Posts Tagged ‘I Am The Walrus’
“Maybe the only significant difference between a really smart simulation and a human being was the noise they made when you punched them”*…
The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is tiny; it has only has 302 neurons. These connections have been completely mapped in the OpenWorm project, which is building a complete simulation of the worm in software. One of the founders of OpenWorm, Timothy Busbice, has embedded the connectome in an an object-oriented neuron program– which he has installed in the simple Lego robot pictured above…
And the result?
It is claimed that the robot behaved in ways that are similar to observed C. elegans. Stimulation of the nose stopped forward motion. Touching the anterior and posterior touch sensors made the robot move forward and back accordingly. Stimulating the food sensor made the robot move forward…
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Are we just the sum of our neural networks? More at “A Worm’s Mind In A Lego Body.”
* Terry Pratchett, The Long Earth
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As we cram for the Turing Test, we might recall that it was on this date in 1967 that the BBC banned “I Am The Walrus” for play on their air. The Beatles had grabbed and used a snippet of a BBC broadcast of King Lear (which has also influenced Lennon’s lyrics), but that wasn’t the problem. Rather, the lines “pornographic priestess” and “let your knickers down” were deemed inappropriate.
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