Neuroscience – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Dec 7
2010

Rethinking Education to Build Better Learners — Naveen Jain

My generation was the last one to learn to use a slide rule in school. Today that skill is totally obsolete. So is the ability to identify the Soviet Socialist Republics on a map, the ability to write an operation in FORTAN, or how to drive a car with a standard transmission.

We live in a world of instant access to information and where technology is making exponential advances in synthetic biology, nanotechnology, genetics, robotics, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. In this world, we should not be focused on improving the classrooms but should be devoting resources to improving the brains that the students bring to that classroom.

To prepare students for this high-velocity, high-technology world the most valuable skill we can teach them is to be better learners so they can leap from one technological wave to the next. That means education should not be about modifying the core curricula of our schools but should be about building better learners by enhancing each student’s neural capacities and motivation for life-long learning.

Less than two decades ago this concept would have been inconceivable. We used to think that brain anatomy (and hence learning capacity) was fixed at birth. But recent breakthroughs in the neuroscience of learning have demonstrated that this view is fundamentally wrong.

In the past few decades, neuroscience research has demonstrated that, contrary to popular belief, the brain is not static. Rather, it is highly modifiable (“plastic”) throughout life, and this remarkable “neuroplasticity” is primarily experience-dependent. Neuroplasticity research shows that the brain changes its very structure with each different activity it performs, perfecting its circuits so it is better suited to the task at hand. Neurological capacities and competencies are both measurable and significantly consequential to educational outcomes.

This means that the neural capacities that form the building blocks for learning  attention & focus, memory, prediction & modeling, processing speed, spatial skills, and executive functioning  can be improved throughout life through training. Just as physical exercise is a well-known and well-accepted means to improve health for anyone, regardless of age or background, so too can the brain be put “into shape” for optimal learning.

If any of these neural capacities are enhanced, you would see significant improvements in a person’s ability to understand and master new situations.

While these basic neural capacities are well known by scientists and clinicians today, they are rarely used to develop students into better learners by schools, teachers or parents. There is too little awareness and too few tools available for enhancing a student’s capacity and ability to learn. The failure to focus on optimizing each student’s neural capacities for learning is resulting in widespread failure of the educational systems, particularly for the underprivileged.

Gone are the days when you could equip students with slide rules and a core of knowledge and skills and expect them to achieve greatness. Our children already inhabit a world where new game platforms and killer apps appear and are surpassed in dizzying profusion and speed. They are already adapting to the dynamics of the 21st century. But we can help them adapt more methodically and systematically by focusing our attention on improving their capacity to learn throughout their lives.

This far-reaching and potentially revolutionary conclusion is based on recent research breakthroughs and thus may be contrary to the past beliefs of many teachers, administrators, parents and students, who have historically emphasized classroom size and curriculum as the key to improved learning.

Just as new knowledge and understanding is revolutionizing the way we communicate, trade, or practice medicine so too must it transform the way we learn. For students, that revolution is already well under way but it’s happening outside of their schools. We owe it to them to equip them with all the capabilities they’ll need to thrive in the limitless world beyond the classroom.

I believe that while it’s important to leave better country for our children, it’s more important that we leave better children for our country.

Naveen Jain is a philanthropist, entrepreneur and technology pioneer. He is a founder and CEO of Intelius, a Seattle-based company that empowers consumers with information to make intelligent decisions about personal safety and security. Prior to Intelius, Naveen Jain founded InfoSpace and took it public in 1998 on NASDAQ. Naveen Jain has been awarded many honors for his entrepreneurial successes and leadership skills including “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year”, “Albert Einstein Technology Medal” for pioneers in technology, “Top 20 Entrepreneurs” by Red Herring, “Six People Who Will Change the Internet” by Information Week, among other honors.

Nov 19
2010

Stoic Philosophy and Human Immortality

The Stoic philosophical school shares several ideas with modern attempts at prolonging human lifespan. The Stoics believed in a non-dualistic, deterministic paradigm, where logic and reason formed part of their everyday life. The aim was to attain virtue, taken to mean human excellence.

I have recently described a model specifically referring to indefinite lifespans, where human biological immortality is a necessary and inevitable consequence of natural evolution (for details see www.elpistheory.info and for a comprehensive summary see http://cid-3d83391d98a0f83a.office.live.com/browse.aspx/Immo…=155370157).

