Get your own Free Home PageThe Relationship Between Natural Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence, Eldon E. New, 1967 The discovery of the scientific method led to the present sciences and enabled them to take a dominant position in the economy. Lately, great progress has been made toward the discovery of the process of thought. This search should bring about changes in society as much as industry was affected by the scientific method. Since thought and memory are not independent, a means of at least a short term memory must be at hand before a machine or an animal can think. Memory in computers is achieved by different methods, but a new process in which logic circuits are used to store computer memory closely resembles the already discovered process of memory in humans. [update follows essay] Because planaria worms do not digest food, they were used in an ex- periment to discover the location of memory in invertebrates. Worms were taught to follow a dark path instead of a light one by feeding them after they chose the dark path and giving them an electric shock after they took the light one. These trained worms were then fed to untrained worms which assimilated the trained worm's cells directly into their tissues. These worms the became trained to follow the dark path. This experiment led to the conclusion that lower animals store memory in the cells of their body. When trained rat's brains were pulverized and injected into other rats, they too became trained. Because the rat's brain does not reprocuce itself as does the brain of the worm, the rat is able to store more memory in its brain cells (neurones). To improve rat's memories, they were fed a vitamin which multi- plied the chromosomes in their brains. This was so successful it multiplied the rats' intelligence five times and greatly increased their memory. This same vitamin was adapted for human use under the trade name Cylert. It restored the memory of many people who had completely lost their minds. After seeing these results, researchers theorized that the carrier of memory was the nucleus of the neurone. [see update below] To see if it made poeple as much smarter as it had made the rats, extensive tests were given to college students, and the results were negative. In the same test, people who had taken sugar pills scored higher than those who had taken Cylert. This pill offers great help to those with a loss of memory due to old age. After about thirty-five years the brain cells of the average human start to die off at a slow rate. The chromosomes, however, continue to increase for many more years, thus increasing memory cap- acity with age. The number of chromosomes is so great that the possible bits of memory in the brain outnumber the atoms in the visible universe. Of course, most things are filed in more than one place in the brain. A cell's genetic memory is stored in the nucleus, so any other memory must be stored in the same place. The nucleus is composed of ribonucleic acid which consists of hundreds of crystals with thousands of genes in each. Their first function is mitosis and cell growth, but since neurones do not die in normal use they lose their ability to mul- tiply. Whe one loses some skin, it grows back, but when the brain is damaged it cannot repair itself. Most of the cells ofthe body carry chromosomes with the blueprint of the entire body so they can replace their neighbor cells if they become damaged. Neurones, however, because they do not need the ability to multiply, store a chemical record of the electrical impulses which travel through the cell. These change the path of future elictrical impulses and enable the message to be relplayed as if the cell were a tape recorder. There are two billion brain cells, but if each could carry only one impulse, out memory would be lost completely every few hours. With the incredible number of components in each chromosome, [3 billion base pairs] and the two miles of chromosomes in each cell, [2 meters] the brain's memory capacity will probably outlast the brain. Smaller memory cells enable computers to solve different problems at the same time. Computer memory cells are able to store as many as forty million items (1) This number is still small compared to the amount stored in brain cells. Thes smaller components are made possible by integrated circuits, which are entire circuits printed on semiconductors, instead of semi- conductors on printed circuits. (2) A resemblance to neurones is unavoid- able for these tiny chips housed in a transistor-sized box with eight wires leading from it. The operation of the chrmosomes in the neurone closely resembles that of a semiconductor in a computer. The diode is the simplest semi- conductor, operating like a one way valve. Two diodes back-to-back make a transistor, which modifies one current to the shape of another. Larger combinations and groups of combinations perform almost any operation, but none as complex as the chromosome will probably ever be made. A chromosome is a ladder-shaped crystal which is composed of many different types of smaller molecules. (3) The long. thin crystal has free electrons travelling through itand holding it together. Due to their strange shape, these molecules exhibit a strange property which was first noticed at very cold temperatures. When metals were cooled to near absolute zero, they became supecon- ductive. They had no electrical resistance. One current continued moving through a coil of wire for years before they stopped it. This practical form of perpetual motion exists inside our cells and prevents our brains from overheating. Before it was known that the brain's memory units were superconductive, supercooled computers were planned to utilize this efficient electrical property. The brain operates more slowly than a computer, because it has loose connections: at the connection of each neurone is a gap which must be crossed by a spark. There are so many of these synapses that the brain is thousands of times slower than a computer. A modern computer, however, is much heavier than a human brain. When the size is considered, the brain is much more efficient than any present machine. (4) Computers are made of hundreds of simple components which merely add and carry numbers. But these addres are connected in a way which allows them to re-connect themselves to perform desired operations. To make a computation faster and easier for the computer, operators prepare a system of operation for the computer called a program. A program is a method of solving a problem and is really part of the machine itself. The brain programs itself the way we program computers. (5) However, the brain, as it begins to recognize the relationship between its senses and its actions, must learn to modify its program as new information is received. This power to recognize and create new paths of logic is the most important element of natural intelligence and the worst drawback of present computer programs. Computers have been built which can solve written problems in high school algebra, and others have been designed which diagram sentences. To solve these problems, programs had to be written which could change their attack when a method failed. But these programs are not flexible enough to change themselves. They can only solve one type of problem. Computers design and modify other computers, so a program that can help write better programs could be created. Much faster progress toward better artificial intelligence can be made after this achievement. Because the brain already does this, program writers pattern com- puters after newly discovered mental processes. Psychologists, also, have learned about the mind from computers. "A profound change has taken place with the discovery that descriptions of thought processes can be turned into prescriptions for the design of machines or, what is the same thing, the design of programs." (6) The similarity doesn't stop there though; scientists are growing a brain from giant complex crystal resembling chromosomes, with the hope that they can program it to answer questions. They will let the crystals grow randomly, then attach sensors and re-arrange it electronically until it gives the desired response. This is similar to the way a baby programs its brain. These crystals would compose an electronic brain which would be similar ro ours in size and function. It could be mounted in a robot mechanism and allowed to move about under its own power.
[It is now known that one of the mechanisms of memory involves specialized proteins in the brain cells. These cause memory to be stored through a chemical process which requires some time to "develop", analogous to the process of developing a picture.]
[update, 2001] from Nature Magazine: "Analysis of the extent of four families of proteins involved in vesicle trafficking leads to several conclusions. The veolutionary leap from single to multicellular organisms did not require an increase in the core machinery... undelying the transport vesicle life cycle. The Rab family did expand significantly from yeast to worms and flies, impying that multicellular organisms exert more regulation over vesicle-trafficking pathways. The evolutionary jump to mammals saw a significant increase in all of the families examined. This implies that mammals orchestrate the complexities of multicellular physiology through not only more finely tuned regulation, but also tissue specific regulation of the core trafficking machinery. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated in hte brain, where memories are at lest partially encoded through the regulation of specialized membrane trafficking proteins most abundantly expressed in neurons." [7]
(1) Ben B. Seligman, "Automation", The Americanna Anual, 1966, p. 105 (2) Donald C. Latham, "Transistors and Integrated Circuits", pp. 95-120 (3) "Viruses and How Your Body Fights Them", LIFE, vol. 60. no.7, 1966 (4) Marvin L. Minsky, "Artificial Intelligence", Scientific American, Vol 215, no.3, Sept 1966 (5) Judith Groch, "You and Your Brain", p 85 (6) Minsky, op. cit. p. 160 [7] "A genomic perspective on membrane compartment organization", by Bock, Matern, Peden, Scheller, Naature, 15 Feb, 2001 [the paper was written when the author was 17 years old, and with very limited reference material.]
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