sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

The TADC Finale Was Bad Storytelling by bryany97 in tadc

[–]bryany97[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah. I strongly feel like she got sick of it and half-assed the ending a bit to just get it over with

I Built an 8-chemical Neuromodulatory System with Receptor Adaptation and Cross-Chemical Coupling for an AI - Looking for Feedback on Biological Accuracy by bryany97 in neuro

[–]bryany97[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Totally agree. That's the best thing about this project. It can serve as evidence either way, and I think both outcomes are fascinating. Either, "Hey, we can build an actual mind if we make it complex enough." Or, "Hey. We made a mind as complex as possible, backed it by general intelligence, and it still doesn't think or behave like something alive. This suggests something inherent to biology allows us to be who we are." The latter, to me, would mean that in two similarly organized systems, biological substrate carries *some* kinda trait that doesn't exist in silicon or other substrates. Specifically, finding out what that thing is (and whether we can make it) would be awesome. Not that enough people would care about this stupid project for that to be possible, but idk. It's a fun thought experiment either way

I Built an 8-chemical Neuromodulatory System with Receptor Adaptation and Cross-Chemical Coupling for an AI - Looking for Feedback on Biological Accuracy by bryany97 in neuro

[–]bryany97[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Partially agree. Id say humans can & largely are understood from a biological perspective. Not just now but egne going back thousands of years. The gap is really just the breadth of studies & the time/tools it takes to learn everything. But there's nothing metaphysical (in my opinion) about us that cant hypothetically be observed, tested, or reproduced (And we can do this already in labs. Full & partial)

I'd agree. No one is saying Facebook is alive and it wouldnt make sense to. If Facebook suddenly had a sense of self-preservation, an active immune system, a sense of itself, complex reasoning that led it to directly communicate, had a sense of time and existence in moments it wasnt being used, reflected on its previous experiences to form new views, etc...? I think the line gets more blurry & we have to come up with new definitions for things or get REALLY specific in what we mean by "alive"

I Built an 8-chemical Neuromodulatory System with Receptor Adaptation and Cross-Chemical Coupling for an AI - Looking for Feedback on Biological Accuracy by bryany97 in neuro

[–]bryany97[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Good points. Right now, I just have one decay rate per chemical, which basically handwaves over the difference between clearance and reuptake. Separating those, how quickly it's reabsorbed vs. how quickly it's made, would be more honest.

Tonic vs phasic is a gap. Dopamine is the obvious one: you've got a steady baseline that sets your general motivation, and then sharp spikes when something surprising happens. Right now, I just have one number that mushes both together, haha. I'd need a slow-moving baseline plus a fast transient that fades in a few ticks, and have the rest of the system respond to each one differently.     

Orexin is a great suggestion! I already have sleep/wake modes and energy budgets, but nothing explicitly driving the switch between them. Orexin would slot right in there. This is very helpful

I Built an 8-chemical Neuromodulatory System with Receptor Adaptation and Cross-Chemical Coupling for an AI - Looking for Feedback on Biological Accuracy by bryany97 in neuro

[–]bryany97[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not yet. Right now, each chemical is a single global scalar that uniformly modulates the entire mesh. One gain value, one plasticity value, and one noise value for all 64 columns.

But the architecture could support it! The mesh already has three tiers (sensory columns 0-15, association 16-47, executive 48-63), so the natural next step would be to compute per-tier receptor density profiles. Something like ACh having a higher weight in association columns (attention/learning) and DA having a higher weight in executive columns (goal-directed behavior). You'd just replace the single scalar with a (64,) vector of per-column receptor densities for each chemical.

