Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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MIT Computer Model Equals Brain At Rapid Categorization
« on: 2007-04-04 02:55:10 » |
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[Blunderov] Very soon now we will have Dualism at bay. All your neurons are belong to us!
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/004165.html
April 03, 2007
MIT Computer Model Equals Brain At Rapid Categorization
Here's one of the pieces needed to create an artificial intelligence.
Now, in a new MIT study, a computer model designed to mimic the way the brain itself processes visual information performs as well as humans do on rapid categorization tasks. The model even tends to make similar errors as humans, possibly because it so closely follows the organization of the brain's visual system.
"We created a model that takes into account a host of quantitative anatomical and physiological data about visual cortex and tries to simulate what happens in the first 100 milliseconds or so after we see an object," explained senior author Tomaso Poggio of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. "This is the first time a model has been able to reproduce human behavior on that kind of task." The study, issued on line in advance of the April 10, 2007 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), stems from a collaboration between computational neuroscientists in Poggio's lab and Aude Oliva, a cognitive neuroscientist in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
This new study supports a long–held hypothesis that rapid categorization happens without any feedback from cognitive or other areas of the brain. The results also indicate that the model can help neuroscientists make predictions and drive new experiments to explore brain mechanisms involved in human visual perception, cognition, and behavior. Deciphering the relative contribution of feed-forward and feedback processing may eventually help explain neuropsychological disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. The model also bridges the gap between the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and neuroscience because it may lead to better artificial vision systems and augmented sensory prostheses.
I am expecting artificial intelligence to come as a result of work by computer scientists to emulate each function that brains do. AI will emerge from putting together lots of models of subsystems that do various functions that the brain performs.
The development of true AI will likely shake up religious believers most of all. If a computer can think like a human the obvious implication is that human thinking not by itself evidence for a soul. If a machine can think as well as a human then why should we expect humans to have souls? I'm not saying there isn't an answer to that question. My point is that the question will become important once we achieve AI.
By Randall Parker at 2007 April 03 10:25 PM
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