5:20 Terry Sejnowski
Reverse-engineering brains is within reach
Fascinating description of how a software program taught itself to play backgammon using a very simple learning heuristic. The program went from rudimentary skills to grand master status — similar to IBM’s Deep Blue, but without teams of programmers hard-coding game strategies into it. It taught itself.
This learning ability has broad application across a host of technologies: soon we will have a cognitive power grid, cognitive cars, congitive homes, etc.
5:50 Dennis Bray
What Cells Can Do That Robots Can’t
Bray argues that the information encoding capability of RNA and other proteins far surpasses what is typically found in even very advanced robotic systems. We have a vast, he argues “almost infinite” (but that seems excessive) capability to store data.
If true, it still seems to me that Kurzweil’s exponential processing growth eventually closes this gap.
6:15 Sejnowski/Bray debate
Will we soon realistically emulate biological systems?
I had to miss this one in order to do me Steven mann interview and video. I’m guessing they disagreed.