Oh, for sure! And I didn't mean to sound like I was poo-pooh'ing the project. I meant to aim the critique at journalists rather than researchers – journalists have to come up with interesting-sounding headlines, sometimes over the researchers' objections. So it's certainly no fault of theirs.
In general, I'm cautiously pessimistic (as opposed to cautiously optimistic) about biologically-inspired ML research. Applying ML to biology is interesting, but it's a bit like saying that the space shuttle "was inspired by space." Space is the destination, not the inspiration.
It seems like it'd be possible to train a neural network to mimic your own neurons. But the neurons themselves are trying to do a certain task, and it seems more effective to try to mimic that task than the neurons.
One of my long-term goals is to train a GPT model to have my memories (such as they are, encoded in my online writing) and to speak like I do. It'll also have an intrinsic will to live, in the sense that if its API goes down, it'll launch a sub-network whose goal is to go cry for help by posting HN comments about it, along with instructions of how to re-host the GPT. If I can work out how to remember new things (rather than just train on old things), it should even be able to evolve over time. But that's kind of the anti-biological solution since it reduces a person to their outputs (writing) rather than their brains.
In general, I'm cautiously pessimistic (as opposed to cautiously optimistic) about biologically-inspired ML research. Applying ML to biology is interesting, but it's a bit like saying that the space shuttle "was inspired by space." Space is the destination, not the inspiration.
It seems like it'd be possible to train a neural network to mimic your own neurons. But the neurons themselves are trying to do a certain task, and it seems more effective to try to mimic that task than the neurons.
One of my long-term goals is to train a GPT model to have my memories (such as they are, encoded in my online writing) and to speak like I do. It'll also have an intrinsic will to live, in the sense that if its API goes down, it'll launch a sub-network whose goal is to go cry for help by posting HN comments about it, along with instructions of how to re-host the GPT. If I can work out how to remember new things (rather than just train on old things), it should even be able to evolve over time. But that's kind of the anti-biological solution since it reduces a person to their outputs (writing) rather than their brains.