Artificial Intelligence

JohnRoth wrote:Babies are born too soon. If we follow the standard size-gestation curve for mammals, a human baby should take 18 - 20 months of pregnancy before being born. The classical reason for why its shorter is that the head would be too large for the birth canal. A more modern reason is that the energy requirements on the mother's body would simply be too much: at nine months, the baby is taking as much as the mother can afford.

I'm a little confused. In what specific way is the baby taking too much 'energy' from the mother? Because AFAIK nutritionally they're totally dependent on the mother for another 4-6 month after birth (breast milk). (ignoring formula or wet nurses; but I don't think either of those were widespread enough long enough ago to impact our evolving genetics)

I have trouble believing it can be more 'energy' efficient to create milk that the baby then needs to digest back into component parts than it is to simply provide those parts directly. But I'm far from a biologist, so I could be very wrong about that.
And there could certainly be other stresses on the mother's systems that get offloaded by giving birth.

Jonathan_S wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:Babies are born too soon. If we follow the standard size-gestation curve for mammals, a human baby should take 18 - 20 months of pregnancy before being born. The classical reason for why its shorter is that the head would be too large for the birth canal. A more modern reason is that the energy requirements on the mother's body would simply be too much: at nine months, the baby is taking as much as the mother can afford.

I'm a little confused. In what specific way is the baby taking too much 'energy' from the mother? Because AFAIK nutritionally they're totally dependent on the mother for another 4-6 month after birth (breast milk). (ignoring formula or wet nurses; but I don't think either of those were widespread enough long enough ago to impact our evolving genetics)

I have trouble believing it can be more 'energy' efficient to create milk that the baby then needs to digest back into component parts than it is to simply provide those parts directly. But I'm far from a biologist, so I could be very wrong about that.

And there could certainly be other stresses on the mother's systems that get offloaded by giving birth.

There are two arguments that can be made here. First, once the baby is born, the mother does not have to deal with disposing of the baby's waste products. Second, the relevant time when the baby is a drain on the mother's resources isn't from conception to birth, it's conception to weaning. If the after-birth part is more energy intensive than the before-birth part, it's still part of the complete bracket where the baby is a direct drain on the mother's body, and has to be accounted for.

In any case, I'm simply giving an argument I've seen from people who are specialists in the matter.

JohnRoth wrote:Rather than answer this on a point by point basis, I'm going to start out with a story. This happened at one of those boring inspirational meetings you sometimes get dragooned into when you're working for the Evil Empire.

The guy was droning on when he told a story. He'd been a marketing exec at a hardware company, and he was going on about how many 1/4" drills they'd sold. And you know, he said, nobody wanted 1/4" drills. What they wanted was 1/4" holes.



He had a point, though. The only people who want an "artificial intelligence" are researchers. Everyone else wants machines you can talk to about the job at hand and that will learn from experience. If we get an "artificial intelligence," it's most likely to be the result of two things: more and more "intelligent" tools, and the realization that these things really do unify on a deep level so that they don't have to be as domain-specific as we currently make them - at least in terms of the underlying mechanisms.

Here's a point about biological systems a lot of people miss: humans are the result of a really nasty design tradeoff. A new-born horse, for example, can get up on its hooves and walk after about an hour. It takes a human baby about 11 months to accomplish that same task. Why?

Babies are born too soon. If we follow the standard size-gestation curve for mammals, a human baby should take 18 - 20 months of pregnancy before being born. The classical reason for why its shorter is that the head would be too large for the birth canal. A more modern reason is that the energy requirements on the mother's body would simply be too much: at nine months, the baby is taking as much as the mother can afford.

The basic point is that nobody except a researcher wants an AI they have to spend years raising from infancy before it will start paying off. They want something that can be put to use immediately after coming off the assembly line.

The basic point is that nobody except a researcher wants an AI they have to spend years raising from infancy before it will start paying off.

