In principle, it should be quite possible to map a human brain, replace each neuron with a chip, and have a human-level AI. Such a design would not have the long-term adaptability of the human brain, but it’d pass a Turing test trivially. Obviously, the cost involved is prohibitive, but it should be a sufficient boundary case to show that QC is not strictly necessary. It may still be helpful, but I’m sufficiently skeptical of the viability of commercialized QC to believe that the first “real” AI will be built from silicon.
Note for the downvoters of the above: I suspect you’re downvoting because you think a complete hardware replacement of neurons would result in long-term adaptibility. This is so, but is not what was mentioned here—replacing each neuron with a momentarily equivalent chip that does not have the ability to grow new synaptic connections would provide consciousness but would run into long-term problems as described.
Yeah, I was using the non-adaptive brain as a baseline reducto ad absurdum. Obviously, it’s possible to do better—the computing power wasted in the above design would be monumental, and the human brain is not such a model of efficiency that I don’t think you can do better by throwing a few extra orders of magnitude at it. But it’s something that even an AI skeptic should recognize as a possibility.
If we’re going to be picky, also the idea that only neurons are relevant isn’t right; if you replaced each neuron with a neuron-analog (a chip or a neuron-emulation-in-software or something else) but didn’t also replace the non-neuron parts of the cognitive system that mediate neuronal function, you wouldn’t have a working cognitive system. But this is a minor quibble; you could replace “neuron” with “cell” or some similar word to steelman your point.
Yeah, The glia seem to serve some pretty crucial functions as information-carriers and network support infrastructure—and if you don’t track hormonal regulation properly, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt. Still, I think the point stands.
In principle, it should be quite possible to map a human brain, replace each neuron with a chip, and have a human-level AI. Such a design would not have the long-term adaptability of the human brain, but it’d pass a Turing test trivially. Obviously, the cost involved is prohibitive, but it should be a sufficient boundary case to show that QC is not strictly necessary. It may still be helpful, but I’m sufficiently skeptical of the viability of commercialized QC to believe that the first “real” AI will be built from silicon.
Note for the downvoters of the above: I suspect you’re downvoting because you think a complete hardware replacement of neurons would result in long-term adaptibility. This is so, but is not what was mentioned here—replacing each neuron with a momentarily equivalent chip that does not have the ability to grow new synaptic connections would provide consciousness but would run into long-term problems as described.
Yeah, I was using the non-adaptive brain as a baseline reducto ad absurdum. Obviously, it’s possible to do better—the computing power wasted in the above design would be monumental, and the human brain is not such a model of efficiency that I don’t think you can do better by throwing a few extra orders of magnitude at it. But it’s something that even an AI skeptic should recognize as a possibility.
If we’re going to be picky, also the idea that only neurons are relevant isn’t right; if you replaced each neuron with a neuron-analog (a chip or a neuron-emulation-in-software or something else) but didn’t also replace the non-neuron parts of the cognitive system that mediate neuronal function, you wouldn’t have a working cognitive system.
But this is a minor quibble; you could replace “neuron” with “cell” or some similar word to steelman your point.
Yeah, The glia seem to serve some pretty crucial functions as information-carriers and network support infrastructure—and if you don’t track hormonal regulation properly, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt. Still, I think the point stands.