This model is based on a deterministic, non-dualistic approach, described by the laws of Chaos theory (dynamical systems) and suggests that, in order to accelerate the natural transition from human evolution by natural selection to a post-Darwinian domain (where indefinite lifespans are the norm) , it is necessary to lead a life of constant intellectual stimulation, innovation and avoidance of routine (see http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/rej.2005.8.96?journalCode=rej and http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/rej.2009.0996) i.e. to seek human virtue (excellence, brilliance, and wisdom, as opposed to mediocrity and routine). The search for intellectual excellence increases neural inputs which effect epigenetic changes that can up-regulate age repair mechanisms.

Thus it is possible to conciliate the Stoic ideas with the processes that lead to both technological and developmental Singularities, using approaches that are deeply embedded in human nature and transcend time.

Apr 18
2010

Ray Kurzweil to keynote “H+ Summit @ Harvard — The Rise Of The Citizen Scientist”

With our growing resources, the Lifeboat Foundation has teamed with the Singularity Hub as Media Sponsors for the 2010 Humanity+ Summit. If you have suggestions on future events that we should sponsor, please contact [email protected].

The summer 2010 “Humanity+ @ Harvard — The Rise Of The Citizen Scientist” conference is being held, after the inaugural conference in Los Angeles in December 2009, on the East Coast, at Harvard University’s prestigious Science Hall on June 12–13. Futurist, inventor, and author of the NYT bestselling book “The Singularity Is Near”, Ray Kurzweil is going to be keynote speaker of the conference.

Also speaking at the H+ Summit @ Harvard is Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge, UK, and is the Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation, a California-based charity dedicated to combating the aging process. His talk, “Hype and anti-hype in academic biogerontology research: a call to action”, will analyze the interplay of over-pessimistic and over-optimistic positions with regards of research and development of cures, and propose solutions to alleviate the negative effects of both.

The theme is “The Rise Of The Citizen Scientist”, as illustrated in his talk by Alex Lightman, Executive Director of Humanity+:

“Knowledge may be expanding exponentially, but the current rate of civilizational learning and institutional upgrading is still far too slow in the century of peak oil, peak uranium, and ‘peak everything’. Humanity needs to gather vastly more data as part of ever larger and more widespread scientific experiments, and make science and technology flourish in streets, fields, and homes as well as in university and corporate laboratories.”

Humanity+ Summit @ Harvard is an unmissable event for everyone who is interested in the evolution of the rapidly changing human condition, and the impact of accelerating technological change on the daily lives of individuals, and on our society as a whole. Tickets start at only $150, with an additional 50% discount for students registering with the coupon STUDENTDISCOUNT (valid student ID required at the time of admission).

With over 40 speakers, and 50 sessions in two jam packed days, the attendees, and the speakers will have many opportunities to interact, and discuss, complementing the conference with the necessary networking component.

Other speakers already listed on the H+ Summit program page include:

David Orban, Chairman of Humanity+: “Intelligence Augmentation, Decision Power, And The Emerging Data Sphere”
Heather Knight, CTO of Humanity+: “Why Robots Need to Spend More Time in the Limelight”
Andrew Hessel, Co-Chair at Singularity University: “Altered Carbon: The Emerging Biological Diamond Age”
M. A. Greenstein, Art Center College of Design: “Sparking our Neural Humanity with Neurotech!”
Michael Smolens, CEO of dotSUB: “Removing language as a barrier to cross cultural communication”

New speakers will be announced in rapid succession, rounding out a schedule that is guaranteed to inform, intrigue, stimulate and provoke, in moving ahead our planetary understanding of the evolution of the human condition!

H+ Summit @ Harvard — The Rise Of The Citizen Scientist
June 12–13, Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

You can register at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/648806598/friendsofhplus/4141206940.

