h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I agree that we all have phases of, what appear to be, greater or lesser consciousness, but I'm more interested in what we are capable of when operating on all cylinders.

Even creatures which I would put fairly low on the scale seem to need sleep. Though I agree that our experience of sleep seems to suggest that what our brains do while asleep is connected with our conscious thoughts.

>>As long as these questions ar unanswered, what else do
>>paleontologists have to go on, except for the actual size of
>>the brain?

Caffeine.
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Complexity is the issue here, not mass. Nature occasionally chooses non-optimal mechanisms, such as the human cornea, which is inferior to the smaller cats' cornea because of the way the cells are oriented. We have no proof (other than the lack of digital watches in the fossil record) that T-Rex, with its rather small brain, was less intelligent than ourselves.

Right, they all need sleep! But what does the brain do when asleep?
When we humans sleep, our brain is still (almost violently) active, tho be it on different wavelengths/patterns from when we are awake.

Right now we can't even be sure whether other mammals dream, although indications are they do! But what level of complexity do dreams have in those beings? We have no clue!

>Complexity is the issue here, not mass.

Didn't I see a mention of the technology being the same in all mammals? And something about complexity mapping to mass?

Wouldn't those arguments *imply* a certain MASS in the end?

> Complexity is the issue here, not mass.

...and I've been assuming that all neural tissue is and always has been equal (so, complexity would be proportional to mass). Which is probably rubbish.

> Hmm, if that were true, then no mammal would need more brain-cells than any mouse has.

...if it wanted to be as intelligent as a mouse. That's where my logic is going.

You're right, I must be wrong, but nobody has told me why (although I think the penny is starting to drop with my last reply to Deryck)

>...and I've been assuming that all neural tissue is and always has >been equal (so, complexity would be proportional to mass). Which is >probably rubbish.

No, Deryk himself uttered less than an hour ago:

>Complexity just maps to size in brains because mammals all use the >same technology in their skulls.

So, we all agree on that one! He can't go back on that, without saying he must have been mistaken

>...if it wanted to be as intelligent as a mouse.

Yeah, exactly the point!

The issue is, we're trying to figure out what is needed for movement.
If the size of the brain wouldn't need to grow, to accomodate for a larger body-mass, then almost ALL of our own brain would be needed for awareness/intelligence... But several other mammals have about the same brain-mass as we do, and we haven't proven yet, that they are only half as intelligent (if that's even fair to say) as we dare pretend to be.

All the mammals we find lying around today have much the same brain technology AFAIK, but the paleontologists assume that this can be extended to any bones we find lying around too.

I am not suggesting that current mammals use anything different. The mass argument is probably safe for mammals. I'm more concerned with how big a chunk of silicon needs to be to contain enough complexity and whether we are 1% or 10% of the way to making it.

>I'm more concerned with how big a chunk of silicon needs to be to >contain enough complexity and whether we are 1% or 10% of the way to >making it.

Ah well, this wasn't completely clear from your earlier postings.
The size of the silicon chunk would also hold relevence to the complexity, given a certain technology... if we're to put it in 1 micron layers, the chunk would be MUCH bigger than when we used 0.18 micron techniques.

What the actual size would be? That question can only be answered as soon as we have succeeded in creating a few of those intelligent self-aware chunks of sand.

Movement is only one issue. Some animals use large parts of their brain for their senses, like a dog's sense of smell will likely take up a higher proportion of its brain. Other mammals probably have brain structures specifically allocated to other things. We just happen to have a lot of cortex, which is probably where our intelligence comes from.

> I'm more concerned with how big a chunk of silicon needs to be to contain enough complexity and whether we are
> 1% or 10% of the way to making it.

Have you done any work on this?

Let me assure you, I didn't feel like you were hijacking anything. Debating every item from whatever your own point of view might be is just the *purpose* of these discussions! Actually, I was HAPPY to see you barge in, and bring some of your own thoughts into play.

The most of the arguments here would be agreeable for me.

If an AI is to be a machine that performs some jobs for us, I wouldn't really wanna agree to the term AI for a description. We would be using the term VERY loosely.

