
Ask HN: What excites you most about Neuromorphic Hardware? - hsikka
I just finished https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1705.06963 and was pleasantly surprised at state of neurotrophic computing. Specifically, the use of organic materials to build robust, low power networks that get past the von Neumann bottleneck and allow us to incorporate new levels of sensing into our environment and lives seems extraordinary. TPUs and chips are obviously interesting for orgs like google, but what about synthetic clusters of neurons integrated into our environment? How significant could that be?
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modeless
Neuromorphic hardware is barking up the wrong tree if you ask me. What excites
me is not hardware that works like brains work, but software that does what
brains can do. If you want to fly, don't try to build a bird. Build an
airplane.

~~~
hackandtrip
In a sense, aren't we trying to take inspiration from a model evolved in many
million years? We are trying to build an airplane taking inspiration from a
bird. Also, emulating the way brain work can be seen as one of the many paths
towards AGI, can't it? Even if, AGI speaking, to my understanding the
computation speed is not the problem.

~~~
modeless
Neural networks are already loosely inspired by the brain. Neuromorphic
hardware is taking things too far. Just as airplanes were a better path to
flight than ornithopters, iterating on AI techniques that work is a better
path to AGI than brain imitation.

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stealthcat
Remember when William Ditto actually made wetware computing using live neuron
cells (yep living cells), but he saw the potential of such computer and
stopped research. Instead he focused in chaos computing, and founded
Chaologix, where he made analog circuit that can transform to different logic
gates very fast. But recently they are acquired by ARM.

The only company I know that is doing wetware computing today is koniku.io
though they are super secretive about their progress. And they only made
sensors for now.

Now we are trying to emulate plasticity of growing brain with rigid, solid
state electronics. I'm not that positive, so stay to deep learning and
backprop for now...

~~~
hsikka
Whoah this is super interesting, do you have any papers or research you can
point me to? I'd love to learn more about this because i'm a neuroscience and
AI student.

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j1vms
In case anyone is interested, Carver Mead's 1990 seminal paper on the subject
[0]. It's a fairly accessible read, and covers the power/computational
efficiency trade-offs on the spectrum from natural, biological systems to
manufactured analog vs. digital electronic systems.

[0]
[https://web.stanford.edu/group/brainsinsilicon/documents/Mea...](https://web.stanford.edu/group/brainsinsilicon/documents/MeadNeuroMorphElectro.pdf)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carver_Mead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carver_Mead)

~~~
alok-g
PS: I did not read the paper again.

Most of such analysis reporting brain to be more power efficient than
computers talk about energy it would require to emulate brain operations in
silicon. That does not sound like a fair comparison. How about the energy a
brain would need to emulate a computer chip, say multiplying a billion
floating point numbers?

For a fair comparison, we must do a comparison for the same neutral task, one
that both machines and brains can do. It's would need discussions to define
what would this be since capabilites of each still show wide differences.

Likewise, some texts assume each synapse to carry a memory of say a byte, and
then claim our brain has a memory of about 10^15 bytes. A human brain cannot
actually recall all that information, the latter is estimated to be at about
10-30 MB only (per an old book I read).

~~~
p1esk
You should probably read the paper again. The comparison Mead proposed is for
the energy spent on a simplest fundamental computing event. In the case of a
brain, it's a single neural pulse going through a synapse. In the case of a
digital computer, it's a switching of a single transistor. In both cases, we
can calculate how many events happen per second, and we know the power
consumption. A brain simply does more operations per second than the fastest
computer chip, while spending less energy.

You might disagree on what constitutes a fundamental computing event, and we
can discuss that, but the idea seems valid to me.

~~~
alok-g
An apples-to-apples comparison should not care for what the fundamental unit
is, unless it can be argued to be the equal in terms of what it does to the
problem being solved. The common factor needs to be the same problem given to
both to see how much power is consumed. Or alternatively, we could compare
what they could do with a given amount of power with a common output
performance metric.

~~~
p1esk
Don't you realize that brain and computer are optimized for different tasks?
Should we compare them at matrix multiply, or playing chess, or writing a
novel, or ...?

