Tell all!

Amazing! So the Editor of Kurzweil AI agrees with me that Brain FLOPS might be (grossly) under-estimated?

Don’t get me wrong, I hope we aren’t farther from brain FLOPS equivalence, but this is potentially big news in the Universe Epoch 5/6 timeline, is it not? Google doesn’t show me estimates involving astrocytes, only neurons, and so ~38 Peta-FLOPS.

I understand that some of the complexity of processing functions of astrocyctes are controversial. Even so, there is research that suggest significant processing (1):

We might be talking about ~20 doubles required ~= +20 years at 1-year/doubles. I can’t calculate it precisely from the limited info I’ve found thus far on astrocycte average number of connections and gliotransmitter frequency.

Why 20 double-times (2^20)?

We have maybe ~10x more astrocytes than neurons, right?

They are connected to “several” to 100s thousands (some research points to 2 million in some cases) of other astrocytes and synapses. How many on average, I haven’t seen. Any research on this?

Let’s say it is similar to neurons, and also ~10,000 on average. As they fire and communicate among themselves via glio-transmitters. At what frequency? I’ve seen research indicating about 10-200 hz in different cases, but I’ve only had a chance to skim this info for now.

Let’s suppose the same 100 Hz.

Well than, than is just 10x more computation than a neuron-centric estimation. That is just ~3 doubles. 3 years. No big deal.

But we have 2 systems here (neuron and astrocyce), so we might need to consider them in combination. Since astrocyte (A’s) connections have a chance to ‘process’ signals on ~10,000 points of contact with neuron (N’s) synapse (S’s), and since there are 10x more A’s than N’s, then we should multiply processing by 100,000, right? Also, ways in A’s affect S signals are numerous. Say 10. So 10x for that right, or not? so 1-million fold increase now? And there might be many more A connections on avg than 10k. As stated, up to 2 million connections have been found. I’ll ignore that additional 10-100 factor for now.

So 1-million-fold increase = ~20 doubles = 20 years at 1-year/doubles. Not insignificant. But maybe several years less at the double exponential curve, right? How much less? What are some double exponential growth functions KurzeilAI and others use anyway? Public info?

Oh well, 20 years isn’t the end of the world. We might find some other snags though. On the plus-side, we’re already putting some chips in animal brains so maybe we’ll just jump onto brain +/* cpu soon, and benefit from the types of calculations computers are good at in a that is fundamental to our thought-process that way, anyhow.

PS, ya, have Ray email me : ) I have some other thoughts I haven’t heard mentioned. Some stuff that’d be great for the next book. More about a new way to view Identify etc, so a crowd-pleaser as well. : )

(1) http://brainblogger.com/2012/02/03/the-many-emerging-roles-of-astrocytes/

Is it reasonable to leave out astrocytes? If not, by what factor would the FLOPs estimate of the brain need be increased? Astrocyctes are the most numerous of brain cells, and interconnect with several to 100s thousands synapses.

Why would astrocytes need to be considered?

1) Astrocyctes affect synaptic signal strength, and thereby neuron firing. Astrocyctes communicate with each other and with synapses, so shouldn’t the processing represented by the collective states therein need to be considered as more than just a single alteration of the “floating point” value, and, rather, an alteration of the calculation necessary for the value?

2) Something to also consider) Recent discoveries such as, e.g., augmented intelligence in mice injected with human astrocytes.

It is not a popular idea yet, but with the “cloud” perhaps people will being to start thinking a little differently. There is more to humanity than just biological electrical functioning.

Srsly, this obsession with language is an anglo-american thing, most people in most countries do not care that much which language you, on the other side of the planet, speak.And of course, sell them to Iran, some people would feel safer if the only country to ever have used nuclear arms gets rid of its WPMs.

@ Mortran: Nice comments, and agreed.People vastly overestimate the power of a human brain and undestimate the complexity of the software necessary to have strong AI.Even if one says that the human brain is ‘better’ than most contemporary supercomputers he/she has to reflect upon the fact that we are nowhere near “the end of history.”
I mean the period of so called “Modern Art” was somewhere from 18xx to 19xx.Todays hightech could be tomorrows trash.

Oh, hi mister congressperson, I need 2 billion dollars to have a toy, er, a defense expenditure to safeguard the nuclear stockpile.

Stupid question from the back of the room. How did you do this work in 1958 with vacuum tube computers?