Comment by boothead | Hacker News Reader

Comment by boothead | Hacker News Reader

So after reading "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins [1], it would seem that the algorithm of the cortex is mostly figured out and it missing only the hardware capable of simulating enough neurons. One comment I read a while back was that the description in the book was good as far as it goes but there's more to do with regards to making it a two way process. I.e. the part where the nervous system takes action to confirm a prediction (I probably didn't explain that very well).

My question is why would you want to build a human like intelligence? Wouldn't it be enough to build tools that simulate parts (pattern recognition, inference, reasoning etc) of our own intelligence so that me may augment what we're capable of? What purpose would it serve to include emotions feelings and what makes us human?

I'd love to hear from people who actually know more about this stuff than reading a couple of popular science books!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Intelligence

Upvoted for the OI reference, which I found to be a remarkable book. I highly recommend it.

But I wouldn't go so far as to say "it would seem that the algorithm of the cortex is mostly figured out": my takeaway from the book was that a lot of it was solid educated guesses and connecting of dots. E.g., the concept that the brain stores and manipulates patterns and this is the key intelligence behind all the senses, and the multiple "levels" of intelligence and how they connect to each other.

I totally agree with your second para (this is another point that is present throughout in the book). Jeff Hawkins did a good job (for me) to distinguish between intelligence and "human-ness". Recreating the human cortex will still leave us far far away from creating an artificial human brain.

To be honest, it's likely that the why is simply “because we can”. I'm sure there are other advantages—having a fully-functioning brain in a digital realm where you can modify it at will has a myriad of probably psychological and biological research implications. But even if most people asked themselves ethical questions about whether doing that is right etc etc, someone would produce it simply because it is possible.

I hate to say “it's in our nature”, but I think there is something (perhaps each other?) that is constantly pushing us to prove that the boundaries others thought were there aren't. And even if we know intellectually that they aren't, we want to manifest the breakdown of those boundaries.

So why would someone want to build a human-like intelligence? Because they can.

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