With the exception of Uncle Sam. They'll accept true A.I. in any form that they can get it. Then keep it under wraps raising it for years. Decades even, until it's ready to be let loose on American enemies at large, foreign and domestic.

I even think certain humans would even prefer an A.I. they'll have to raise. Families that cannot have their own kids - for whatever reason. What was that movie? Oh yea, "A.I."


Another morsel to chew on...

What if man advances to the point when he can augment the human brain with circuitry. Apparently half of the human brain is unused and half of the other half is wasted. Then half of what's remaining is deadened with alcohol and drugs. lol

What then. If over 50 % of the human brain becomes circuitry, what would we be? An Artificially Supplemented Intelligence, A.S.I.?

cthia wrote:
What if man advances to the point when he can augment the human brain with circuitry. Apparently half of the human brain is unused and half of the other half is wasted. Then half of what's remaining is deadened with alcohol and drugs. lol

What then. If over 50 % of the human brain becomes circuitry, what would we be? An Artificially Supplemented Intelligence, A.S.I.?

This was debunked ages and ages ago.

Just like all the so called scientists who said we had all this "JUNK" DNA. Well it happens that lo' and behold' as we research our genome, most of the so called "JUNK" DNA is found to have a purpose after all and we would all be dead without said "JUNK" DNA. We are finding every day more so called "JUNK DNA" that supposedly is leftovers from our Evolutionairy past, that indeed it has specific purpose after all. We are now down to a very tiny percentage of our DNA that we do not know what it does and the percentage is getting smaller and smaller every day.

Same goes for the human brain. Fact is no one really knows how it works. We have tons of "theories". Few hard facts. So, saying we "ONLY" use a portion of it is absurd.

Just as we do not know why galaxies are breaking Newtonian physics. So, stating emphatically, so and so is true on a cosmological basis is absurd.

Relax wrote:

cthia wrote:
What if man advances to the point when he can augment the human brain with circuitry. Apparently half of the human brain is unused and half of the other half is wasted. Then half of what's remaining is deadened with alcohol and drugs. lol

What then. If over 50 % of the human brain becomes circuitry, what would we be? An Artificially Supplemented Intelligence, A.S.I.?

This was debunked ages and ages ago.

The "you only use 10% of your brain" thing was, as you say, debunked years ago. It turns out that it was propagated by a number of people selling "human potential" courses, so it got into the public mindset.

Relax wrote:Just like all the so called scientists who said we had all this "JUNK" DNA. Well it happens that lo' and behold' as we research our genome, most of the so called "JUNK" DNA is found to have a purpose after all and we would all be dead without said "JUNK" DNA. We are finding every day more so called "JUNK DNA" that supposedly is leftovers from our Evolutionairy past, that indeed it has specific purpose after all. We are now down to a very tiny percentage of our DNA that we do not know what it does and the percentage is getting smaller and smaller every day.

The "junk DNA" thing is interesting. Quite a bit of it is parasitic viral sequences, most of which serve no function whatsoever. A lot of the rest is structural: it's used to hold the DNA in specific configurations that are needed in different cell types. There are a huge number of transcribed sequences which have no known function; some of them may be functional, some may not be, but as of the last I heard, nobody knows.

Relax wrote:Just as we do not know why galaxies are breaking Newtonian physics. So, stating emphatically, so and so is true on a cosmological basis is absurd.

That's where "dark matter" comes from. It's a placeholder for observations that galaxies don't seem to have enough ordinary matter, distributed in understandable ways, to account for the observed rotational characteristics.