Mar 12
2010

Reduction of human intelligence as global risk

Another risk is loss of human rationality, while preserving human life. In a society there are always so many people with limited cognitive abilities, and most of the achievements are made by a small number of talented people. Genetic and social degradation, reducing the level of education, loss of skills of logic can lead to a temporary decrease in intelligence of individual groups of people. But as long as humanity is very large in population, it is not so bad, because there will always be enough intelligent people. Significant drop in population after nonglobal disaster may exacerbate this problem. And the low intelligence of the remaining people will reduce their chances of survival. Of course, one can imagine such an absurd situation that people are so degraded that by the evolutionary path new species arise from us, which is not having a full-fledged intelligence — and that back then this kind of evolving reasonable, developed a new intelligence.
More dangerous is decline of intelligence because of the spread of technological contaminants (or use of a certain weapon). For example, I should mention constantly growing global arsenic contamination, which is used in various technological processes. Sergio Dani wrote about this in his article “Gold, coal and oil.” http://sosarsenic.blogspot.com/2009/11/gold-coal-and-oil-reg…is-of.html, http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877 (09) 00666–5/abstract
Disengaged during the extraction of gold mines in the arsenic remains in the biosphere for millennia. Dani binds arsenic with Alzheimer’s disease. In his another paper is demonstrated that increasing concentrations of arsenic leads to an exponential increase in incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. He believes that people are particularly vulnerable to arsenic poisoning, as they have large brains and longevity. If, however, according to Denis, in the course of evolution, people will adapt to high levels of arsenic, it will lead to a decline in the brain and life expectancy, resulting in the intellect of people will be lost.
In addition to arsenic contamination occurs among many other neurotoxic substances — CO, CO2, methane, benzene, dioxin, mercury, lead, etc. Although the level of pollution by each of them separately is below health standards, the sum of the impacts may be larger. One reason for the fall of the Roman Empire was called the total poisoning of its citizens (though not barbarians) of lead from water pipes. Of course, they could not have knowledge about these remote and unforeseen consequences — but we also may not know about the many consequences of our affairs.
In addition to dementia is alcohol and most drugs, many drugs (eg, side effect in the accompanying sheets of mixtures of heartburn called dementia). Also rigid ideological system, or memes.
Number of infections, particularly prion, also leads to dementia.
Despite this, the average IQ of people is growing as life expectancy.

Aug 17
2009

A lifeboat for consciousness

I recently began to worry that something/someone, some field, force, disease, prion, virus, bad luck and/or natural causes could threaten and perhaps destroy the most valuable entity in the universe, an entity more valuable than life itself. Consciousness. What good is life extension without conscious awareness? What is consciousness?

We know the brain works a lot like a computer, with neuron firings and synapses acting like bit states and switches. Brain-as-computer works very well to account for sensory processing, control of behavior, learning and other cognitive functions. These functions may in some cases be non-conscious, and other times associated with conscious experience and control. Scientists seek the distinction – the essential feature, or trick for consciousness.

Some suggest there is no trick, consciousness emerges as a by-product of cognitive computation among neurons. Others say we don’t know, that consciousness may indeed require some feature related to, but not quite the same as neuron-to-neuron cognition.

In either case, humans and other creatures could in principle become devoid of consciousness while maintaining cognitive behaviors, appearing more-or-less normal to outside observers. Such hypothetical non-conscious behaving entities are referred to in literature, films and philosophical texts as ‘zombies’. Philosopher David Chalmers introduced the philosophical zombie, a test case for whether or not consciousness is distinct from cognitive neurocomputation.

I’ve studied and researched consciousness for over 35 years, and work as an anesthesiologist, erasing and restoring consciousness several times per day for surgery. Patients under anesthesia are not zombies. They lack consciousness but also lack cognition. On the other hand, for a very brief period after first emerging from anesthesia following surgery, my patients seem like zombies, behaving purposely but blankly. Like in the old song “She’s not there” by…..The Zombies.

During a routine surgery recently, one of the nurses was talking about a book called ‘Patient Zero’ in which a terrorist group turned people into zombies the terrorists were then able to control. I later discovered there exists an entire genre of zombie terror books and films (‘Invasion of the body snatchers’ being perhaps the original). Could it be possible? How could we protect ourselves from consciousness-snatchers who want to turn us into zombies? Well, we need to understand what consciousness is (but, so do ‘they’).

We do know consciousness correlates with a particular coherent EEG gamma synchrony. Somehow selectively blocking EEG brain-wide coherence while sparing neuron-to-neuron computation and cognition could conceivably erase consciousness. But I would bet on an even more subtle and profound feature or trick. For example I personally believe (with Sir Roger Penrose) that consciousness involves quantum computations in microtubules inside brain neurons.

