wind_dude t1_j9ru6yc wrote on February 24, 2023 at 2:39 AM

Reply to comment by currentscurrents in [D] To the ML researchers and practitioners here, do you worry about AI safety/alignment of the type Eliezer Yudkowsky describes? by SchmidhuberDidIt

Considering in 355 BC Aristotle thought the brain was a radiator, it's not a far leap to think were wrong that it uses electrical impulses like a computer. And I'm sure after quantum mechanics there will be something else. Although we have far more understanding than 2000 years ago, we are very far from the understanding we will have in 2000 years.

currentscurrents t1_j9rw3uy wrote on February 24, 2023 at 2:53 AM

That's like saying we're wrong about out aerodynamics and how birds fly, because Aristotle was wrong about it and we'll understand flight very differently in 2000 years.

These articles don't represent the mainstream neuroscience position. It pretty clearly does use electrical impulses. You can stick in an electrode array and read them directly, or you can stick someone in an fMRI and see the electrical patterns. It also pretty clearly uses chemical signalling, which you can alter with drugs. We've seen no structures that appear to perform quantum computation.

wind_dude t1_j9rwt70 wrote on February 24, 2023 at 2:59 AM

>Quantum neural networks are an interesting idea, but our brain is certainly not sitting in a vat of liquid nitrogen, so intelligence must be possible without it.

look at the links I shared above.

Recreating actual intelligence, what the definition of AGI was 6 months ago, will not be possible on logic based computers. I have never said it's not possible. There's a number of reasons it is not currently possible, the number 1 that we don't have a full understanding of intelligence, and recent theories suggest it's not logic based like previously theorised, but quantum based.

Look at the early history of attempting to fly, for centuries humans strapped wings to their arms and attempted to fly like birds.

currentscurrents t1_j9rxyne wrote on February 24, 2023 at 3:07 AM

Most of these links are highly philosophical and none of them address the question of how the brain would usefully retain qubit stability at body temperature.

The evidence they present is very weak or non-existent, and the newscientist article acknowledges this is not the mainstream neuroscience position.

Meanwhile there is heaps of evidence that electrical and chemical signaling is involved; fiddling with either of them directly affects your conscious experience.