Comment by nawgz
6 months ago
I’m in agreement with you in that raw compute isn’t really the only missing piece, but I’m not in agreement we have enough compute to fully simulate even simple insect brains
6 months ago
I’m in agreement with you in that raw compute isn’t really the only missing piece, but I’m not in agreement we have enough compute to fully simulate even simple insect brains
I feel like we are talking past one another here. I disagree that all the computer processors in the world combined don't have enough raw processing power to simulate a single bee brain. That to me is an absurd idea.
Now if you meant we don't know enough about bees to actually model what its brain does and create a processor to actually process an artificial bee brain, then yes, we don't have that ability yet.
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Aside, when I watched Netflix show black mirror such as the grain episode, I always kept getting stuck at how are they lowering this tiny device... What kind of battery technology works here was my question even though this is science fiction.
> I disagree that all the computer processors in the world combined don't have enough raw processing power to simulate a single bee brain. That to me is an absurd idea.
A bee weighs 100mg. If they are 5% brain, their brain weighs 5mg. 5mg of carbon is 2.5 * 10^20 atoms.
The largest supercomputers, at hundreds of trillions of transistors, come in at 2-5 * 10^14 transistors.
I don't think that combining all the computers in the world would give us 1 transistor per atom in a bee brain, and I additionally have to imagine transistors are incapable of simulating an atom by multiple orders of magnitude (i.e. 1 atom would require > 1 * 1 ^ 4 transistors) in realtime.
So, I would argue that our level of compute is still insufficient to simulate even a simple insect brain in realtime. Perhaps you could compute 1 second of bee thinking in an hour using all our compute.
And then, of course, comes into play that we have no idea how to simulate an atom in full fidelity.
> A bee weighs 100mg. If they are 5% brain, their brain weighs 5mg. 5mg of carbon is 2.5 * 10^20 atoms.
Any rational characterization of the problem has left the building here.
Nobody wants to simulate any creature's brain or nervous system atom for atom.
Most of what atoms do in any cell, including neurological cells, is operate a vast number of complex but common survival systems. And the very small fraction supporting specifically neurological behavior, do not meaningfully contribute at the level where specifics of individual atoms matter, but at a level many orders of magnitude higher in scale.
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