Microtubules are the major structural component of the neuronal cytoskeleton whose disruption is an essential feature of Alzheimers disease. Microtubules dynamically organize intra-neuronal and synaptic activities, conduct signals, have collective vibrational and electromagnetic modes and quite possibly mesoscopic quantum states. Motor proteins and biomolecular agents traverse and interact with microtubules.

I became obsessed with microtubules in medical school in the early 1970s. Their cylindrical lattice structure of ‘tubulin’ protein subunits looked to me like a computing switching circuit. Through the 1980s, colleagues and I developed models of microtubule information processing in which states of tubulin subunits were bits interacting with lattice neighbor tubulins. With about 10⁷ (10 to the seventh) tubulins per neuron switching at 10^−9 seconds, we calculated a potential for 10¹⁶ operations per second in each neuron. This was, and remains unpopular in AI/Singularity circles because it potentially pushes the goalpost for brain capacity significantly. Recent evidence has shown collective microtubule excitations at 10^−7 seconds (rather than the 10^−9 seconds we assumed), indicating a neuronal information capacity of ‘only’ 10¹⁴ operations per second.

But here’s the really good news. Microtubules self-assemble. With proper conditions tubulins polymerize into microtubules, and with associated proteins into networks of cross-linked microtubules. In principle, tubulin and other necessary proteins can be genetically mass-produced, and then self-assemble into large arrays. If microtubules process molecular-scale information (quantum or classical), appropriate arrays of microtubules could serve as a repository of consciousness — a ‘Lifeboat’.

These could be useful. Evil forces aside, consciousness-snatchers include aging, disease and death. In 1987 I wrote a book about microtubule information processing based entirely on classical (non-quantum) processes. The brief, concluding chapter considered arrays of microtubules as orbiting consciousness Lifeboats. It foreshadowed the Singularity, and in retrospect also applies to quantum processes. The chapter follows below. And we should understand consciousness not just to preserve it, but to enhance it in any way possible.

From
Ultimate computing: Biomolecular consciousness and nanotechnology
Elsevier, 1987
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/ultimatecomputing.html

11 The Future of Consciousness

Nanotechnology may enable the dream of Mind/Tech merger to materialize. At long last, debates about the nature of consciousness will move from the domain of philosophy to large scale experiments. The visions of consciousness interfacing with, or existing within, computers or mind piloted robots expressed by Moravec, Margulis, Sagan and Max Headroom could be realized. Symbiotic association of replicative nanodevices and cytoskeletal networks within living cells could not only counter disease processes, but lead to exchange of information encoded in the collective dynamic patterns of cytoskeletal subunit states. If these are indeed the roots of consciousness, a science fiction-like deciphering and transfer of mind content may become possible. One possible scenario could utilize a small window in a specific brain region. Hippocampal temporal lobe, a site where memories enter and where electromagnetic radiation from outside the skull penetrates most readily and harmlessly, is one possible area where information distributed throughout the brain may perhaps be accessed and manipulated. Techniques such as laser interferometry, electroacoustical probes scanned over brain surfaces, or replicative nanoprobes immunotargeted to key hippocampal tubulins, MAPs, and other cytoskeletal components might be developed to perceive and transmit the content of consciousness.

What technological device would be capable of receiving and housing the information emanating from some 10¹⁵ tubulin subunits changing state some 10⁹ times per second? One possibility is a customized array of nanoscale automata, perhaps utilizing superconducting materials. Another possibility is a genetically engineered array of some 10¹⁵ tubulin subunits (or many more) assembled into parallel tensegrity arrays of interconnected microtubules, and other cytoskeletal structures. Current and near future genetic engineering capabilities should enable isolation of genes responsible for a specific individual’s brain cytoskeletal proteins, and reconstitution in an appropriate medium. Thus the two evident sources of mind content (heredity and experience) may be eventually reunited in an artificial consciousness environment. A polymerized cytoskeletal array would be highly unstable and dependent on biochemical, hormonal, and pharmacological maintenance of its medium. Precise monitoring and control of cytoskeletal consciousness environments may become an important new branch of anesthesiology. Polymerization of cell-free cytoskeletal lattices would be limited in size (and potential intellect) due to gravitational collapse. Possible remedies might include hybridizing the cytoskeletal array by metal deposition, symbiosis with synthetic nanoreplicators, or placement of the cytoskeletal array in a zero gravity environment. Perhaps future consciousness vaults will be constructed in orbiting space stations or satellites. People with terminal illnesses may choose to deposit their mind in such a place, where their consciousness can exist indefinitely, and (because of enhanced cooperative resonance) in a far greater magnitude. Perhaps many minds can comingle in a single large array, obviating loneliness, but raising new sociopolitical issues. Entertainment, earth communication, and biochemical mood and maintenance can be supplied by robotics, perhaps leading to the next symbiosis-robotic space voyagers (shaped like centrioles?) whose intelligence is derived from cytoskeletal consciousness.

