • Mango@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We’re on the same page it seems, but did you just quote Ex Machina?

    Now imagine you’re a brain that’s been properly scanned into this computer. What about your environment? Are they emulating your sensory input? There’s just so much about this that makes me expect the being to be suffering terribly.

    Relevant: youtu.be/0Gkhol2Q1og?si=QULzMbNN59hey8GF

    People like to dramatically simplify what they think is good or bad. A living being needs so very much more than just a sustained existence.

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• GONADS125@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I welcome the path towards singularity (not that any of us will likely be alive for it…).

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  • Mango@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I reject it entirely. People can’t get over what shape their genitals are. There’s no goddamn way we can trust anyone to be in charge of an entire emulated being, even with a large staff of people fretting over every detail with checks and balances in place.

    If I say I wanna die(and I do) I get an army of people telling me how stupid and wrong I am. “It gets better.” No it doesn’t. You wanna know why they reject my desire to die? It’s because what they want from me matters more than ethics to them. I’m not granted personal agency as an actual living being. How can we trust anyone when it’s “just a machine” and there’s power dynamics at hand? Political image leads people to keep downs syndrome people who self harm alive while they pretend for the camera that they’re providing a healthy fulfilling life for them.

    Nobody is ready for this.

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    • SCB@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Literally no one can stop you from killing yourself. You don’t require approval from anyone. I’m not sure why this makes you so angry.

      I tell people not to kill themselves because I am a former suicidal person who doesn’t want people to make a choice they cannot undo, not because I want anything from them. If you’re totally sold, it’s trivially easy to end your own life.

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      • cjsolx@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I’m Pretty sure they’re speaking hypothetically, as if they were the artificial brain.

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      • Mango@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        No it’s not. Success rate is shit even at the highest rates.

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    • Kedly@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Being able to chose your form and synthetically modify your body doesnt really change your ability to choose to keep living or not

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      • Mango@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        What part of that has literally anything to do with what I said?

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• tsonfeir@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Brain scans. It’s actually a person.

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