~~~
alok-g
Which is why I am claiming that a comparison of energy efficiency of the two,
as seen in most literature, is invalid.

~~~
p1esk
I think this comparison assumes that we want to do whatever brain does - the
way brain does it. Because we don't know any alternative way to do it. So we
try to emulate the brain (replicate neuronal operations) using transistors (or
memristors, etc).

This does not make sense for some tasks, such as doing matrix multiply in FP64
precision, but it does make sense for the tasks we care about the most -
whatever it is that makes us intelligent (AGI). At least until we can abstract
the details of the brain operation which are not important from AGI
standpoint.

~~~
alok-g
We should wait for the energy comparisons to be made till we understand. :-)
Emulating brain with machines or vice versa is not an interim solution.

Alternatively, perhaps the common task could today be defined based on
something that Deep Learning can handle, like say visual object recognition
using a pretrained model.

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gisely
Energy efficiency! Our brains vastly outperform existing hardware while using
less energy and producing less heat. Once we understand more about what makes
them capable of that we will be able to push hardware well beyond its current
thermal-related problems.

~~~
alok-g
Can you share some references. See my comment on this page here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18425019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18425019)
Thanks.

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yters
I've seen use of rat brains to control devices. Is that considered
neuromorphic? Has there been an attempt to use human brain matter in such
devices?

~~~
jonmrodriguez
Don't you think this would constitute slavery? Shouldn't this be extremely
illegal?

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OJFord
Have you ever heard of dairy farms, or horses? If not, I'd advise against
searching.

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shkkmo
Cows and horses are not people. The use of human brains or human brain matter
brings up slavery in a way that rat brains don't because owning animals is not
considered morally equivalent to owning people.

~~~
OJFord
Ah, sorry, I skipped over the 'human brain in...' part of the post, and
thought GP was responding to 'rat brains'. Please ignore.

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geuis
At a high level, I think the top level advantages potentially are in power
saving and flexibility when working on machine learning problems.

The brain is very power efficient compared to modern computers. Incorporating
more “organic” structured can lead to much greater power efficiency.

As more is learned about efficient neural network models, implementing them in
hardware will lead to much faster and cheaper learning models.

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vinceguidry
Really the only thing that interests me is being able to control a computer
with thought, if I can look at a screen and 'click' in my head, to me that's
basically Star Trek utopia. Having a thought-controlled keyboard would be
awesome too, but not nearly as cool as a mouse.

The rest of it can go in the bin, but I'm sure some of it might be neat.

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rs23296008n1
The name. Branding for this is great. The technical side also has huge
potential.

(No this isn't sarcasm or some kind of hipster in-joke)

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orliesaurus
can someone explain it to the uninitiated?

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fulafel
Interesting that in Fig. 10, half of the HW implementations are analog or
partially analog.

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marmaduke
If we learn how to program them reliably it’s huge.

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o_wilson
Wow bit of ‘light reading’ needed before answering this question. :-p

~~~
gervase
Note that the linked article is only about 22 pages, followed by 2682 (!)
references.

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Vanit
I for one welcome our new Typhon overlords.

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FlowNote
Binding them to Neanderthal organiods. Yes, we have plans to do exactly this.

If you'd like to be part of the wildness of that idea and have neuromorphic
and/or spiking neural network and/or genetics experience, send an e-mail to
patrick.ryan@emblem21.com

~~~
jonmrodriguez
Patrick, don't you think you should reflect on what you are doing before
taking sentient neurons and forcing them to live their entire lives confined
inside a machine, with no possibility of escape? How would you enjoy being
born into such captivity?

What would you do if you were experiencing an endless state of pain but lacked
the language ability to communicate your pain to your owner?

I have written to the Vatican already suggesting that they push to make neural
slavery illegal, as it violates the principle of the dignity of sentient life.
I hope you will please reflect on what you are doing and stop doing it
voluntarily instead of waiting for the laws to change and make what you are
doing illegal. Whether legal or not, any form of slavery is immoral.