Yes, this is science fiction. Will it become reality like so much previous science fiction has? Probably not precisely as suggested; but if past events are valid indicators, the future of consciousness may be even more outrageous.

Jul 23
2009

Artificial brain ’10 years away’

By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News, Oxford

A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed.

Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain.

He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses.

Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said.

“It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,” he said.

“And if we do succeed, we will send a hologram to TED to talk.”

‘Shared fabric’

The Blue Brain project was launched in 2005 and aims to reverse engineer the mammalian brain from laboratory data.

In particular, his team has focused on the neocortical column — repetitive units of the mammalian brain known as the neocortex.

The team are trying to reverse engineer the brain

“It’s a new brain,” he explained. “The mammals needed it because they had to cope with parenthood, social interactions complex cognitive functions.

“It was so successful an evolution from mouse to man it expanded about a thousand fold in terms of the numbers of units to produce this almost frightening organ.”

And that evolution continues, he said. “It is evolving at an enormous speed.”

Over the last 15 years, Professor Markram and his team have picked apart the structure of the neocortical column.

“It’s a bit like going and cataloguing a bit of the rainforest — how may trees does it have, what shape are the trees, how many of each type of tree do we have, what is the position of the trees,” he said.

“But it is a bit more than cataloguing because you have to describe and discover all the rules of communication, the rules of connectivity.”

The project now has a software model of “tens of thousands” of neurons — each one of which is different — which has allowed them to digitally construct an artificial neocortical column.

Although each neuron is unique, the team has found the patterns of circuitry in different brains have common patterns.

“Even though your brain may be smaller, bigger, may have different morphologies of neurons — we do actually share the same fabric,” he said.

“And we think this is species specific, which could explain why we can’t communicate across species.”

World view

To make the model come alive, the team feeds the models and a few algorithms into a supercomputer.

“You need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron,” he said. “So you need ten thousand laptops.”

Computer-generated image of a human brain

The research could give insights into brain disease

Instead, he uses an IBM Blue Gene machine with 10,000 processors.

Simulations have started to give the researchers clues about how the brain works.

For example, they can show the brain a picture — say, of a flower — and follow the electrical activity in the machine.

“You excite the system and it actually creates its own representation,” he said.

Ultimately, the aim would be to extract that representation and project it so that researchers could see directly how a brain perceives the world.

But as well as advancing neuroscience and philosophy, the Blue Brain project has other practical applications.

For example, by pooling all the world’s neuroscience data on animals — to create a “Noah’s Ark”, researchers may be able to build animal models.

“We cannot keep on doing animal experiments forever,” said Professor Markram.

It may also give researchers new insights into diseases of the brain.

“There are two billion people on the planet affected by mental disorder,” he told the audience.

The project may give insights into new treatments, he said.

The TED Global conference runs from 21 to 24 July in Oxford, UK.

Jul 6
2009

Unique opportunity to sponsor research investigating an infectious cause and potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease

Unique opportunity to sponsor research investigating an infectious cause and potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease afflicts some 20 million people world-wide, over 5 million people of whom reside in the United States. It is currently the seventh-leading cause of death in the US. The number of people with the disease is predicted to increase by over 50% by 2030. The economic as well as emotional costs are huge, the costs being estimated as more than $148 billion each year (direct and indirect, for of all types of dementia, to Medicare, Medicaid and businesses).

The causes of Alzheimer’s disease are unknown, apart from the very small proportion with familial disease. We are investigating the involvement of infectious agents in the disease, with particular emphasis on the virus that causes oral herpes/cold sores/fever blisters. We discovered that most elderly humans harbour this virus in their brains and that in those (and only those) who possess a certain genetic factor, the virus confers a strong risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Also, we found that the virus is directly involved with the characteristic abnormalities seen in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients.