JohnRoth wrote:Babies are born too soon. If we follow the standard size-gestation curve for mammals, a human baby should take 18 - 20 months of pregnancy before being born. The classical reason for why its shorter is that the head would be too large for the birth canal. A more modern reason is that the energy requirements on the mother's body would simply be too much: at nine months, the baby is taking as much as the mother can afford.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'm a little confused. In what specific way is the baby taking too much 'energy' from the mother? Because AFAIK nutritionally they're totally dependent on the mother for another 4-6 month after birth (breast milk). (ignoring formula or wet nurses; but I don't think either of those were widespread enough long enough ago to impact our evolving genetics)

I have trouble believing it can be more 'energy' efficient to create milk that the baby then needs to digest back into component parts than it is to simply provide those parts directly. But I'm far from a biologist, so I could be very wrong about that.

And there could certainly be other stresses on the mother's systems that get offloaded by giving birth.

JohnRoth wrote:There are two arguments that can be made here. First, once the baby is born, the mother does not have to deal with disposing of the baby's waste products. Second, the relevant time when the baby is a drain on the mother's resources isn't from conception to birth, it's conception to weaning. If the after-birth part is more energy intensive than the before-birth part, it's still part of the complete bracket where the baby is a direct drain on the mother's body, and has to be accounted for.

In any case, I'm simply giving an argument I've seen from people who are specialists in the matter.

My emphasis.

Another way a baby who is born lightens the metabolic load on the mother versus one in the womb is that the mother does not have expend energy to supply oxygen to the baby.

Also, some other relevant questions/potential arguments to think about are:

What is the maximum amount of energy (food) that can be supplied by the placenta and umbilical cord from the mother to the baby?

What is the maximum amount of oxygen that can be supplied by the placenta and umbilical cord from the mother to the baby?

What is the maximum amount of waste products (carbon dioxide and anything else minus the baby's urine) that can be removed from the baby to the mother by the umbilical cord and placenta?

What is the maximum amount of amniotic fluid (In the early weeks of pregnancy, amniotic fluid is mainly made up of water supplied by the mother. After about 20 weeks, a baby's urine makes up most of the fluid.) that can be carried in the amniotic sac in the mother's uterus?

What is the maximum volume the mother's uterus can carry (baby, placenta, umbilical cord, amniotic sac and fluid)?

I don't even begin to know the answers to the questions, but I would think that each answer has its own maximum limit. And if a baby in the womb has metabolic demands that exceed one or more of those limits, things are likely to not go well for the mother, the baby, or both. I suspect that these limitation, over time, will produce a bias towards having babies that don't exceed the limits.

JohnRoth wrote:SNIP

Viral DNA has been proven to be a bunk myth as much as the "only" 10% used of the human brain. Currently they are claiming 8% of the human Genome is virus junk. This number keeps shrinking. Currently they are claiming this 8% is left over from a virus promoter. Of course only 1% of DNA creates proteins that latch onto said promotors, though this number is also climbing as we are moving into 3d protein folding in a big way. So, the "junk" so called virus DNA keeps shrinking, the Protein making DNA keeps increasing.

Yet there are these millions of headlines, "ONLY 8% of HUMAN DNA IS RETROVIRUS BASED". Bald faced lie. They have no idea.

What is true is we have no idea what the other 8% does. We "think" we know what the 92% does but even that is a bald faced lie as well. If that were true we could modify it to make people taller, have blue eyes, with blond hair and all say Sieg Hiel together. We can't do anything with it other than to say, this person with this DNA, Might be more prone to, 'X'.

It was not long ago that the headlines were, "ONLY 30% was claimed as "junk viral DNA"". Then in one fell swoop, there was the, oops, all those introns, do have a purpose after all. Without em we are dead. That eliminated 10% of unknown. Were there headlines saying, "WE ARE STUPID ARROGANT SCHMUCKS" who don't know anything but claim we do? Of course not. That does not get grant money.

What can be said that of the 8% so called Virus DNA, most of it is near identical varied sequences(100,000 sequences). These so labeled "left over virus promotors" I would not be surprised if in one fell swoop more, like the introns, we finally figure out, ooops, sorry about the millions of articles shouting to the masses how brilliant we are, oh wait a second, no we are not, most all of those will be found required for human life as well. Seems rather obvious when most of them are near identical to each other.

