Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Evolution ain't done yet

We often think of evolution in terms of that process that made us what we are today. Self conscious (are we?) intelligent (are we?) beings.


Beside my personal skepticism about our intelligence (is it intelligent to try to create artificial life without understanding life in the first place?) today I was just thinking on how evolved we actually are and how long is still the way to go. I don't think the evolution process will ever stop if not for force majeure causes (extinction of the human race due to external factors or self inflicted ones) but for sure analyzing the evolution as a whole, having its past and future plotted, we could, for a given moment in time (relative to our spacetime reference frame), evaluate how far we are from the highest form that we'll evolve into.

Given that the highest life expectancy average is of 84.4 years (Wolfram Alpha source) and that the evolution rule is "survival of the fittest" we are way far away from being what the evolution will make of us just because we die. Jeanne Louise Calment died at the age of 122 yrs. He's the oldest person ever recorded. My point is that we are not surviving at all. We keep dying and that seems perfectly normal just because it "naturally" happens. But there is nothing "natural" or certain in death and we should start being conscious about it.

I would consider the human race evolved when we'll have overcome the natural factors that lead our tissues to age and our cells to die. Surely when will be at that point then reproduction of the species will slow down and so will the evolution. At least the genetical one.
At that point in time the social knowledge-driven evolution will keep following the trend that we already have today and will, once and for all, take over the genetical one.

We will become what ancient greeks would have called Gods.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Simulated brain closer to thought

Remarkable milestone for the field of neuroscience and AI in general.

A detailed simulation of a small region of a brain built molecule by molecule has been constructed and has recreated experimental results from real brains.

Scaling the simulation to the human brain is only a matter of money, says the project's head.


"It's a matter of if society wants this. If they want it in 10 years, they'll have it in 10 years."
Henry Markram
Brain Mind Institute

Read more here.