endoself comments on Fast Minds and Slow Computers - Less Wrong

26 Post author: jacob_cannell 05 February 2011 10:05AM

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Comment author: endoself 09 February 2011 07:58:00PM 1 point [-]

A prototype of what?

A computer that used the most advanced interconnects available today to be more parallel than normal computers.

If you are reverse engineering a circuit, you may initially simulate it at a really low level, perhaps even the molecular level, to get a good understanding of how it's logic family and low level dynamics work. But the only point of that is to figure out what the circuit is doing. Once you figure that out you can apply those principles to build something similar.

The only reason this works is because humans built circuits. If their behaviour was too complex, we would not be able to design them to do what we want. A neuron can use arbitrarily complex calculations, because evolution's only requirement is that it works.

Comment author: jacob_cannell 10 February 2011 06:10:31AM 0 points [-]

The only reason this works is because humans built circuits. If their behaviour was too complex, we would not be able to design them to do what we want.

Quite so, but . .

A neuron can use arbitrarily complex calculations, because evolution's only requirement is that it works.

Ultimately this is all we care about as well.

We do simulate circuits at the lowest level now to understand functionality before we try to build it, and as our simulation capacity expands we will be able to handle increasing complex designs and move into the space of analog circuits. Digital ASICS for AGI would probably come well before that, of course.

Really its a question of a funding. Our current designs have tens of billions of industry momentum to support.

Comment author: endoself 10 February 2011 10:33:56PM 0 points [-]

A neuron can use arbitrarily complex calculations, because evolution's only requirement is that it works.

Ultimately this is all we care about as well.

No we have another requirement: the state of the system must separate into relevant and irrelevant variable, so that we can easily speed up the process by only relying on relevant variables. Nature does not need to work this way. It might, but we only having experience with human-made computers, so we cannot be sure how much of the information can be disregarded.

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