[HN Gopher] Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a si...
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Cortical Labs: "Human neural networks raised in a simulation"
Author : pr337h4m
Score : 55 points
Date : 2023-10-23 06:18 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (corticallabs.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (corticallabs.com)
| trulyhnh wrote:
| Never thought the day that brain in a vat is no longer a
| philosophical question but a practical one would come so soon.
| sparrowInHand wrote:
| To be honest, i thought it would first go the other way around.
| To many billionaires afraid of death, trying to encode there
| mindstate-personality into a machine and become semi-imortal.
| Version467 wrote:
| I've never understood this. Even if we would have perfect
| mind-uploading capabilities, this doesn't help the
| billionaire who is afraid of death, right? It'd just be a
| copy of them. An immortal one, sure, but the original person
| would die just the same, no?
| falcor84 wrote:
| There's the philosophical argument that we have no
| continuity of consciousness in our meatbag bodies either -
| e.g. when you wake up, it's rebooting your consciousness
| from suspended memories.
| freilanzer wrote:
| Lucid dreaming would like a word.
| ben_w wrote:
| Even then it's not continuous over all your sleep.
| mofunnyman wrote:
| Not to mention that nearly all of the atoms in your body
| are replaced every decade, meaning most of you went into
| sewage treatment long ago.
| paulluuk wrote:
| It's probably not a fear of death, but a fear to cease to
| exist. And uploading your mind does mean that you continue
| to exist.
| viraptor wrote:
| It probably depends on your idea of what the
| soul/consciousness is and how it interacts/integrates with
| the physical world.
|
| There's a few people interested in the idea of (simplifying
| a lot) "brain as an antenna receiving the consciousness
| signals".
| Borrible wrote:
| The belief of being no one can be a truth, the belief of
| being someone an advantage.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Just plug them into a corresponding MMORPG and let them
| continue from there?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Ah, the _billionaires_. Boogeymen of our times. The scourge
| of all us crabs living here in this fine bucket.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I think there's a good reason that trying to cheat death and
| meeting a grim end as a result is such a common trope in
| mythology. Even in ancient times I think people generally
| recognised the profound harm refusing to accept the
| inevitability of death does to a person.
| dr_j_ wrote:
| One day we'll have biological networks of the size that can
| compete with today's biggest artificial neural networks,
| capable of running things like, well, ChatGPT. Then the
| philosophical questions will run even deeper....
| komali2 wrote:
| Since they're both neural networks, what questions have
| changed? I don't see what that clarifies or confounds about
| the nature of consciousness.
| superb_dev wrote:
| "neural nets" may mimic organic neurons but they are not
| comparable in that way
| bergen wrote:
| Nobody would argue that turning off ChatGPT is killing a
| sentient being. With a biological network, "turning it off"
| and killing it are very close if not the same (depending on
| who you ask). Biological network are present in our
| physical reality, you have some matter to deal with, which
| also makes the experience completely different. People fall
| in love and have compassion with ChatGPT, what would you
| think happens if you care for a brain a vat for months? If
| it is an actual neural structure resembling natural ones,
| than it might be possible it forms memories and becomes
| sentient. This is a completetly different array of ethical
| questions, you can't think of (living) biological matter
| like a machine, especially not regarding ethics.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Nobody would argue that turning off ChatGPT is killing
| a sentient being.
|
| Some do, judging by surveys.
|
| And there was a famous case last year with a different
| LLM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMDA#Sentience_claims
| pencilcode wrote:
| This gives me nightmares tbh. Love that they say that they're
| happy and healthy, lol.
| imposterr wrote:
| Very "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" for me.
| dsego wrote:
| Darkness, imprisoning me All that I see, absolute horror I
| cannot live, I cannot die Trapped in myself, body my holding
| cell Landmine, has taken my sight Taken my speech, taken my
| hearing Taken my arms, taken my legs Taken my soul, left me
| with life in Hell
| edf13 wrote:
| It's all it's known, all it ever has... a higher being may
| feel the same sadness about us mere humans.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| A pig, in a cage, on antibiotics
| mnode wrote:
| Beautiful website. They massively over-claim on their science
| though. Their 'tech' is nothing special, people have been
| culturing and recording from neurons for years. And their claims
| of 'sentient' neurons in a dish should be taken as being somewhat
| flexible with the meaning of the word.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| When I see something so over-engineered on the aesthetics
| front, my knee jerk reaction is to think "this is
| overcompensating, and i guess they don't _really_ have what
| they promise "
| pmontra wrote:
| The website reminds me of mid 90s multimedia presentations on
| CDs. It takes a long time to scroll and read and there is not
| much to learn about them. Maybe their research page would be a
| better starting point https://corticallabs.com/research.html
|
| The latest article is "Critical dynamics arise during
| structured information presentation within embodied in vitro
| neuronal networks"
| boschfish wrote:
| The Neurally Controlled Animat: Biological Brains Acting with
| Simulated Bodies (2001)
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440704/
| anon-3988 wrote:
| If the goal is to mimic the human brain, how is this different
| than just...starting with a human brain? Either way, you will be
| subjugating a possibly conscious mind into servitude. I am sure
| they are "happy" (however you want to measure it) about it either
| way lol
| jagrsw wrote:
| > you will be subjugating a possibly conscious mind into
| servitude.