If a machine develops consciousness, we will have lost track of what we're building. That's something I must agree to, too.
Also, we can't be sure that such a machine will be prepared to co-operate with our petty schemes. Considering what we've managed to put our world, our environment, our fellow human beings, and many species of cousin-mammals through, I wouldn't blame an (true) AI for getting rid of us right away.

I just spent four years studying artificial neural networks, but, no, I haven't done any work on this. There are groups trying to make intelligent machines out of artificial neurons, but artificial neurons are usually just computer programs running on some general purpose hardware and are probably not using the substrate very efficiently. Much more needs to be known in terms of algorithms and structures before anyone could guess how big a beach would be needed.

VERY valid points again!

We will be having to account for more than only motion, then.

The question remains, however: what portion of brain-mass (or -complexity) is responsible for certain senses, what portion is responsible for movement, etc. etc. and so forth.

We will need a lot more research to be done, and quite a staggering amount of computing-power to be invested, in solving those questions, before we may hope to find an equation that seems to reasonably fit all beings of whatever nature.

We can measure brain mass. Measures of complexity exist in terms of size, novelty etc. (see "The Quark and the Jaguar", Murray Gell-Mann for example), but I don't know if we can put a meaningful number on the complexity required for a certain level of intelligence or consciousness.

What I was trying to talk about is that intelligence (consciousness) is what we perceive, to some extent what we believe. I don't mean anything philosophical about whether other people actually exist, but that I think of you and my other fellow humans as intelligent because it is what I have been lead to believe. In my experience you have done/said things to which I (difficult to capitalise "I") believe to be intelligent.

Until humans in large numbers agree that they believe a machine is intelligent, there will be no AI

I agree, let's not try to get philosophical on this one. After all, we're on a quest for facts; actual numbers that can be put to meaningful use!

Fact is, as you so justly put it, we don't have such numbers yet. And thus we're still just guessing a bit, trying random theories and values, to see just where that leads us.

We humans seem to be (to some extent) intelligent, agreed. We *must* (that's a way to emphasize, if ever you need one again), however, continue to remember that this intelligence is what we've declared it to be ourselves. We can't even be sure whether of not this kind of reasoning is in any way fair, unless we encounter another (or better still, several other) species that has (or have) developed some kind of technology.
Not even to mention if such a species has used technology to adapt its environment to itself, or to better adapt itself to its environment.
But this is philosophy again...

As far as AI goes... we'll just have to wait and see, I guess. No way of telling, yet!

