Eric Hand March19.3m, Brains: a few key facts & concepts - How facts & ideas about the brain may predict the Singularity - Project Blue Brain: Supporting evidence & milestone for the Singularity?

Fun facts (er, plausible guesses) about the brain - Computational capacity: Kurzweil guesses about 20 petaflops (20 X operations / second). IBM has said they will have a computer of about that power operational in Number of neurons ~= 100 billion - Total length of neural fibers ~= 1 million km. - Connections among these = at least trillions

Brain Development The human genome has only million bytes of info, in compressed form, less than some existing computer programs, but gives rise to an adult brain that would need at least terabytes or petabytes to fully describe.

Mathematical metaphors are the Mandelbrot set, and cellular automata, as demonstrated by Stephen Wolfram. This is because brain development happens by a probabilistic fractal process. A few simple rules for cell division, migration, and connection act huge numbers of times, with some randomness each time.

Example of a Mandelbrot set

Neurons showing similar branching patterns

The neocortex is arranged into 6 distinct cell layers

Main computational units in the neocortex: millions of neocortical columns, cylindrical volumes 0.5 mm wide by 2 mm high, each containing about 10,000 neurons connected in an intricate way.

Representation of a mammalian neocortical column Representation of a mammalian neocortical column

Until the last years, predictions about AI and robots surpassing general human intelligence (strong AI) had been repeatedly over- optimistic.

E.g.: In 1977, Marvin Minsky, A founding father of modern AI, said that general artificial intelligence at or above human level (aka strong AI) would be achieved within a generation.

Ray Kurzweil, in his 2001 essay "The Law of Accelerating Returns", extends Moore's Law to describe an exponential growth of technological progress in general. He gives numerous graphs to support his claims. E.g:

Cost o fcalculations /sec from

He expects these trends to continue for decades. Why? - Progress in more technologies is becoming driven by advances in IT - There is accelerating synergistic feedback among the rapidly growing fields of Genetics, Nanotech, and Robotics

He predicts that this will lead to superhuman general intelligence by about He defines this as it the ability to pass the Turing Test.

Extrapolating Growth of Computing to Strong AI

"The Singularity" is a phrase borrowed from the astrophysics of black holes. As used by Vernor Vinge and Raymond Kurzweil, it refers to the idea that accelerating technology will lead to artificial intelligence that will exceed human intelligence about the year As superhuman AI permeates civilization by about 2045, The results on the other side of the "event horizon" will become unpredictable.

Singularity video The Singularity By Ray Kurzweil at the TED conf (23:41) brain info starts at about 17 min.

IBM Project Blue Brain IBM is now in the second year of a ten year collaboration with a Swiss University to simulate the computational functionalities of the human neocortex. They claim to have simulated a mouse neocortial column. To the extent this is accurate, it is huge progress, And tends to support Kurzweil's schedule for the arrival of strong AI and the Singularity. Remember Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating returns. Halfway thru the Human Genome Project, only ~1% of the Genome had been decoded, and many called that a failure.

IBM says they are doing project Blue Brain to advance treatment of brain disorders, including senility. But they surely appreciate the possibility of huge military AI contracts, as increasing aversion to casualties in Western countries has led to the a strategy of "Our technology against their sons." E.g.: Robart 3 –The warfighters associate TheWarfightersAssociate.wmv TheWarfightersAssociate.wmv

Project Blue Brain videos The Brain According to Henry Markram - video/ Bluebrain | Year One – video documentary to-follow-bluebrain-project-video/

I have not found recent technical info on Blue Brain, possibly because they don't want to give away anything useful to potential competitors.

More Resources Ray Kurzweil's AI/Singularity website: Why We Can Be Confident of Turing Test Capability Within a Quarter By Ray Kurzweil The advent of strong AI (exceeding human intelligence) is the most important transformation this century will see, and it will happen within 25 years, says Ray Kurzweil, who presented this paper at The Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference: The next 50 years on July 14, The Singularity Is Near (2005) - The current "bible" of technology futurics

The Singularity Hub Blue Brain Project homepage Working Brain Model - MIT Techology Review Books by Marvin Minsky The Society of Mind (1988) The Emotion Machine (2007) Finite and Infinite Machines (1967) Perceptrons - Expanded Edition(1987) Minsky/e/B000APALSQ/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1