BI 090 Chris Eliasmith: Building the Human Brain

Chris and I discuss his Spaun large scale model of the human brain (Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network), as detailed in his book How to Build a Brain. We talk about his philosophical approach, how Spaun compares to Randy O'Reilly's Leabra networks, the Applied Brain Research Chris co-founded, and I have guest questions from Brad Aimone, Steve Potter, and Randy O'Reilly.

• Chris's website.
• Applied Brain Research.
• The book: How to Build a Brain.
• Nengo (you can run Spaun).
• Paper summary of Spaun: A large-scale model of the functioning brain.

Some takeaways:

• Spaun is an embodied fully functional cognitive architecture with one eye for task instructions and an arm for responses.
• Chris uses elements from symbolic, connectionist, and dynamical systems approaches in cognitive science.
• The neural engineering framework (NEF) is how functions get instantiated in spiking neural networks.
• The semantic pointer architecture (SPA) is how representations are stored and transformed - i.e. the symbolic-like cognitive processing.

Time Points:

0:00 - Intro
2:29 - Sense of awe
6:20 - Large-scale models
9:24 - Descriptive pragmatism
15:43 - Asking better questions
22:48 - Brad Aimone question: Neural engineering framework
29:07 - Engineering to build vs. understand
32:12 - Why is AI world not interested in brains/minds?
37:09 - Steve Potter neuromorphics question
44:51 - Spaun
49:33 - Semantic Pointer Architecture
56:04 - Representations
58:21 - Randy O'Reilly question 1
1:07:33 - Randy O'Reilly question 2
1:10:31 - Spaun vs. Leabra
1:32:43 - How would Chris start over?