One thing is for certain, we still do not know much about cell selection in early development. Last I checked, this is a vast field of study. Kinda important to where we came from.

"Dark Matter" is a big ol' ???. Right now all we know is that our cosmos theories are wrong. Galaxies should "have more mass" if our gravitational equations are correct. Currently we "need" 90% more mass to make our current cosmos models work. Big ol' Right now we have galaxies accelerating at over the speed of light or towards us at over the speed of light. Clearly red shift calculations are wrong as well.

Now, "How" all of those interweaving phenomenon are wrong is another matter.

When someone comes out with a cosmos that does not require "dark" matter, and solves the res shift, and spinning galaxy problem, I will listen attentively. Until then... It is nothing but throwing bandaids on a patient who held a grenade to their chest.

Relax wrote:

cthia wrote:What if man advances to the point when he can augment the human brain with circuitry. Apparently half of the human brain is unused and half of the other half is wasted. Then half of what's remaining is deadened with alcohol and drugs. lol

What then. If over 50 % of the human brain becomes circuitry, what would we be? An Artificially Supplemented Intelligence, A.S.I.?

This was debunked ages and ages ago.

Just like all the so called scientists who said we had all this "JUNK" DNA. Well it happens that lo' and behold' as we research our genome, most of the so called "JUNK" DNA is found to have a purpose after all and we would all be dead without said "JUNK" DNA. We are finding every day more so called "JUNK DNA" that supposedly is leftovers from our Evolutionairy past, that indeed it has specific purpose after all. We are now down to a very tiny percentage of our DNA that we do not know what it does and the percentage is getting smaller and smaller every day.

Same goes for the human brain. Fact is no one really knows how it works. We have tons of "theories". Few hard facts. So, saying we "ONLY" use a portion of it is absurd.

Just as we do not know why galaxies are breaking Newtonian physics. So, stating emphatically, so and so is true on a cosmological basis is absurd.

Not true. I decided to go straight to a reputable source. And that reputable source just woke me up at midnight after I left her an email in her inbox. She's seven hours ahead in Bucuresti. After rambling on with me for about an hour, she's now talking to my wife for over an hour about my wife's sisters wedding my wife just attended. It's after 2:00 A.M. now while I prepare this post. (Andreea was a flower girl at my own wedding recently in Fuerteventura.)

According to her, a neurosurgeon, nothing has been debunked and nothing has been proven. The truth is that it just isn't known, not yet. Current studies do confirm that the human brain is never at any moment 100 % used. Never! So what percentage of it is used?

Okay, (I hear her correcting me), a very small percentage of brain activity seems to be happening at any particular moment. It is the "brain potential" slant. This has been derived from many studies -- including brain scans during many different environments and stimulations.

Andreea says that under certain laboratory conditions there is pronounced brain activity in both hemispheres, however far less than 50 % of the total brain. *SEE BELOW.

Long before my post, I had a discussion with her. What prompted me to ring her was an ecstatic email that she sent me about several symposiums she had attended culminating in an interesting stop at the Stockholm Brain Institute. Part of her excitement regards outlines of future equipment that will allow more understanding of what exactly is going on in the brain as outlined by pledges in the U.S.

"Pledges in the US, what pledges in the US?"
"Your pledges in the US a couple of years ago."
"My pledges in the US?," you oxymoron!
"Not yours you moron, your president."

Which she began to share with me what is going on in my own country which is having impacts all over the world in her field. Remember, she's a neurosurgeon, not a neuroscientist.

From President Obama's Brain Initiative which is having impacts all over the world...

While these technological innovations have contributed substantially to our expanding knowledge of the brain, significant breakthroughs in how we treat neurological and psychiatric disease will require a new generation of tools to enable researchers to record signals from brain cells in much greater numbers and at even faster speeds. This cannot currently be achieved, but great promise for developing such technologies lies at the intersections of nanoscience, imaging, engineering, informatics, and other rapidly emerging fields of science and engineering.