There are several treatment possibilities available to combat this virus and all would be suitable candidates as therapies in Alzheimer’s disease. However, much more research is needed before trials of these agents for Alzheimer’s disease in humans can begin.

In these financially difficult times many funding bodies have to prioritise projects based around long established hypotheses. Projects involving new avenues of investigation can receive very positive comments by scientific reviewers, yet are rarely funded, as they almost always appear risky compared with projects largely confirming or expanding existing ideas. Such conservative projects are almost guaranteed to produce useful data, though with modest impact. This situation can mean that research proposals with the potential to transform our understanding of a disease and offer new approaches to its treatment never reach the threshold for funding and are not implemented, even though the potential and quality of the science is acknowledged by reviewers and funding panel.

It appears that our work examining a viral cause for Alzheimer’s disease is in this category. Despite our publishing a large number of potentially very exciting papers on this topic, and despite our research projects being reviewed favourably by scientific referees, few funding panels are prepared to commit resources to fund our work, as by doing so they deny funding to other more straightforward, very low risk projects.

We are therefore actively seeking sponsorship for several projects of varying costs to investigate the interaction of virus and specific genetic factor, the pathways of viral damage in the brain, and the effects of antiviral agents. All the projects would provide significant evidence strengthening the case for trialling antiviral agents in Alzheimer’s disease.

Antiviral agents would inhibit a likely major cause of the disease in contrast to current treatments, which merely inhibit the symptoms.

If any Lifeboat member knows of a company or individual that would be interested in sponsoring some of our research on Alzheimer’s disease then please contact me for further details.

Ruth Itzhaki

Contact details:

[email protected]

Faculty of Life Sciences, Moffat Building, The University of Manchester, Manchester M60 1QD, UK

Create an AI on Your Computer

Singularity Hub

Create an AI on Your Computer

Written on May 28, 2009 – 11:48 am | by Aaron Saenz |

If many hands make light work, then maybe many computers can make an artificial brain. That’s the basic reasoning behind Intelligence Realm’s Artificial Intelligence project. By reverse engineering the brain through a simulation spread out over many different personal computers, Intelligence Realm hopes to create an AI from the ground-up, one neuron at a time. The first waves of simulation are already proving successful, with over 14,000 computers used and 740 billion neurons modeled. Singularity Hub managed to snag the project’s leader, Ovidiu Anghelidi, for an interview: see the full text at the end of this article.

The ultimate goal of Intelligence Realm is to create an AI or multiple AIs, and use these intelligences in scientific endeavors. By focusing on the human brain as a prototype, they can create an intelligence that solves problems and “thinks” like a human. This is akin to the work done at FACETS that Singularity Hub highlighted some weeks ago. The largest difference between Intelligence Realm and FACETS is that Intelligence Realm is relying on a purely simulated/software approach.

Which sort of makes Intelligence Realm similar to the Blue Brain Project that Singularity Hub also discussed. Both are computer simulations of neurons in the brain, but Blue Brain’s ultimate goal is to better understand neurological functions, while Intelligence Realm is seeking to eventually create an AI. In either case, to successfully simulate the brain in software alone, you need a lot of computing power. Blue Brain runs off a high-tech supercomputer, a resource that’s pretty much exclusive to that project. Even with that impressive commodity, Blue Brain is hitting the limit of what it can simulate. There’s too much to model for just one computer alone, no matter how powerful. Intelligence Realm is using a distributed computing solution. Where one computer cluster alone may fail, many working together may succeed. Which is why Intelligence Realm is looking for help.

The AI system project is actively recruiting, with more than 6700 volunteers answering the call. Each volunteer runs a small portion of the larger simulation on their computer(s) and then ships the results back to the main server. BOINC, the Berkeley built distributed computing software that makes it all possible, manages the flow of data back and forth. It’s the same software used for SETI’s distributed computing processing. Joining the project is pretty simple: you just download BOINC, some other data files, and you’re good to go. You can run the simulation as an application, or as part of your screen saver.

