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From: ted@aggregate.com (Ted Stockwell)
Subject: Re: 100 Billion Neurons Nonsense
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In-Reply-To: bsmall@sfrsa.com's message of Tue, 28 Jun 94 21:58:01 PDT
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 17:51:00 GMT
References: <eZ1Noc4w165w@sfrsa.com>
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In article <eZ1Noc4w165w@sfrsa.com> bsmall@sfrsa.com (bsmall) writes:
>
>   I'm reading my ROBOTS! Newsletter, the review of Brainmakers, 
>   and two points come through the obligatory tribute to the AI
>   neural network greats (Grossberg, Hopfield, etc.). One, a 
>   mention of a Japanese Masno Aizawa who experiments with living 
>   cells. Its about time someone started looking at the real stuff.
>   And two, the traditional recital of the 100 billion neurons in the
>   human brain and gee that's why we don't have smart robots yet.
>
>   On the first point, I'd like to know more about what Aizawa is
>   doing, if indeed anyone out there in netland have an understanding
>   of his work, speak up. I don't see the future in robotics is 
>   connecting probes to neural tissue Frankenstein-style. However,
>   I do think that there is a lot to be learned by modeling the 
>   biological units, and, like the Wright Brothers, the right approach
>   will be based on a very keen understanding of the biological 
>   principles and then adapting them to the task with the best available
>   technology.

There is a lot of research on neural networks from both the software
engineering perspective, which is concerned with practical applications
like pattern recognition, and from the biology perspective which is
concerned with accurately simulating biological systems.  For info and
discussion on this subject, check out comp.ai.neural-nets.

--
Ted Stockwell, Aggregate Computing                      ted@aggregate.com
        Theatre is life.  Film is art.  Television is furniture.
