(derived from How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil)
By Sachita Chittal
Out of all the scientific advances, regenerating essential organs and tissues out of stem cells and regenerating a functioning brain with comparable intricacy seems unreachable. A famous British philosopher Emerson Pugh once said “If the brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”
But what if you were told that the brain was that simple? Just how John Dalton’s theory of atoms being the most fundamental particles was shattered by Sir JJ Thompson’s scintillating subatomic particles theory [the electrons], what if this belief of the brain being an incomprehensible complexity was shattered too? And what if in the same way, the myriad of the brain’s quick-paced, multifaceted functions was broken down into smaller particles?
In “How to Create a Mind” by Ray Kurzweil, it is hypothesized that the structure and functioning of the brain can be broken down to small repeat units of similar processes. “Therefore,” he states, “creating an artificial brain will not require simulating the human brain at every level of detail,” but will need programming a basic unit of cognition to be replayed over and over.
Think of the alphabets. Now, try saying them backwards. It’s difficult, isn’t it? Imagine a keyboard that has all the alphabets in their standard order – as opposed to a QWERTY keyboard. Can you type as fast as could with QWERTY one? Can you type without pausing, thinking and looking? Definitely not, it will need a lot of practice. This proves that our cognition is dependent on strict segments – broken down processes – and is sequential. Similarly, did you ever notice that typing consists of a set of smaller tasks? Opening your laptop, opening a document, phrasing your sentences, and then moving your fingers over the keyboard in differing patterns to form them. It’s a sequential, segmented hierarchy: one big task consisting of smaller tasks, consisting of even smaller tasks, done in memorized order.
But what’s more non-intuitive is the fact that the brain structure itself is a sequential, segmented hierarchy. The neocortex in the cerebrum is made up of a million smaller units called cortical columns. [The columnar hypothesis states that the cortex is composed of discrete, modular columns of neurons, characterized by a consistent connectivity profile.] Paralleling this breakdown, the cortical columns are made of groups of neurons, all of which fire electrical signals using the same basic process [using neurotransmitters across synapses] to congregate into a plethora of tasks of varying complexity and constituents.
Maneuvering back to “How to Create a Mind”, Ray hypothesizes the manufacturing of a brain using reverse engineering – working backwards from these subatomic processes. In time, a Sir JJ Thompson for the brain will come along and someday in the future you will witness the creation of what created everything we perceive, like this article and the randomly shaped lines you’re “reading” as letters.
Citations: https://fortelabs.co/blog/a-pattern-recognition-theory-of-mind/ / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_column
Proof of hierarchical processing: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2014.00223/full
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