The release of GPT-4 is imminent, as Microsoft Germany CTO Andreas Braun mentioned at an AI kickoff event on 9 March 2023.
Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,184
Microtubules are Biological Computers: searching for the mind of a cell
In episode 13 of the Quantum Consciousness series, Justin Riddle discusses how microtubules are the most likely candidate to be a universal quantum computer that acts as a single executive unit in cells. First off, computer scientists are trying to model human behavior using neural networks that treat individual neurons as the base unit. But unicellular organisms are able to do many of the things that we consider to be human behavior! How does a single-cell lifeform perform this complex behavior? As Stuart Hameroff puts it, “neuron doctrine is an insult to neurons,” referring to the complexity of a single cell. Let’s look inside a cell, what makes it tick? Many think the DNA holds some secret code or algorithm that is executing the decision-making process of the cell. However, the microscope reveals a different story where the microtubules are performing a vast array of complex behaviors: swimming towards food, away from predators, coordinating protein delivery and creation within the cell. This begs the question: how do microtubules work? Well, they are single proteins organized into helical cylinders. What is going on here? Typically, we think of a protein’s function as being determined by its structure but the function of a single protein repeated into tubes is tough to unravel. Stuart Hameroff proposed that perhaps these tubulin proteins are acting as bits of information and the whole tube is working as a universal computer that can be programmed to fit any situation. Given the limitations of digital computation, Roger Penrose was looking for a quantum computer in biology and Stuart Hameroff was looking for more than a digital computation explanation. Hence, the Hameroff-Penrose model of microtubules as quantum computers was born. If microtubules are quantum computers, then each cell would possess a central executive hub for rapidly integrating information from across the cell and to turn that information into a single action plan that could be quickly disseminated. Furthermore, the computation would get a “quantum” speed-up in that exponentially large search spaces could be tackled in a reasonable timeframe. If microtubules are indeed quantum computers, then modern science has greatly underestimated the processing power of a single cell, let alone the entire human brain.
~~~ Timestamps ~~~
0:00 Introduction.
3:08 “Neuron doctrine is an insult to neurons”
8:23 DNA vs Microtubules.
14:20 Diffusion vs Central Hub.
17:50 Microtubules as Universal Computers.
23:40 Penrose’s Quantum Computation update.
29:48 Quantum search in a cell.
33:25 Stable microtubules in neurons.
35:18 Finding the self in biology.
#quantum.
#consciousness.
#microtubules.
Website: www.justinriddlepodcast.com.
Email: [email protected].
Twitter: @JRiddlePodcast.
Music licensed from and created by Baylor Odabashian. BandCamp: @UnscrewablePooch.
Painting behind me by Paul Seli. IG: @Paul. Seli.art
The Future of Consciousness: How Singularity Could Change the Way We Experience Life
Technological Singularity is expected to trigger profound changes in both social and technogenic structures. The introduction of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), that can be both disembodied and embodied as smart robots, will bring about a multitude of issues, including human unemployment or underemployment, ethical considerations regarding the treatment of robots, the challenge of managing their runaway superintelligence, and most importantly, harnessing the potential of human-machine convergence.
ChatGPT 4: everything we know so far
ChatGPT 4 is coming, and rumors suggest massive improvements in the GPT-4 model, surpassing Bing Chat, but OpenAI warns we might be disappointed.
Baidu to release AI generative service Ernie Bot soon
According to Baidu CEO Robin Li Baidu will release its AI generative language model Ernie bot in March. However, specific dates regarding when it will be available remains unknown, but it could come “very soon”. It is very likely that only Baidu’s users (those owning a Baidu account) will have access to Ernie.
Although Ernie has been broadly adopted by Baidu services, it has yet to open for the public.
Li previously announced that the company will launch Ernie Bot in March. The large language model was first introduced in 2019 and has been updated to the third generation. As OpenAI’s ChatGPT draws broad attention, Baidu is also jumping on the bandwagon and preparing to launch Ernie.
The Race for a Humanoid General Purpose Robot is Next
Figure comes out of Stealth.
A robot that can autonomously explore real-world environments
Roboticists have developed many advanced systems over the past decade or so, yet most of these systems still require some degree of human supervision. Ideally, future robots should explore unknown environments autonomously and independently, continuously collecting data and learning from this data.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University recently created ALAN, a robotic agent that can autonomously explore unfamiliar environments. This robot, introduced in a paper pre-published on arXiv and set to be presented at the International Conference of Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2023), was found to successfully complete tasks in the real-world after a brief number of exploration trials.
“We have been interested in building an AI that learns by setting its own objectives,” Russell Mendonca, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. “By not depending on humans for supervision or guidance, such agents can keep learning in new scenarios, driven by their own curiosity. This would enable continual generalization to different domains, and discovery of increasingly complex behavior.”
