Comment by klmr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by klmr | Hacker News Reader

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What? Ants don’t have general intelligence, and even ant colonies’ decision making (= simple swarm intelligence) is readily replicable in a programmed system, and has been, for a while.

I don’t think a gradual scale is very helpful because I don’t think that the progression from current-generation AI to AGI is going to be gradual (it will require at least one paradigm shift). That said, if you want to compare AI progress to actual animals then our current-gen AI way beyond ants. Note that, while we haven’t fully mapped the neurons/connectome of ants yet, this is unnecessary to emulate their decision-making power. And we have mapped (and can simulate) the full connectome of simpler animals (e.g. C. elegans, P. dumerilii) so we’re definitely a long way beyond single molecules.

If you are referring to the open worm project, then the conclusions you have drawn are exactly the opposite of what I have drawn.

As I understand it open worm is a hodge podge of statistical and numerical methods to try and replicate the sensorimotor behavior of c elegans. Open worm is neither complete, accurate nor elegant, despite knowing c elegans connectome and having mapped the some 900 cells in the worms body.

I wasn’t explicitly referring to that, it’s just one of many efforts. Anyway, you’re certainly right that none of the existing efforts are “elegant” but that’s hardly relevant. What matters is that the connectome is fully mapped, and that we can accurately simulate arbitrary behaviour. The issue with projects such as OpenWorm is that they have so far not been successful in generating new insight (this may be connected to your issue with lack of elegance) but this is distinct from being able to accurately simulate behaviour. Another issue is that of simulating the physical environment because — surprise, surprise — simulating the worm neurons without any realistic external stimuli is a pretty pointless exercise for most purposes.

But pick any set of stimuli you like, feed it into the models and you get a response that corresponds exactly with empirical observation. I’d therefore definitely call the neuronal model itself accurate and complete.

No actually we can't do arbitrary simulation of c elegans. Can you link me towards a publication which contains validated results supporting your assertion?

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