Tech Companies Are Binge-Hiring Neuroscientists (bloomberg.com) 46
pacopico writes: There's a very weird trend going on in Silicon Valley right now where tech giants like Apple, Facebook and Twitter are raiding university neuroscience labs. They're hiring people who do pretty esoteric research on animal brains and putting them in their AI divisions. According to this Bloomberg Businessweek story, part of the reason is simply that the scientists tend to be good at dealing with large amounts of data. But the bigger deal is that these researchers specialize in things like auditory and visual function and even brain/machine interfaces and are being tapped to build new products based on the brain.
Neuro marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure some companies do this to develop mind-machine interfaces.
But in most cases it's probably because "neuro marketing" is such a hype right now. As Cambridge Analytica made painfully clear, big data has become about understanding and manipulating how people think and what choices they make.
Neuromaketing on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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That's true, compared to Neuroscience data, handling a big database is easy and actually most "big data" data sets are relatively small compared to MRI that needs to be registered with MEG, EEG or other data sources.
or just better neural nets (Score:3)
on the other hand, the modern deep neural-net got to their current image-recognition capabilities, once the computer scientists started to incorporate layered design, a bit like what was known about the visual column in the brain (and also once moore's law made large rnough nets possible).
So there are possibly also companies trying to better the current state of the art neural-net based AIs by incorporating more of the current knowledge in neuroscience.
but yes, marketing is also going to benefit a lot to.
or just general brain drain (Score:4, Interesting)
So there are possibly also companies trying to better the current state of the art neural-net based AIs by incorporating more of the current knowledge in neuroscience.
It's also possible they are just recruiting people smart enough to deal with problems of this complexity, and would rather them be working on artificial neural networks instead of their traditional research areas. The unfortunate consequence could be that instead of working on Alzheimer or MS research these scientists would be building better cat image recognition software.
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You haven't been watching the work. That's not the year 3000, but it might be 2050. The really difficult problem, though, is getting those electrodes properly in place. They've already got electrodes that can be put in place and left there without damaging the brain (after the original operation). I haven't heard that they've solved the problem of the electrodes becoming encysted, and thus non-working, but I have heard that they were working on promising approaches. Getting the electrodes in place thou
Apart from the occasional game playing Ai.. (Score:3)
... most of the "new products" involving ANNs coming out of silicon valley seems to be some form of image recognition surveillance system. Yet that laughably take a moral standpoint against working for the military.
Re:Apart from the occasional game playing Ai.. (Score:4, Funny)
... most of the "new products" involving ANNs coming out of silicon valley seems to be some form of image recognition surveillance system. Yet that laughably take a moral standpoint against working for the military.
That's the gameplan for our upper class. See this talk by former national security advisor of the united states Zbigniew Brzeziski:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values.
Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."
"In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason."
Zbigniew Brzeziski, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era
You can check out his books on amazon.com for those of you are interested in the upper crusts plans for the world.
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... most of the "new products" involving ANNs coming out of silicon valley seems to be some form of image recognition surveillance system. Yet that laughably take a moral standpoint against working for the military.
The retard is strong in this thread.
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Oh do go back into class silly little boy, teacher will be wondering where you've got to.
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Neuroscientists are (in general) not neurotics. However, people who cannot comprehend simple sentences might be considered borderline neurotic...or merely uneducated.
The Big Bang Theory (Score:1)
Tech Companies Are Binge-Hiring Neuroscientists
In "The Big Bang Theory" reunion TV movie a few years from now, this is what happens to Doctor Amy Farrah Fowler Cooper.
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There's nothing special about ASIC chips for which you'd need neuro-scientists. They could just develop the algorithms on regular hardware and then turn it over to the engineers to pound that into ASICs.
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"They could just develop the algorithms on regular hardware"
Algorithms which are based on or at least inspired by models of biological neurological systems. If you are trying to make software with alogorithms that parallel the Milliard reaction in some way (and have virtually limitless wealth) you'd hire chefs and chemists. If you are doing the same with neuron and higher order brain function you hire neurologists. As a bonus they learn some amount of scientific computing/data science as part of their educa
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The point is that if neurologists can describe the function and connectivity, it can be modeled as an algorithm on regular hardware. There's no need for the neurologists to get involved in ASIC design. Someone else can perform that optimization step purely based on the algorithm.
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Sure, I'm not saying that you are wrong in what you said I'm saying the point is wrong in the sense that you are being too literal in boxing it into the "ASIC design" step and only including the literal ASIC modeling piece of the process. If your intent from day one is to end with an ASIC the whole design process is an ASIC design project. Even process since you can typically get better results if you choose algorithms, implementations, etc that will target the strengths and avoid weaknesses of ASICs from t
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The trouble is dragonflies beat any missile guidance system, Pigeons, fruit flies, crustsicions beat any self driving car. Even rats are smart per gram of grey matter.
Clearly these experts are not replicating core brain functions.
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Clearly these experts are not replicating core brain functions.
We even know for sure what some of these core functions are: the mainstream neural networks are not turing complete. They're just classifiers.
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Apple, Google and Facebook want to control us all. If they aren't stopped, this is how they're going to do it.
Step one is to make sure the Democrats sweep the elections in 2020, by controlling what people think about the candidates. That will improve their revenue and end the threat of regulation.
Not a wierd trend (Score:2)
Some of the best biostatisticians and neuroscientists are literally leading AI research groups in academia, so this is just silicon valley catching up to the real world.
If you want to crack codes, you hire cryptographers; if you want to do AI, you get people who literally teach those skills.