On the Brains of Machines

This picture is kind of like an infrared camera but for algorithms.

It's a heat map for the eyeballs of a computer; what is it looking at, what are its clues?

In this case, it's looking at the water, not at the ship, in order to identify the image as a ship. (We're also assigning agency to this thing, in case anyone's keeping track.)

Neural nets are a big deal these days, but they come with a new problem. We don't know what they're doing, because the thing that makes them so special is that they figure out their own algorithm. (Agency again.) Computer programmers are not writing the programs; the networks write the programs using trial and error. Machine Learning is another name for this idea of iterative development.

There's a lot of people who would like to know what's going on in there, mostly to see how these things are getting their answers, and to make sure that the algorithms don't cheat to get their answers. Some learn bad habits, like detecting "ships" in pictures with water (which means they're good at detecting water, not ships), or by skimming metadata, which means they're good at classifying metadata, not pictures of stuff. These heat maps, and more importantly the forensics-like algorithms that inform them, are very helpful. They let us see inside the brains of the machine.

***

Speaking of disembodied brains, here's the artificial synapse. It uses a new type of hardware memory system that works more like a brain does, in an array, where they can do their computing business simultaneously. Neuromorphic computing.

And if you want to grow those artificial synapses in a 3-D tissue culture (brains in a dish), call these guys.

Cerebral organoids -- they're more for studying how the brain works than they are about making artificial brains. At least they're not using human brains, right?

Wrong; there are ethical concerns that these organoids might develop consciousness, or have already developed consciousness. 

Notes:

What is it like being a brain in a computer?
Clarifying how artificial intelligence systems make choices
Mar 2019, phys.org

Sebastian Lapuschkin et al, Unmasking Clever Hans predictors and assessing what machines really learn, Nature Communications (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-08987-4

Fast, efficient and durable artificial synapse developed
Apr 2019, phys.org

Elliot J. Fuller et al. Parallel programming of an ionic floating-gate memory array for scalable neuromorphic computing, Science (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw5581

Researchers grow active mini-brain-networks
Jun 2019, phys.org

Stem Cell Reports, Sakaguchi et al.: "Self-organized synchronous calcium transients in a cultured human neural network derived from cerebral organoids"
https://www.cell.com/stem-cell-reports/fulltext/S2213-6711(19)30197-3
DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2019.05.029

The Natural Way

Robots eating robots.

'Cyborg' bacteria deliver green fuel source from sunlight
Aug 2017, BBC news

Scientists have created bacteria covered in tiny semiconductors [solar panels] that generate a potential fuel source from sunlight, carbon dioxide and water.

The so-called "cyborg" bugs produce acetic acid [vinegar], a chemical that can then be turned into fuel and plastic.

After combing through old microbiology literature, researchers realised that some bugs have a natural defence to cadmium, mercury or lead that lets them turn the heavy metal into a sulphide which the bacteria express as a tiny, crystal semiconductor on their surfaces.

Dr Kelsey Sakimoto from Harvard University in Massachusetts, US:
"We grow them and we introduce a small amount of cadmium, and naturally they produce cadmium sulphide crystals which then agglomerate on the outsides of their bodies."

They have an efficiency of around 80%, which is four times the level of commercial solar panels, and more than six times the level of chlorophyll.
-phys.org

POST SCRIPT
The Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) was a project by Robotic Technology Inc. (RTI) and Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. to develop a robotic vehicle that could forage for plant biomass to fuel itself, theoretically operating indefinitely. It was being developed as a concept as part of the DARPA military projects for the United States military. [And so it eats dead bodies too]

Bottoms Up

Lawmakers sick after drinking raw milk to celebrate legalizing raw milk
Mar 2016, reddit

Sure this is more than a year old, but come on - does this story ever get old?

I don't think I need to explain much, because this headline says it all.

Just a couple notes on public health then. Louis Pasteur is the guy who came up with pasteurization, which is just heating your milk enough to kill the bacteria, especially the bacteria for Listeria, which can kill babies and old folks and people with compromised immune systems.

Homeopathic enthusiasts say that pasteurization kills the good bacteria with the bad, and although that may be true, most people would rather take the chance and just kill the listeria-stuff.

I went to a dairy farm in Pennsylvania this month, to take a tour. You know what's in that raw milk? Puss and blood and bacteria. You know what's even better? Every cow's milk gets poured into the same huge tanker truck to mix with each other.

If you're getting it directly from a cow that you know by name, go ahead and drink it raw. But if you're drinking it from a dairy farm like this one, you might wanna wait til it's been pasteurized.

Further, our host told us that organic dairy farming has a downside in that they aren't allowed to use antibiotics on their cows. Good right? Yes, until the cow gets sick; because cows get sick just like us. The farm I visited does use antibiotics, so if a cow gets sick, as soon as they notice it (using their hi-tech milking monitors they can tell if a cow is sick based on a drop in their milk production) they remove that cow from the group and stop milking it. If you can't use antibiotics, what do you do? You hedge your bets. You leave the cow in the group, to possibly infect other cows; and you keep milking that cow as long as you can, and risk infecting your milk. The other option is to get rid of that cow, like get it off the farm forever, which is a big loss, so why would you do that if you didn't have to.

Finally, our host also mentioned how those who own 50-cow farms all share a tanker delivery truck, but if one of them has a sick cow, and sick milk, he can ruin the whole batch. The batch gets tested and if it has the wrong number of bacteria etc., it gets denied and dumped, and everyone loses out because that one farmer tried to push milk from a cow that could have been removed from the herd while it was administered antibiotics, and then returned later.

Anyway, I don't mean to come down on organic-things, but it is good to know the whole story, especially being that 'organic' has become a selling point, which means you can expect the bad parts of the organic world to be left out of the conversation. And homeopathy, keep it coming, always really good stuff.

It's Alive

AKA - The Selfish Meme grows legs

Network Address has been slacking on the Fake News front, simply because we tend to avoid anything on the front lines (since you're probably already getting that news from somewhere else) but this stuff is just too good...

As information bursts forth from the noosphere into the anthroposphere, from the inorganic to the organic, from the dematerialized idea to the materialized corpuscule, we see...

Cambridge scientists consider fake news 'vaccine'
Jan 2017, BBC

Researchers suggest "pre-emptively exposing" readers to a small "dose" of the misinformation can help organisations cancel out bogus claims. ...like a virus...contagion...


POST SCRIPT

But let us not forget - Charles Darwin used the taxonomy of Language to explain his theory of evolution.

Natural Selection X Artificial Intelligence
Network Address, 2012

Also check out The Extended Phenotype, Virus of the Mind, Thought Contagion, and memes, meta-, and memetics in general

Self-Numbing

Solar powered self-mowing lawnmowers are the most mind-numbing thing there is, when you think about it.

Second in line is the fact that we have had to build structures to keep the Alaskan pipeline from sinking into the  earth due to global warming.

Lastly, 'synthetic musk' is the thing in dryer sheets that make you want to make love to dryer sheets.