6 ms·
I have wondered this and occasionally seen some related news. Transistors can do more than on and off, there is also the linear region of operation where the g
by hermitShell 1y ago
I have wondered this and occasionally seen some related news.
Transistors can do more than on and off, there is also the linear region of operation where the gate voltage allows a proportional current to flow.
So you would be constructing an analog computer. Perhaps in operation it would resemble a meat computer (brain) a little more, as the activation potential of a neuron is some analog signal from another neuron. (I think? Because a weak activation might trigger half the outputs of a neuron, and a strong activation might trigger all outputs)
I don’t think we know how to construct such a computer, or how it would perform set computations. Like the weights in the neural net become something like capacitance at the gates of transistors. Computation is I suppose just inference, or thinking?
Maybe with the help of LLM tools we will be able to design such things. So far as I know there is nothing like an analog FPGA where you program the weights instead of whatever you do to an FPGA… making or breaking connections and telling LUTs their identity
- HeyLaughingBoy 1y agoYou don't think we know how to construct an analog computer? We have decades of experience designing analog computers to run fire control systems for large guns. https://maritime.org/doc/firecontrol/index.php https://maritime.org/doc/firecontrol/index.php
- stefanka 1y agoWe have also a pretty decent amount of experience with (pulse/spiking) artificial neural networks in analog hardware, e.g. [1]. Very Energy efficient but yet hard to scale. [1] https://www.kip.uni-heidelberg.de/Veroeffentlichungen/details.php?id=4053 https://www.kip.uni-heidelberg.de/Veroeffentlichungen/detail...
- hermitShell 1y agoThat’s a very cool abstract, thanks. I suppose it’s the plasticity that poses a pretty serious challenge. Anyway, if this kind of computer was so great maybe we should just encourage people to employ the human reproduction system to make more. There’s a certain irony of critics of current AI. Yes, these systems lack certain capabilities that humans possess, it’s true! Maybe we should make sure we keep it that way?