New computer will mimic human brain -- and I'm kinda scared

a lab in Australia is building a new supercomputer that will for the first time both physically resemble a human brain and perform as many operations about 228 trillion per second the scary bit is how few operations these are yes how few let me explain the new supercomputer will be built at Western Sydney University it's part of a new paradigm called neuromorphic Computing that's computers modeled after the so far best processing apparatuses that nature has given us brains neuromorphic Computing isn't the same as artificial intelligence these are two different research areas with different goals but they have in common are neuron networks you may know neuron networks as the most important software behind artificial intelligence but while these neuron networks do in some sense resemble the neuron networks in the human brain they're different from the real thing in one very important way way it's that for AIS the structure of the neuron network is represented in the software but the physical basis is still transistors lined up on microchips in the human brain in contrast the network is a physical thing it's one with the algorithm that runs on it this difference is what scientists and Engineers want to remove with the neuromorphic computers these are built to resemble a human brain in terms of Hardware not just in terms of the algorithm that runs on it this doesn't mean that they're built from biological tissue it just means that the connectivity and functionality of the biological tissue is reflected in the structure of the neuromorphic processor so the thing doesn't actually look like a brain it's still a box with wires in it but it works differently than your phone the term neuromorphic is somewhat vague and encompasses a lot of different things in some research settings for example they basically throw a bunch of wires at top each other to create a network and call that neuromorphic some researchers have succeeded with teaching these wires to recognize handdrawn numbers by adjusting how well the Junctions conduct electricity and from there it's just a small step until they run for president somewhat more sophisticated than a handful of wires is IBM's True North processor that they first put forward in 2014 it had 1 million cores each designed to resemble the way neurons fire in the brain and specifically designed to map the virtual neurons of a neuron net onto the physical ones IBM has since updated and improved its neuromorphic processors but there's still far smaller than the human brain the new computer to be built in Sydney is named Deep South not just to acknowledge its location but it's also a not to Google's Deep Mind and IBM's True North the new new computer however work completely differently than either the researchers in Sydney want to use what's called field programmable gate arrays that are basically small circuits whose function in contrast to normal microprocessors can still be electronically changed these programmable arrays will take on the function of neurons and simulate in particular the spiking that's the rather sudden Threshold at which neurons pass on information in addition they'll be building in some Randomness into the behavior of these artificial neurons because that seems to be playing and important if not well understood role in the human brain the point of this research project is not to build a super powerful computer that would be more difficult because then you'd have to figure out how to train this neuron Network for the moment they just want to find out how the human brain manages to run on so little power it barely needs 20 watts to operate at whereas training the currently existing artificial intelligences consumes huge amounts of energy and running them isn't cheap either sooner or later this will become a problem mapping the neural networks from the software to the hardware could dramatically decrease the energy requirement another reason that they use these field programmable gate Aras is that they are slow you see neurons in the human brain need a few milliseconds or so to update their State because it's all chemical reactions you might find that fast but remember that modern computer processors update billions of times a second so they're easily a million times faster than the neurons in our brains if you want to build something that physically resembles a human brain therefore you need slow Electronics so this is what they'll be doing the researchers plan to complete the Deep South computer by April this year it'll be remotely accessible for research purposes they I suppose the waiting list will be quite long of course this opens the possibility that once they've manage to get this done they might be able to build a device that works like a human brain but a million times faster which uh isn't scary at all hello hi Elon I've been telling you all good things are called something with deep deep space deep deep fry deep X I don't know it sounds like a medical condition to me you're welcome bye I hope you're enjoying our science news I know it can be hard to keep track of what's going on in science but I also know a solution Nautilus is a Science magazine that keeps you up to date on the most relevant topics that are being discussed today they frequently have scientists writing for them who will tell you the inside stories what I particularly like about Nautilus is that they cover all areas of science from astronomy to economics history Neuroscience to philosophy and physics Nautilus comes with a digital and a print version and it's just a pleasure to read they really put a lot of effort into writing and the graphic design is top if you use our custom link join nautilus.com Saina you'll get 15% off your membership subscription so go and check this out thanks for watching see you tomorrow

Channel: Sabine Hossenfelder

Views: 531,266

Keywords: science without the gobbledygoook, hossenfelder, science humor, science news sabine, science news, tech news, deep south computer, neuromorphic computing, computing news, computer like brain, artificial intelligence, computer vs human brain

Id: 8-WZiLOxoC8

Length: 6min 37sec (397 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2024