Rise of the machines: IBM scientists simulate cat brain in supercomputer

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

They knew their program worked when it started formulating demands for “cheezburgers” with poor grammar.

Seriously though, this is beyond cool. I had no idea present day capacities had evolved this far; last time I paid attention, they’d successfully simulated the nervous system of an earthworm…

I’m not sure, but I think what is really meant by ‘simulate a cat brain’ is ‘simulate a neural net of a complexity comparable to a cat brain’, i.e. they probably won’t have replicated the exact neural pathways present in an actual cat brain.

22

I saw something on TV a couple of years back where scientists had built a robot that simulates the behaviour of a cockroach, which I suppose is a step or two up from an earthworm, but quite far removed from a cat.

I have to say that I’m actually kind of surprised that 147,000 CPUs are still a hundredth the power required to simulate a cat’s brain. While I realize cat brains are incredibly complex as compared to the insects they’ve been working on so far, I almost have to wonder how they have implemented the code. Are they using one CPU to simulate a dozen neurons or something? Maybe they just need to optimize. :slight_smile:

I wouldn’t worry about it crashing. It’ll just act like it was intentional until everyone leaves, and then it’ll find a quiet corner and lick its circuits.

23

Hell,

I wanna know what poor soul had to plug in 150,000 processors.

24

I’m a bit confused. What did they actually do here?

25

They’re probably 8-core processors, so that cuts the work down to 18,375 processors. Piece of cake! Really, really big cake.

26

So, how long til we get a robo cat?

Mindfield

I can never remember the name of the scientist. But the two roach robots were named Ghengis and Attilla. Currently, he’s working on a project called Cog.

27

But, when the computer tries to climb on it’s own keyboard won’t that cause some kind of universe destroying paradox?

28

This will be the first computer in history that eats its own mouse, then jumps back into the cardboard box it came in.

29

Ah yes, now I recall. Colin Angle. Who founded iRobot, maker of the Roomba, cleaner of floors and tormentor of cats.

I wonder how RoboCat would react to one…

30

Winner.