Baby Steps

So, 6700 volunteers, 14,000 or so platforms, 740 billion neurons, but what is the simulated brain actually thinking? Not a lot at the moment. The same is true with the Blue Brain Project, or FACETS. Simulating a complex organ like the brain is a slow process, and the first steps are focused on understanding how the thing actually works. Inputs (Intelligence Realm is using text strings) are converted into neuronal signals, those signals are allowed to interact in the simulation and the end state is converted back to an output. It’s a time and labor (computation) intensive process. Right now, Intelligence Realm is just building towards simple arithmetic.

Which is definitely a baby step, but there are more steps ahead. Intelligence Realm plans on learning how to map numbers to neurons, understanding the kind of patterns of neurons in your brain that represent numbers, and figuring out basic mathematical operators (addition, subtraction, etc). From these humble beginnings, more complex reasoning will emerge. At least, that’s the plan.

Intelligence Realm isn’t just building some sort of biophysical calculator. Their brain is being designed so that it can change and grow, just like a human brain. They’ve focused on simulating all parts of the brain (including the lower reasoning sections) and increasing the plasticity of their model. Right now it’s stumbling towards knowing 1+1 = 2. Even with linear growth they hope that this same stumbling intelligence will evolve into a mental giant. It’s a monumental task, though, and there’s no guarantee it will work. Building artificial intelligence is probably one of the most difficult tasks to undertake, and this early in the game, it’s hard to see if the baby steps will develop into adult strides. The simulation process may not even be the right approach. It’s a valuable experiment for what it can teach us about the brain, but it may never create an AI. A larger question may be, do we want it to?

Knock, Knock…It’s Inevitability

With the newest Terminator movie out, it’s only natural to start worrying about the dangers of artificial intelligence again. Why build these things if they’re just going to hunt down Christian Bale? For many, the threats of artificial intelligence make it seem like an effort of self-destructive curiosity. After all, from Shelley’s Frankenstein Monster to Adam and Eve, Western civilization seems to believe that creations always end up turning on their creators.

AI, however, promises rewards as well as threats. Problems in chemistry, biology, physics, economics, engineering, and astronomy, even questions of philosophy could all be helped by the application of an advanced AI. What’s more, as we seek to upgrade ourselves through cybernetics and genetic engineering, we will become more artificial. In the end, the line between artificial and natural intelligence may be blurred to a point that AIs will seem like our equals, not our eventual oppressors. However, that’s not a path that everyone will necessarily want to walk down.

Will AI and Humans learn to co-exist?

The nature of distributed computing and BOINC allow you to effectively vote on whether or not this project will succeed. Intelligence Realm will eventually need hundred of thousands if not millions of computing platforms to run their simulations. If you believe that AI deserves a chance to exist, give them a hand and recruit others. If you think we’re building our own destroyers, then don’t run the program. In the end, the success or failure of this project may very well depend on how many volunteers are willing to serve as mid-wives to a new form of intelligence.

Before you make your decision though, make sure to read the following interview. As project leader, Ovidiu Anghelidi is one of the driving minds behind reverse engineering the brain and developing the eventual AI that Intelligence Realm hopes to build. He’s didn’t mean for this to be a recruiting speech, but he makes some good points:

SH: Hello. Could you please start by giving yourself and your project a brief introduction?

OA: Hi. My name is Ovidiu Anghelidi and I am working on a distributed computing project involving thousands of computers in the field of artificial intelligence. Our goal is to develop a system that can perform automated research.

What drew you to this project?

During my adolescence I tried understanding the nature of question. I used extensively questions as a learning tool. That drove me to search for better understanding methods. After looking at all kinds of methods, I kinda felt that understanding creativity is a worthier pursuit. Applying various methods of learning and understanding is a fine job, but finding outstanding solutions requires much more than that. For a short while I tried understanding how creativity is done and what exactly is it. I found out that there is not much work done on this subject, mainly because it is an overlapping concept. The search for creativity led me to the field of AI. Because one of the past presidents of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence dedicated an entire issue to this subject I started pursuing that direction. I looked into the field of artificial intelligence for a couple of years and at some point I was reading more and more papers that touched the subject of cognition and brain so I looked briefly into neuroscience. After I read an introductory book about neuroscience, I realized that understanding brain mechanisms is what I should have done all along, for the past 20 years. To this day I am pursuing this direction.

What’s your time table for success? How long till we have a distributed AI running around using your system?

