Re: AI's in full thrust

In message <33C9B58E.4945@acd.net>
	  Donald Hosford <Hosford.donald@acd.net> wrote:

> I was watching "beyond 2000" on television the other day.  They had an
> artical about these group of researchers attempting to put a single
> neuron (as software) into a computer.  The program required an entire
> supercomputer just to process that one neuron!  And the supercomputer
> could barely keep up!

I don't see why. From a purely functional point of view,
all a neuron does is switch itself on if the sum of all
the inputs is greater than a certain amount, where each
input has its own weighting factor (that's more of a
description of a neuron in a neural net actually, but
functionally the two are similar). If they want to model
all the chemical and electrical processes going on, then
it could get _very_ complicated, but it's not necessary.

>  That one neuron was processing 150,000 inputs
> from	other neurons.	The average human brain has about 6000
neurons...

It's somewhat nearer 10 billion. And each has about 1,000
connections. From what I remember from my AI course at
any rate...

> shows how much computing power it takes to make their intellegence
> possible!  COOL! 8-)

Knowing modern computers, probably rather hot actually :)

-- 
Be seeing you,
Sam.