Posts with keyword: singularity

3 entries

Cat Brains and Bionic Eyes

Sat May 24 20:06:00 2008

This article from New Scientist about how scientists recorded the reponses of 49 neurons in a cat's brain (the lateral geniculate nucleus, or LGN to be precise) in order to create a better bionic vision system reminds me or the sentient lobsters in Accelerando by Charles Stross.
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New Conferences on IT Conversations

Wed Nov 7 08:45:00 2007

This week, I published shows on IT Conversations from two new series: the Singularity Summit and RailsConf. Here are the show descriptions. Rodney Brooks - The Singularity: A Period Not An Event - In the keynote presentation from the 2007 Singularity Summit, Rodney Brooks, Panasonic Professor of Robotics at MIT, explores many possible singularity futures based on decades of experience researching, inventing, and commercializing robots. During this presentation Dr. Brooks examines why we need robotics and AI as well as how the singularity will not be like it is portrayed by Hollywood. David Heinemeier Hansson - Rails 2007 Keynote
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Simulated Mouse Brains

Wed May 2 16:18:00 2007

Researchers from IBM Almaden Research Lab and the University of Nevada ran a simulation of one half of a mouse brain on the BlueGene L supercomputer that had 8 million neurons and 6300 synapses. The simulation ran at one-tenth speed for ten seconds--so about 1 second of mouse brain activity. On other smaller simulations the researchers said they had seen "biologically consistent dynamical properties" emerge as nerve impulses flowed through the virtual cortex. In these other tests the team saw the groups of neurons form spontaneously into groups. They also saw nerves in the simulated synapses firing in a
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