I have been working on this project for about 3 years now, and I estimate that we will need another 7–8 years to finalize the project. Nonetheless we do not need that much time to be able to use some its features. I expect to have some basic features that work within a couple of months. Take for example the multiple simulations feature. If we want to pursue various directions in different fields (i.e. mathematics, biology, physics) we will need to set up a simulation for each field. But we do not need to get to the end of the project, to be able to run single simulations.

Do you think that Artificial Intelligence is a necessary step in the evolution of intelligence? If not, why pursue it? If so, does it have to happen at a given time?

I wouldn’t say necessary, because we don’t know what we are evolving towards. As long as we do not have the full picture from beginning to end, or cases from other species to compare our history to, we shouldn’t just assume that it is necessary.

We should pursue it with all our strength and understanding because soon enough it can give us a lot of answers about ourselves and this Universe. By soon I mean two or three decades. A very short time span, indeed. Artificial Intelligence will amplify a couple of orders of magnitude our research efforts across all disciplines.

In our case it is a natural extension. Any species that reaches a certain level of intelligence, at some point in time, they would start replicating and extending their natural capacities in order to control their environment. The human race did that for the last couple thousands of years, we tried to replicate and extend our capacity to run, see, smell and touch. Now it reached thinking. We invented vehicles, television sets, other devices and we are now close to have artificial intelligence.

What do you think are important short term and long term consequences of this project?

We hope that in short term we will create some awareness in regards to the benefits of artificial intelligence technology. Longer term it is hard to foresee.

How do you see Intelligence Realm interacting with more traditional research institutions? (Universities, peer reviewed Journals, etc)

Well…, we will not be able to provide full details about the entire project because we are pursuing a business model, so that we can support the project in the future, so there is little chance of a collaboration with a University or other research institution. Down the road, as we we will be in an advanced stage with the development, we will probably forge some collaborations. For the time being this doesn’t appear feasible. I am open to collaborations but I can’t see how that would happen.

I submitted some papers to a couple of journals in the past, but I usually receive suggestions that I should look at other journals, from other fields. Most of the work in artificial intelligence doesn’t have neuroscience elements and the work in neuroscience contains little or no artificial intelligence elements. Anyway, I need no recognition.

Why should someone join your project? Why is this work important?

If someone is interested in artificial intelligence it might help them having a different view on the subject and seeing what components are being developed over time. I can not tell how important is this for someone else. On a personal level, I can say that because my work is important to me and by having an AI system I will be able to get answers to many questions, I am working on that. Artificial Intelligence will provide exceptional benefits to the entire society.

What should someone do who is interested in joining the simulation? What can someone do if they can’t participate directly? (Is there a “write-your-congressman” sort of task they could help you with?)

If someone is interested in joining the project they need to download the Boinc client from the http://boinc.berkeley.edu site and then attach to the project using the master Url for this project, http://www.intelligencerealm.com/aisystem . We appreciate the support received from thousands of volunteers from all over the world.

If someone can’t participate directly I suggest to him/her to keep an open mind about what AI is and how it can benefit them. He or she should also try to understand its pitfalls.

There is no write-your-congressman type of task. Mass education is key for AI success. This project doesn’t need to be in the spotlight.

What is the latest news?

We reached 14,000 computers and we simulated over 740 billion neurons. We are working on implementing a basic hippocampal model for learning and memory.

Anything else you want to tell us?

If someone considers the development of artificial intelligence impossible or too far into the future to care about, I can only tell him or her, “Embrace the inevitable”. The advances in the field of neuroscience are increasing rapidly. Scientists are thorough.

Understanding its benefits and pitfalls is all that is needed.

Thank you for your time and we look forward to covering Intelligence Realm as it develops further.

Thank you for having me.

Jan 13
2008

Carnegie Mellon study achieves significant results in decoding human thought

Newsweek is reporting the results of a scientific study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon who used MRI technology to scan the brains of human subjects. The subjects were shown a series of images of various tools (hammer, drill, pliers, etc). The subjects were then asked to think about the properties of the tools and the computer was tasked with determining which item the subject was thinking about. To make the computer task even more challenging, the researchers excluded information from the brain’s visual cortex which would have made the problem a simpler pattern recognition exercise in which decoding techniques are already known. Instead, they focused the scanning on higher level cognitive areas.

The computer was able to determine with 78 percent accuracy when a subject was thinking about a hammer, say, instead of a pair of pliers. With one particular subject, the accuracy reached 94 percent.