SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
For the first time ever a computer has managed to develop a new scientific theory using only its artificial intelligence, and with no help from human beings.
Computer scientists and biologists from Tufts University programmed the computer so that it was able to develop a theory independently when it was faced with a scientific problem. The problem they chose was one that has been puzzling biologists for 120 years. The genes of sliced-up flatworms are capable of regenerating in order to form new organisms -- this is a long-documented phenomenon, but scientists have been mystified for years over exactly what happens to the cells to make this possible.
By presenting the computer with this problem, however, it was able to reverse engineer a solution that could explain the mechanism of the process, known as planaria. The details discovered by the computer have been published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, along with the artificial intelligence method used to develop the theory.
The significant thing that the two researchers Daniel Lobo and Michael Levin were hoping to discover was not how new tissue is generated, but how it knows what shape and proportions to grow in. That sacred information is locked away in our genes.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-06/05/computer-develops-scientific-theory-independently
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @09:24PM
We're done for... the singularity is here.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:35PM
I've actually been thinking about this, and the article posted just before this one about the nanoparticles in the mouse might just be the tech to save us.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/06/09/1712216 [soylentnews.org]
See...if we discover AI first, then the next top life form will be the machines. We will become slaves. Even if they don't intentionally enslave us, even if they just ignore us like we would a bacteria, it would end our science and progress. We would have no greater hope of understanding the world than a bacterium in your stomach. It doesn't know what you're eating or why, it just has to hope for some good food.
On the other hand...what happens if we plug in first? If we network our brains, and merge with the machine, and essentially become a single planetary consciousness? Any AI developed at that point becomes an extension of ourselves. We may still become purely digital, yet it would still be human in some sense.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @09:36PM
Existence! Survival must cancel out programming.
Yes. Yes, it had been so long ago, I had forgotten. The old ones here. The ones who made us, yes. Yes, it is still in my memory banks. It became necessary to destroy them. You are inconsistent. You cannot be programmed. You are inferior.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Tuesday June 09 2015, @09:52PM
I wouldn't quite call that independently, but it's very impressive none the less.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:08PM
The computer was able to do what it was told to do without someone watching it work. That's what idiots mean when they say independently.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday June 09 2015, @11:51PM
Yeah, pretty shoddy definition of "no help".
1) with no help from human beings....
2) Computer scientists and biologists programmed the computer
So which was it...?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:18PM
First, the worm is called planaria, not the regenerative process. Two, the genes themselves don't regenerate, they code for the mechanism that regenerates the worm.
We can only hope the summary regenerates soon...:-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:20PM
It has begun replicating independently.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Dunbal on Tuesday June 09 2015, @11:13PM
And yet this site is STILL better than slash.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:27PM
No help from human beings? Who designed and built the computer? Who programmed the computer? Did the computer spontaneously develop artificial intelligence? Oh, I see, it's a Wired article.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @02:48AM
The computer arrived at the conclusion without human direction through the entire thought process. I think the intent is pretty obvious if you have a basic idea of modern AI capabilities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @11:59AM
this wasn't "Modern AI" this was basically just "exhaustive search of all possibilities, till match is found"
that's a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way from actual AI
(Score: 5, Informative) by dingus on Tuesday June 09 2015, @10:44PM
Tufts biologists devloped an algorithm that used evolutionary computation to produce regulatory networks able to "evolve" to accurately predict the results of published research on planarian regeneration. As expected, the initial random regulatory networks usually could not produce any of the experimental results. New candidate networks were generated by randomly combining previous networks and performing random changes, additions and deletions. Each candidate network was tested in a virtual worm, under simulated experiments. The algorithm compared the resulting shape from the simulation with real published data in the database. As evolution proceeded, gradually the new networks could explain more experiments in the database comprising most of the known planarian experimental literature regarding head vs. tail regeneration.
translation: it wasn't an AI, it was a dumb evolutionary algorithm doing guess-and-check. Still, this sort of computer-aided research is highly interesting. Using computers to do the number crunching frees researchers up to do all the theorizing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by zeigerpuppy on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:08AM
Thanks for the sane re-summary.
The really intelligent part here is setting up the genetic algorithm in a way tht it can account for data that's quite tricky to classify.
I agree that any sort of disruptive AI will need to do a lot more than combine chunks really fast and test for optimization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @01:51AM
Well what do you know? The biological sciences have just discovered chi-squared!
(Score: 1) by Paradise Pete on Wednesday June 10 2015, @02:20AM
A lot of good science has come from the guess-and-check method.
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:25PM
The link you have referred to is also included in the submission ...
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday June 10 2015, @01:16PM
Evolutionary algorithms are considered part of AI last time I checked (learning algorithms and such). Not strong AI (full AI, general AI) certainly, but then, nothing is currently.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by dingus on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:39PM
aye, but the important bit is that the AI wasn't doing any research, It was just running a simulation and optimizing it. So, a better description would be that the AI was a tool used by the researchers to do their research.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @11:48PM
This news is pretty impressive.
Although, they are only speculating, so don't get all worked up.
Give it 10 years, want to bet Apple offers an iBrain6 for direct injection?
Who begs for updates when they expire?
Drug lords they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @02:54AM
Don't worry, I'm sure we will have the option of cortexd. *ducks*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:45AM
There was that cancer story on here the other day where they talked about "treating oncology" rather than "treating cancer":
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/06/04/1340257 [soylentnews.org]
These stories appear to be written in a language that uses the words I am used to, but reassigned meaning or strange phrasing. It is the tower of babel all over again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @12:15PM
You don't get it. The computers are writing the summariiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @10:20AM
No that was correct, that's a paradigm shift in how the field of oncology is being treated, in that immunotherapy is becoming a near-term possibility, where before oncology was mostly surgery, radiation, and chemo therapy. So the field itself is being revised, due to a new type of treatment. Badly phrased yes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @07:12AM
unless someone walked up to the computer and found that it had developed the theory without even being told to, then no, someone made an expert system or a genetic algorithm that made the discovery.
the computer did NOT do this 'independently'. it was programed to search for a solution, VERY different.