Intelligence doesn't really come from the cortex, though a lot of the 'higher' brain functions of which we can make use by means of our intelligence besides the basic animal drives are controlled therein. Although animals that are thought to have more intelligence are usually seen as the ones with more corrugations (sulci/gyri) in the cortex and thus more surface area and thus essentially more cortex, this is only really a measure of the fine-control of motor and sensory systems of the animal in question.
The defining criterion of 'intelligence' is often considered to be self-conciousness. For instance, it is argued that dogs have no self-awareness because they're freaked out by being placed in front of a mirror. Great apes, meanwhile, will pull faces at their reflection, a behaviour considered to represent the fact that they realise the fact of their existence as an entity within an environment.
One role of the cortex is to regulate, mediate and co-ordinate commands and information relayed from the basal ganglia of the brain - this can involve movement and sensory information. The cortex is, for instance, used in the mediation of reflex actions above the level of teh simple spinal reflex (eg the knee-jerk). If we're carrying a tray of hot drinks and one of them slops over on to our hand, the reflex that makes us draw back from pain would require that the tray be dropped and the hands brought in to the chest to prevent further injury. The cortex can prevent this from happening because our conciousness overrides the reflex, knowing that the pain is temporary, slight and the problem of dropping the tray is greater than the problem of a few drops of tea on the hand. In a system such as this the somatosensory cortex is involved with the perception of the pain, the cerebellum with the fine control of all movements involved (such as keeping the tray steady throughout the event), the motor cortex is initiating the basic motor events of carrying the tray, walking etc and the conciousness is observing all and directing the mediation of events. The cortex itself does not originate the command either to walk or keep hold of the tray.
The major parts of the cortex (mostly derived from lesion studies) and divided into the occipital, temporal, parietal, frontal lobes and the insula beneath the frontal lobe are the motor, visual, auditory, somatosensory, olfactory as well as Broca's and Wernicke's areas, responsible for production and comprehension of speech. The oldest part of the cortex, the insula, contains the limbic system, possessed by most mammals and described as the seat of basic animal drives. (The reason smells are so evocative is because the olfactory system connects directly adjacent to the limbic system, resulting in smells being closely associated with emotions. (This is also why lobotomised patients are cabbages - their emotions [insula] and drives [frontal lobes] have been physically removed whilst they can still operate as an organisms) Emotions themselves are an extension and interpretation of the basic drives, and it could be said that some of our conciousness is resident herein. However, emotions in themselves do not make intelligence or conciousness - they are merely used by intelligence in reaction and initiation of thought.
Besides the cortex, the rest of the brain is similar in structure between animals - the basic layouts of wiring, structure and so forth differ only in their physical position, relative size and so on. Intelligence has possibly arisen due to the increasing size of some areas of the brain. Possibly as a by-product from our evolutionary steps such as walking upright and developing the extra-pyramidal system to enable individual movement of the fingers, our brains have increased in complexity - developing the necessary structures to initiate movement in ten digits (one opposable) might have, as a side-effect, enabled the capability of not directly necessary thought, introspection and cogitation. Because evolution is such a hit-and-miss affair as it is actually taking place (it is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can consider the 'moves' made between discrete species) it was purely by chance that the route our ancestors took to bipedalism and multi-digital manipulation also resulted in idle experimentation, often using these digits which eventually led to tool experimentation. Once this point had been reached it was but a simple matter for evolution to favour those with a little more of this emerging feature called curiosity until experimentation developed into insight, reasoning and finally cogitation.
It is another piece of evolutionary luck that we became bipedal before our brains started swelling - a large, heavy brain is easier to carry if the structures supporting it have their centres of gravity directly beneath - any increase in brain size was able to be borne by the bodies of our ancestors.
Insight and reasoning are the qualities associated with true intelligence - many animals show curiosity, tool-usage and experimentation but few actually seem to consider themselves and their actions in relation to not only the present but the past and future too. There is no part of the brain responsible for this, it is merely the degree of complication of neuronal structure in the brains of 'intelligent' creatures that allows it. In a crude sense, these animals have enough 'spare brain' left over after capability to perform their basic actions as an organisms to allow a little of it to be used in idle speculation.

Pfff, I won't even TRY to read that... Did you scan an entire BOOK?

I agree that AI would be used loosely. In fact, I don't think we could even use it at all. Even if the intelligence is created by a human mind/idea, it's still intelligent in its own right. Unless it's some sort of little machine that can process requests without needing any real attention from its creator(s). If the organism is truly intelligence, created or not, then it can not be termed artificial, except in the case where the creator is trying to exert human supremacy over the organism by telling both humans and the "AI"s that the "AI"s are not a "natural" or "real" intelligence. I mean, if you consider humans themselves, somewhere along the line we were given the ability to process complex ideas. Whether or not this ability came from an outside source (a God of some sort) is still a question for debate. Wars are fought over this thing. If the ability evoled into our genetic makeup, then possibly the gene exists in other animals and just hasn't been "turned on" to our knowledge. Perhaps someday scientists will discover which gene controls thought processes, or they'll figure out which part of the brain controls such thought and they'll test improving the gene/brain piece in animals. Would those animals then be AI or intelligent in their own right? I say they'd simply be intelligent, but it does raise the question of whether or not anyone should tamper with another creature's genetic makeup. If it is just a gene that isn't "turned on" then perhaps that will change later in the evolutionary cycle. Then again, if it's a specific part of the brain, can we increase the size without disrupting the normal brain function, or even the normal functions of the organism? And what about plants? Will they get the chance for some sort of intelligence, or do they already have some system we're not aware of? Frustrating questions, but truly fascinating ideas!