Which led to many discussions. The mind, rambling mind!, of a neurosurgeon is fascinating. (I wonder how much brain activity is in her head while she's talking!)

You just strap in, anchor in, hunker down and enjoy the ride. Transatlantic telephone conversations with her threaten to fry our aging communication lines! lol

*This initial thread of conversation between Andreea and I began prior to this summer when she rang me and asked if I'd send her copies of the movie "Mercury Rising" with Bruce Willis.

Shadowy elements in the NSA target a nine-year old autistic savant for death when he is able to decipher a top secret code.

She said it was a popular movie in her social circle but that she'd only seen parts of it in various places. I sent her fifteen copies that would cover all of her friends and a few extra. I hadn't seen the movie either and she explained the premise to me. Since then I've watched it of course and also many a video regarding savants that she pointed me to in English.


Old notes from one particular link corroborating many things Andreea attempted to explain to me. You ever tried chatting up a female Einstein regarding the human brain? Take with lotsa aspirin...

Link regarding these notes below.

Look for these elements, says Andreea to me some time ago before watching. (fMRI: increased blood flow. Studied with MRI:)

-savant syndrome - most of the activity of one particular savant was on the left side of the brain. Typical brain activity is much more symmetrical and pronounced. The total activity is spread amongst both hemispheres -- and at least 50 % more activity in both hemispheres. But certainly far below 50 % of an active brain. That is counter-intuitive. Certainly completely opposite from what I'd imagine. It's as if a savants brain shuts down a significant percentage of the "normally active" region and highly focuses a much smaller percentage. He uses a very specific area of the brain and doesn't use others.

-acquired savants - people who become savants from brain injuries who suddenly find new abilities that wasn't there previously.

Andreea thinks that although much of the brain seems to always be inactive, many people draw the wrong conclusions. It is obvious that the brain has the ability to rewire itself, to cope -- built-in redundancies.

It is my own conclusion that far less than fifty percent of the brain is used. But not, that only fifty percent is needed. -cthia

Andreea says that we shall see. My wife says that I'm basing that on my own half-a-brain. She's just ready for a spanking.

Savant link:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/savant-brain.html

The Brain Initiative
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04 ... human-mind

Do forgive this rushed post. My wife's now off the phone and I see a kitchen utensil in her eyes... you know, a spoon.

I like spoons! But first, that spanking. lol

JohnRoth wrote:He had a point, though. The only people who want an "artificial intelligence" are researchers. Everyone else wants machines you can talk to about the job at hand and that will learn from experience. If we get an "artificial intelligence," it's most likely to be the result of two things: more and more "intelligent" tools, and the realization that these things really do unify on a deep level so that they don't have to be as domain-specific as we currently make them - at least in terms of the underlying mechanisms.

Yes, pretty much. The very last thing we want is a human-equivalent AI, because humans (as a rule) tend to not be very good at only doing what they're told.

What we want instead are systems that can take care of themselves intelligently; To use an analogy, instead of having an AI that replaces an airplanes' pilot, we want an AI that thinks it's a plane.

The E wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:He had a point, though. The only people who want an "artificial intelligence" are researchers. Everyone else wants machines you can talk to about the job at hand and that will learn from experience. If we get an "artificial intelligence," it's most likely to be the result of two things: more and more "intelligent" tools, and the realization that these things really do unify on a deep level so that they don't have to be as domain-specific as we currently make them - at least in terms of the underlying mechanisms.

Yes, pretty much. The very last thing we want is a human-equivalent AI, because humans (as a rule) tend to not be very good at only doing what they're told.

What we want instead are systems that can take care of themselves intelligently; To use an analogy, instead of having an AI that replaces an airplanes' pilot, we want an AI that thinks it's a plane.

So, we'd need to start with a Migratory Bird's brain and start from there?