~~~
FlowNote
Neanderthals aren't legally human and organoids do not have awareness in the
manner you are attempting to establish. Interestingly, a network of organiods,
connected via neuromorphic arbiters, could provide some interesting
intepretations of awareness, especially when the organoids cross species
lines.

From a national security perspective, the West has to get over its crippling
squeamishness on all things genomics or else the Chinese will completely
dominate the neuromorphic space.

From a moral perspective, if you are concerned about stopping slavery, I
recommend tackling actual instances of it, such as the open air slave markets
in Libya or addressing the valid concerns of any one of the hundreds of
millions of rural Chinese.

From an ethical standpoint, there are a couple federally funded institutions
that traffic stem cells who could use some spotlight in them.

I'm unsure if a religious institution mired in worldwide pedophilia
accusations is the right party you want to associate with to stop this. I
recommend stepping off the soapbox for a moment and try explaining, precisely,
how many neurons are required for the sentience you are describing. Is it 1?
10? 1,345?

Quantifying sentience is your burden. Blanket policies of "all neurons are
sacred" are prematurely alarmist.

~~~
jonmrodriguez
Please understand that I have no problem with genetic engineering in general,
and am probably one of the few people on this thread with genetic engineering
experience. I have customized a DNA sequence and had my custom version
synthesized into a plasmid, which worked as designed. I am a huge proponent of
genetic engineering technology when applied to extend human life and augment
human capabilities.

I think that an arms race mentality is a dangerous approach to engineering
ethics. I would rather that the arms race of the Cold War have been avoided if
it were possible, even if it meant one or both sides being willing to lag
behind when it comes to ethically dangerous technology.

Do you have a citation for the supposition that Neanderthals are not legally
human? I believe that the legal personhood of Neanderthals has not yet been
established, and would likely have to go the Supreme Court. If legal
personhood was denied to Neanderthals (homo sapiens neanderthalensis), would
you say that it should be denied to mentally challenged homo sapiens sapiens
as well?

I am Catholic and have no choice but to align with the Vatican. I am just
trying to do the right thing no matter whether it's with the help of a
national government, a religious authority, or simply individuals who want to
do the right thing.

Please don't accuse me of not doing enough. I have invested 10 years of my
salary into animal welfare companies and outrighted donated 2 years of my
salary to other philanthropic organizations including medical and educational
organizations. I'm just trying to do the best I can and there's not much more
I can do.

~~~
FlowNote
Minor modifications to your genome miss the mark. We didn't master metallurgy
to gently carve our names into tree bark. We plow entire forests.

Arms races exist regardless of your preference for narrative. The Chinese have
zero concerns for forging chimera for any purpose they choose. That's the
reality right now. Meanwhile, the Western response is to empower moral
supremacists who all believe we're one random CRISPR event from an accidental
Holocaust. It's neurotic paranoia rooted exclusively in cultural instability
and it's for children.

Neanderthals aren't human for the same reason celery isn't human. Just because
we _may_ have a shared genetic branch (sharing in genomic expression is a ton
more complicated than linear composition comparison) does not grant the entire
mass of biology with human rights. Fighting for the human rights of non-humans
is misguided bourgeoisie neurosis at best when you consider the entirety of
human suffering that exists within a 500 foot radius of whereever you may be.
Your desperate conflation to associate Neanderthals with, wow, the mentally
disabled precisely proves my point.

Some science on the matter, which I suspect will have little influence on the
subject (Never doubt the ability of moral supremacists to anthropomorphize):
[https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/no-human-dna-found-in-
nea...](https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/no-human-dna-found-in-neanderthal-
genome)

Stuck backing the Catholic horse, eh? How many Neanderthals have been baptized
and why has the Church clearly denied the noble Neanderthal such divine access
to God's love? Perhaps a retcon is in order and we can throw in the
Austropithicine for good measure. This, of course, presupposes an agreement
that there were "humans" before Adam or that homosapien evolution is valid.
Genesis is going to take a hit here, one way or another...

My question still remains: Precisely how many neurons count as sentience, or
are we Overton Window dancing to see if we can start with a " _all neurons are
sacred_ " policy?