|
| Is the distinction between a protein-and-salt-water model
| versus an electronic-gates-and-memory model meaningful? From a
| computational standpoint, they both manipulate states and store
| data. Does substrate matter unless we're invoking metaphysical
| claims?
|
| Regarding the video
| (https://twitter.com/Scobleizer/status/1716312250422796590),
| the device seems untypically polished but also a bit sus. Even
| if it contains living neurons, their functionality appears
| limited to mere survival rather than meaningful data
| processing. The claim that it's/can-be "more efficient than a
| GPU" (even if in the future) is premature at this point IMO.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| Trying to get this kind of accuracy and bandwidth for signal
| measurements you'd have to risk killing the human or at least
| severely cripple them. Look at how outraged people here
| regularly get over Neuralink's tiny chip that would only insert
| an inch or so of electrode threads into the brain. Now imagine
| they were sticking stuff in there that penetrates the entire
| brain. It's much easier publicity wise to just do that with a
| bunch of neurons on a board.
| Liquix wrote:
| _Our biOS composes their reality, sending information about it
| via electrical signals. It then converts the neuron 's activity
| into actions inside that reality. Their world is mediated through
| our biOS._
|
| The simulation argument asserts that "at least one of the
| following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very
| likely to go extinct before reaching a "posthuman" stage; (2) any
| posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant
| number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or
| variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a
| computer simulation."
|
| (1) is still possible - humankind is armed to the teeth, this
| tech could be a bunch of hot air, the breakthrough is still N
| years away, etc.
|
| (2) becomes less likely with every headline. If we had the
| ability today to simulate a consciousness-filled universe
| thousands of instances would be spun up overnight.
|
| (3) is looking more plausible than ever...
|
| https://simulation-argument.com/
| codeflo wrote:
| I know that smarter people than me have discussed this to
| death, but IMO, you simply can't make statistical arguments
| like that.
|
| Let's say you have an input x and a step function f such that
| the sequence x, f(x), f(f(x)), ... contains (in whatever sense)
| a conscious mind. Once that sequence is defined, it doesn't
| (and can't) logically matter whether it is evaluated once,
| twice or a hundred times, whether it is evaluated on a slow
| computer or fast computer, or, in fact, not evaluated at all.
| There is always only one sequence, and the act of evaluating
| adds no information to it.
| poopsmithe wrote:
| Eww, what is up with their website? Just scrolling down lags my
| entire computer.
| Denote6737 wrote:
| Yeah it's pretty unusable site. Clearly designed more for
| marketing than science.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Better accessed with PgUp, PgDown
|
| Or, actually, with Ctrl+U (the code is clean, just go to the
| <main>)
|
| Well, for convenience:
|
| ==== ==== ==== ====
|
| ###~ What does it mean to grow a mind? ~###
|
| The human mind is the north star for digital intelligence. But
| silicon can only do so much. Cortical is growing human neurons
| into silicon. Their reality is our simulation. We think these
| minds will learn better than any digital model and breathe life
| into our machines.
|
| ###~ Human neural networks raised in a simulation ~###
|
| The neurons exist inside our Biological Intelligence Operating
| System (biOS). biOS runs the simulation and sends information
| about their environment, with positive or negative feedback. It
| interfaces with the neurons directly. As they react, their
| impulses affect their digital world.
|
| ###~ Our first minds ~###
|
| The dishbrain is currently being developed at the CL0
| laboratory in Melbourne, AU. We bring these neurons to life,
| and integrate them into The biOS with a mixture of hard silicon
| and soft tissue. Our first cohort have learnt to play Pong.
| They grow, adapt and learn as we do.
|
| ###~ Silicon meets neuron ~###
|
| Neurons are cultivated inside a nutrient rich solution,
| supplying them everything they need to be happy and healthy.
| Their physical growth is across a silicon chip, which has a set
| of pins that send electrical impulses into the neural
| structure, and receive impulses back in return.
|
| ###~ A direct connection to infinity ~###
|
| This creates the highest bandwidth connection possible between
| an organic neural network and a digital world. Our biOS
| composes their reality, sending information about it via
| electrical signals. It then converts the neuron's activity into
| actions inside that reality. Their world is mediated through
| our biOS.
