<story><title>Where will the next major advance towards general purpose AI come from?</title><url>http://www.nowozin.net/sebastian/blog/where-will-artificial-intelligence-come-from.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JoeAltmaier</author><text>A hard problem to be sure. But much of a human brain is a uniform matrix that self-programs. If we duplicate that blindly, we won&amp;#x27;t have to figure out how that works or have to program it.&lt;p&gt;Still a lot to do before that I guess. But 500 years? What else in human history has taken that long to figure out? The age of technology is shorter than that.</text></item><item><author>Balgair</author><text>This is a bad title, it should be &amp;quot;Where will advances in AI come from now?&amp;quot;, In the first paragraph, the author states that AI is here, but asks where new AI advances will be from.&lt;p&gt;On that, in 2, the author talks about Brain Simulations and states that it&amp;#x27;ll take up to 500 years. I think that is a good upper estimate actually. Though optogenetics is a great tool, we need more. Mammalian brains can be up to 50% (at the low estimate, some say 90%) made out of astrocytes and glia. We know pretty much nothing about how they affect neuro processes, outside that they do, sometimes. We do know that is a huge problem with our understanding though, which is something I guess. Optogenetics should help tease out some of those glia methods, but as usual, it will raise more questions than answers. Another issue is potentation and its molecular mechanisms in more than just the hippocampus. That work is incredibly tough, but we really only focus on the anatomically &amp;#x27;easy&amp;#x27; areas for memory. We have to do more to understand. In short, we don&amp;#x27;t even know the correct questions to ask when it comes to the brain and understanding it. A full simulation, or a &amp;#x27;80%&amp;#x27; approximation even, is a few paradigm shifts away still (maybe, we cant know yet). It will likely have to be a &amp;#x27;full world&amp;#x27; simulation too, where you have to control all the inputs to the brain and therefore have to model a world first. The brain&amp;#x27;s best feature is that it is all connected and a giant spaghetti mess. This is, obviously, a long ways away.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sangnoir</author><text>&amp;gt; But 500 years? What else in human history has taken that long to figure out?&lt;p&gt;Powered, heavier than air flight falls into that ball park. da Vinci was making doodles in the (late) 15th century, but this was only accomplished by the Wright brothers in the (early) 20th century.&lt;p&gt;Edit: After additional research, I discovered that &lt;i&gt;recorded&lt;/i&gt; attempts at manned flight can be found as far back as the 11th[1] century! So it took roughly 700 years to figure out, if not longer as earlier attempts were likely not recorded.&lt;p&gt;1. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ornithopter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Ornithopter&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Where will the next major advance towards general purpose AI come from?</title><url>http://www.nowozin.net/sebastian/blog/where-will-artificial-intelligence-come-from.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JoeAltmaier</author><text>A hard problem to be sure. But much of a human brain is a uniform matrix that self-programs. If we duplicate that blindly, we won&amp;#x27;t have to figure out how that works or have to program it.&lt;p&gt;Still a lot to do before that I guess. But 500 years? What else in human history has taken that long to figure out? The age of technology is shorter than that.</text></item><item><author>Balgair</author><text>This is a bad title, it should be &amp;quot;Where will advances in AI come from now?&amp;quot;, In the first paragraph, the author states that AI is here, but asks where new AI advances will be from.&lt;p&gt;On that, in 2, the author talks about Brain Simulations and states that it&amp;#x27;ll take up to 500 years. I think that is a good upper estimate actually. Though optogenetics is a great tool, we need more. Mammalian brains can be up to 50% (at the low estimate, some say 90%) made out of astrocytes and glia. We know pretty much nothing about how they affect neuro processes, outside that they do, sometimes. We do know that is a huge problem with our understanding though, which is something I guess. Optogenetics should help tease out some of those glia methods, but as usual, it will raise more questions than answers. Another issue is potentation and its molecular mechanisms in more than just the hippocampus. That work is incredibly tough, but we really only focus on the anatomically &amp;#x27;easy&amp;#x27; areas for memory. We have to do more to understand. In short, we don&amp;#x27;t even know the correct questions to ask when it comes to the brain and understanding it. A full simulation, or a &amp;#x27;80%&amp;#x27; approximation even, is a few paradigm shifts away still (maybe, we cant know yet). It will likely have to be a &amp;#x27;full world&amp;#x27; simulation too, where you have to control all the inputs to the brain and therefore have to model a world first. The brain&amp;#x27;s best feature is that it is all connected and a giant spaghetti mess. This is, obviously, a long ways away.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dmd</author><text>&amp;gt; But much of a human brain is a uniform matrix that self-programs.&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a neuroscience PhD ... no. Not remotely close, sorry.</text></comment>