g-f(2)31 Scientific American Magazine: Lack of Sleep Could Be a Problem for AIs

Extra-condensed knowledge 

• Some types of artificial intelligence could start to hallucinate if they don’t get enough rest, just as humans do. 
• This sort of instability is not a characteristic of all AI networks. The issue only arises when training biologically realistic processors, or when trying to understand biology itself. 

Genioux knowledge fact condensed as an image.

The “genioux facts” Knowledge Big Picture (g-f KBP) chart

Condensed knowledge

• Our realization came about as we worked to develop neural networks that closely approximate how humans and other biological systems learn to see. We were investigating the way that these simulated networks respond to unsupervised dictionary training.
• The vast majority of researchers on machine learning, deep learning and AI never encounter this instability because, in the very artificial systems they study, they have the luxury of performing mathematical operations that have no equivalent in living neurons.
• The results suggest that in both artificial and natural intelligence systems slow-wave sleep may act to ensure that neurons maintain their stability and do not hallucinate.
• When we exposed the networks to states that are analogous to the waves that living brains experience during sleep, stability was restored. It was as though we were giving the neural networks the equivalent of a good, long nap.
• Sleeplike states in neural networks are very different from the mode your PC enters after some set period of inactivity. A conventional computer that has gone to “sleep” is effectively in suspended animation, with all computational activity frozen in time. And the age-old advice from the IT department to try “turning your computer off and then on again” when a PC gets glitchy is tantamount to exposing your machine to a brief period of brain death.
• We expect that sophisticated AI systems will help us to more fully understand sleep and other characteristics in biological systems. The napping toaster of the future may provide novel insights into the workings of our brains—in addition to a warm and crispy breakfast food.
• We are just starting to investigate an additional benefit of artificial sleep in our simulations. Often, a few neurons in a simulated network fail to function at all when a simulation is started. We have found that applying artificial sleep states seems to reset idle neurons to ensure they become functioning components in the network.

Category 2: The Big Picture of The Digital Age

[genioux fact extracted from Scientific American]

Authors of the genioux fact

Fernando Machuca

References

Lack of Sleep Could Be a Problem for AIs, Garrett Kenyon, December 5, 2020, Scientific American Magazine.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Extracted from NMC

Garrett Kenyon, a Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist and neuroscientist and NMC affiliate, specializes in neurally inspired computing and studies the brain and models of neural networks using high-performance computers. Kenyon was recently published in Scientific American in an observational article AI’s Big Challenge.

g-f(2)20 We have a fabulous “Unartificial” Intelligence to exploit

Extra-condensed knowledge

A new generation of neuroscience writers (e.g., Jon Lieff, David Eagleman, Sanjay Sarma, Luke Yoquinto, Jay Shetty) makes the profound realm of the brain more understandable to the rest of us. As research unlocks ever more knowledge about the brain, new applications will emerge. As the cliché goes, the more we learn, the more we learn how much we don’t know.

• Think of the brain as a living community of trillions of intertwining organisms…a cryptic kind of computational material, a living three-dimensional textile that shifts, reacts, and adjusts itself to maximize its efficiency.
• The genius of the brain is its ability to profoundly change.
• The brain is not just a wired system but also a “wireless” one in which cells transmit signals to the rest of the body. “The whole body is really one enormous brain circuit,” with implications for everything from understanding memory and bias to treating depression and cancer.
• The mind is the body, and the body is the mind. 

Genioux knowledge fact condensed as an image.

The “genioux facts” Knowledge Big Picture (g-f KBP) chart

Condensed knowledge 

• Armed with the latest research, a new crop of writers is bringing brain science to the masses in a thoughtful, measured way. 
• David Eagleman, head of the Center for Science and Law, an adjunct professor at Stanford, CEO of Neosensory, and author of Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain. 
• The brain is like citizens of a country establishing friendships, marriages, neighborhoods, political parties, vendettas, and social networks. Think of the brain as a living community of trillions of intertwining organisms…a cryptic kind of computational material, a living three-dimensional textile that shifts, reacts, and adjusts itself to maximize its efficiency. 
• The genius of this organ, he says, is its ability to profoundly change.
• In Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn, authors Sanjay Sarma (head of Open Learning at MIT) and Luke Yoquinto (a science writer) share this optimistic view of the brain and use it to argue for a different approach to learning. 
• Now that neuroscience research is revealing why we “forget” things, for example, we can adjust educational models to make that less likely. 
• Now that we understand just how much brains can change, we can stop focusing on knowledge transfer and instead teach people how to think. 
• Perhaps most important, we can stop labeling some kids as smart and others as slow and give all of them the same chance to grow their neurons into those lush thickets.
• “Once you realize how education systems are set up not just to nurture but also to cull,” Sarma and Yoquinto write, “you begin to see it everywhere. We winnow in how we test, and we winnow in how we teach.” It’s hard to square such a system with a brain so adaptable that if you remove half of it, the remaining half will reconfigure itself to compensate and allow a person to live a reasonably normal life.
• When influencer and podcaster Jay Shetty implores you to Think Like a Monk to “train your mind for peace and purpose every day,” there is evidence to back him. 
• Today research confirms the value of age-old approaches: meditation, mindfulness, prayer, daydreaming—all these things work, and now we know how and why. 
• In his new book, The Secret Language of Cells, Jon Lieff hammers on that theme, defining the brain as not just a wired system but also a “wireless” one in which cells transmit signals to the rest of the body. 
• “The whole body is really one enormous brain circuit,” he tells us, with implications for everything from understanding memory and bias to treating depression and cancer.
• “If the mind is considered to be either determined by the brain, or related to activity of the brain, then the definition of the mind must be enlarged to include the constant communication of all cells throughout the body.”
• In other words, the mind is the body, and the body is the mind. 

Category 2: The Big Picture of The Digital Age

[genioux fact extracted from HBR]

Authors of the genioux fact

Fernando Machuca

References

Unartificial Intelligence, Scott Berinato, Harvard Business Review, November–December 2020 Issue.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Scott Berinato is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review and the author of Good Charts Workbook: Tips Tools, and Exercises for Making Better Data Visualizations and Good Charts: The HBR Guide to Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations.

Extracted from Amazon

Scott Berinato, senior editor at Harvard Business Review, is an award-winning writer, editor, content architect, and self-described "dataviz geek" who relishes the challenge of finding visual solutions to communication problems. At HBR he has championed the use of visual communication and storytelling and has launched successful visual formats, including popular narrated infographics, on HBR.org. Before joining HBR, Scott was an executive editor at CXO Media, where he pioneered the use of visual features in several of the company's publications. In addition to his work on visualization, he also enjoys writing and thinking about technology, business, science, and the future of publishing. He has a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School at Northwestern University.