|
| ###~ The Ultimate Learning Machine ~###
|
| Those actions have a positive or negative effect in biOS, which
| the mind perceives, adapting to improve that feedback. The
| human neuron is self programming, infinitely flexible, the
| result of four billion years of evolution. What digital models
| try and emulate, we begin with.
|
| ###~ Why? ~###
|
| There are many advantages to organic-digital intelligence.
| Lower power costs, more intuition, insight and creativity in
| our intelligences. But most importantly we are driven by three
| core questions.
|
| ###~ What will we discover if our intelligences train
| themselves? ~###
|
| We know an organic mind is a better learner than any digital
| model. It can switch tasks easily, and bring learnings from one
| task to another. But more important is what we don't know. What
| are the limits of a mind connected to infinity? What can it do
| with data it literally lives in?
|
| ###~ What happens if we take a shortcut to generalised
| intelligence? ~###
|
| Machine Learning algorithms are a poor copy of the way an
| organic neural network functions. So we're starting with the
| neuron, replacing decades of algorithms with millions of years
| of evolution. What happens as these native intelligences start
| solving the problems we'd previously left to software?
|
| ###~ How can we surpass the limits of silicon? ~###
|
| Silicon is raw, rigid, unchanging. Our organic neural networks
| sit on top of this raw power, but the way they grow and evolve
| isn't limited to the software they run on. There is no
| software, it's coded in their DNA. How will computing change as
| we shift from hard silicon to soft tissue?
|
| ###~ RFN: Request For Neurons ~###
|
| The dishbrain is learning and growing in biOS today, and soon
| we're opening an early access preview for selected developers.
| The biOS is our simulation environment, where you can program
| tasks, challenges and objectives for our minds. Join our
| developer program to get early access to our SDK, and secure
| training time with our minds.
|
| ###~ What comes next ~###
|
| We're not making smarter computers, more efficient data
| centers, or more personalised advertising. We're doing this to
| see what happens. What happens if we grow a mind native to the
| infinite possibility space of digital computing? We wonder what
| it will mean for digital spaces, for robotics, science,
| personal care. To explore the delineation between the personal
| mind, the distributed mind, digital and physical realities. To
| blur those boundaries. We wonder what it means to grow a mind,
| born of the physical world, but a native of the digital world,
| where that mind will go, and what it will teach us. Wonder with
| us.
| arnaudvalette wrote:
| Bad idea#328 : a fancy website where the client-side script is
| in fact using the user devices to handle batches of neural
| networks training units.
| epups wrote:
| It's clear that you can get some actual neurons in a dish to
| behave as an artifical neuron network. It is a fascinating
| concept as a research question. What's not clear is what is the
| business value here - do they expect these natural networks to
| outperform ANNs for any foreseeable application?
| freilanzer wrote:
| Science does not need a business value.
| pmontra wrote:
| Their blog is one post per year at
| https://corticallabs.medium.com/
| Denote6737 wrote:
| So head cheese. Or Bio-Neural Gel Packs.
|
| Depending on your sci-fi of choice.
| akie wrote:
| No ethical considerations to be found anywhere. Typical.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Neurons are cultivated inside a nutrient rich solution,
| supplying them everything they need to be happy and healthy_
|
| Neurons are considered organic entities that are satisfied with
| an healthy environment. It is supposed that nothing suffers.
| seydor wrote:
| For those interested beyond the new age marketing speak that
| shouldn't exist on any real research company:
|
| These are the guys behind Dishbrain, which is not really a brain
| but a patch of human induced pluripotent stem cells grown on the
| Maxone silicon chip [2] which allows recording from the entire
| ~5x5mm chip with high resolution.
|
| [1] https://newatlas.com/computers/human-brain-chip-ai/
|
| [2] https://www.mxwbio.com/products/maxone-mea-system-
| microelect...
| psychoslave wrote:
| >What happens if we grow a mind native to the infinite
| possibility space of digital computing?
|
| Nothing we need to care about, as there is no such a thing.
| Mankind has put a significant portion of its limited attentional
| power on building interconnected silicon computers, that in a
| space whose scale is so small compared to human bodies that
| illusion of infinity is easy to fall into. In the same time,
| mankind went with global policy of massively draw on non-
| renewable energy stock, destroying vast sustainable life
| supporting environment in the process. There is nothing like
| unlimited resources and infinite space.
|
| Now, obviously, this page is marketing idle talk, with a weak
| connection to the actual work in their labs.
|
| From a purely scientific point of view, I wonder if that kind of
| device is just as vulnerable to magnetic storms as a pure silicon
| based device.
|
| From a human perspective, without much more context, this seems
| just horrific and I wish them much ethical and legal barriers to
| stop them already.
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(page generated 2023-10-23 09:00 UTC)