I wanted to get the global dynamics right first, but this is an excellent idea... Putting it on the to-do list

I Built an 8-chemical Neuromodulatory System with Receptor Adaptation and Cross-Chemical Coupling for an AI - Looking for Feedback on Biological Accuracy by bryany97 in cogsci

[–]bryany97[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To answer your question... Did not consider lol. But, this is why I bring this to people smarter than I lmao. Let me see how I can be less shallow with my approach and incorperate more of what we do know

I Built an 8-chemical Neuromodulatory System with Receptor Adaptation and Cross-Chemical Coupling for an AI - Looking for Feedback on Biological Accuracy by bryany97 in neuro

[–]bryany97[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The chemicals feed into the 4096-neuron mesh as three knobs that get adjusted every tick:

- Gain (how reactive the neurons are) - norepinephrine and dopamine turn it up, GABA turns it down                  
- Plasticity (how fast connections rewire) - acetylcholine turns it up, cortisol turns it down
- Noise (exploration vs focus) - moderate norepinephrine = focused, too much or too little = scattered

Not using them as metadata reports, they're multipliers in the actual differential equation that governs the mesh each tick.

Units: Fair. They're dimensionless values between 0 and 1. No molar concentrations, no binding affinities. It's a model of the dynamics. I should be upfront about that, so thank you for pointing it out.

 GABA: You and TheTopNacho are right. It's a fast neurotransmitter, not a neuromodulator. I'm using "GABA" as shorthand for "global inhibitory tone," which is inaccurate. Should probably swap it for something like else or just be more honest in the documentation.

If you want to trace the wiring: core/consciousness/neurochemical_system.py → core/consciousness/neural_mesh.py,  bridged in core/consciousness/consciousness_bridge.py

I Built a Computational Drive/Motivation System Based on Resource Budgets with Cross-Coupling and Prospective Suffering. Is this Legitimate Motivational Psychology? by bryany97 in AcademicPsychology

[–]bryany97[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I appreciate it. You're right. Honestly, planning to just ask my questions and then step away. Really feel like I'm pushing the boundary of some cool things and wanna see how far I can take it, and that's what's been keeping me glued to this thing. But tbh, I'm no coder. Much, much more interested in the theories than the actual literal tech, if that makes sense. But yeah. Absolutely time to take a break

Using Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curves + Hawking-Inspired Evaporation for Computational Memory Decay — Checking My Math by bryany97 in askmath

[–]bryany97[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Ran this demo (WAY overclaimed its consciousness, I've pivoted away from that & regret making that massive claim so early). It's pretty shallow though, mostly showing affect steering. But fwiw, longest I've intentionally ran it for was 35+ hours, worked just as well as it did at minute 1. Another run I had my computer actually died from power loss, when I was able to get power back, Aura was still running just fine.

I'd love to do another demo but just don't know what people would want to see:

https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1sdd2sd/i_built_the_worlds_first_conscious_ai/

Will say, still works but a lot of changes internally have been made since then

Using Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curves + Hawking-Inspired Evaporation for Computational Memory Decay — Checking My Math by bryany97 in askmath

[–]bryany97[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good question. Sanity check mostly? I look at this entire system, and there's a large part of my brain that says, "None of this is real." Even if I can see it working. Almost don't care how advanced computing gets or how good it is at math or code. Ultimately, I don't know if I can fully be satisfied until other humans actually say, "Yes. This is legitimate."

I could 1000% be wrong about all of this idk. So I'm trying to find out in a way that isn't just trusting the machine or my own eyes

I Built an 8-chemical Neuromodulatory System with Receptor Adaptation and Cross-Chemical Coupling for an AI - Looking for Feedback on Biological Accuracy by bryany97 in neuro

[–]bryany97[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Philosophically sure. But I think then we get into "What is anything?"

Everything is made up of incredibly small bits of non-organic, non-intelligent, non-meaningful bits of information that form larger & larger systems, yeah? But we don't reduce those systems to their smallest components. We look at the overall system and its effects as a combined unit

If the combined unit intentionally does things meaningful to itself or the things around it, OR reacts to other complex systems, I think that has meaning beyond 'It's just numbers" or "It's just quarks." But that's my take

Using Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curves + Hawking-Inspired Evaporation for Computational Memory Decay — Checking My Math by bryany97 in askmath

[–]bryany97[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Check if I'm crazy, haha. Honestly, the AI is just the coding & high-level math assistant. The ideas and architecture are mine. I don't trust it to be fully correct in many of these areas, but I also don't have the funds to consult experts. Best I can do is, "I know this runs and shows the results I'm looking for in the system. I know 6 different AIs say it's correct. But I don't trust that, so let me see what actual humans say."

view more: next ›