Page 20 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - September 2023
P. 20

20                            Brains May Predict The Future





             To Make Sense of the


              Present, Brains May
               Predict The Future




                 Continued from Page 19






        That is, the errors stemmed from what
        was going on at higher levels of the
        system — suggesting that lower levels
        construct the error signal by comparing
        incoming perceptions with predictions
        descending from higher levels.


        “It was exciting to find prediction errors,
        and to find the specific content of

        predictions, in that system,” said the
        paper’s lead author, Caspar Schwiedrzik, majority of artificial intelligence research the University of Glasgow who has done
        a neuroscientist at the European does not involve predictive coding, extensive work on the theory. But for
        Neuroscience Institute Göttingen in instead focusing on other kinds of now, Sprevak noted, “the jury is still out.”
        Germany.                                         algorithms.                                      []


        According to Lucia Melloni, a researcher           But formulating predictive coding                PSYCHIC PREDICTIONS

        at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical architecture in a deep-learning context
                                                                                                            THAT NEVER CAME TO
        Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, her could bring machines closer to
                                                                                                                   PASS AND WHY
        group is starting to see results compatible intelligence, Friston argues.
        with an explanation of prediction error in
        neuronal data currently being collected DeepMind’s GQN serves as a good                            •  End of the world in 2012:  This
        from humans.                                     example of that potential. And in 2017,             prophecy         gained       widespread
                                                         researchers at the University of Sussex             attention, but as we can see, the world
        A Race to Find More Predictive even used virtual reality and artificial                              didn't come to an end as predicted.
        Machines                                         intelligence technologies that included
                                                         predictive coding features to create what         •  Presidential     election     outcomes:

        Not everyone agrees that the case for            they called the “Hallucination Machine,”            Psychics have often tried to predict
        predictive coding in the brain is                a tool that was able to mimic the altered           election results, and while some
        strengthening. Some scientists accept that       hallucinatory states typically caused by            predictions have been correct, there
        the theory can explain certain aspects of        psychedelic drugs.                                  have been many instances where their
                                                                                                             forecasts proved inaccurate.
        cognition but reject the idea that it could
        explain everything. Others don’t concede         Machine learning advances could be used

        even that much.  To David Heeger, a              to provide new insights into what’s               •  Natural disasters: Psychic predictions
        professor of psychology at New  York             happening in the brain by comparing how             regarding large-scale natural disasters
        University, it’s important to make a             well predictive coding models perform               like earthquakes or tsunamis have
        distinction between “predictive coding,”         against other techniques.  At the very              often missed the mark, as these events
        which he says is about transmitting              least, introducing predictive coding into           are difficult to predict accurately.
        information efficiently, and “predictive         artificial systems could significantly
        processing,” which he defines as                 improve the intelligence of those                 •  Cure for diseases: Some psychics
        prediction-making over time. “There’s a          machines.                                           have claimed to predict specific
                                                                                                             breakthroughs in medical research,
        lot of confusion in the literature because
        these things have been assumed to all be         But before that can happen, much work               but these predictions haven't always
        part of the same soup,” he said. “And            lies ahead. Scientists need to continue the         panned out.

        that’s not necessarily the case, nor is it       kind of research being done by Keller,
        necessarily the best way to go forward in        Schwiedrzik and others to determine just          •  Stock market predictions:  Accurate
        studying it.” Other types of Bayesian            where, for instance, the brain’s internal           predictions       of     stock     market
        models, for instance, might provide a            representations reside. And it remains to           fluctuations can be challenging, and
        more accurate description of brain               be seen whether similar experiments can             while some psychics have claimed
        function under certain circumstances.            substantiate claims for predictive coding           success, the field of finance is known
                                                         in higher cognitive processes.                      for its unpredictability.
        What many experts in the field do agree
        on, however, is that this research has the       Predictive coding “is as important to            Hummm:  The question is “why do so

        potential for exciting applications in           neuroscience as evolution is to biology,”        many people actually believe tat psuchics
        machine learning.  At present, the vast          said Lars Muckli, a neurophysiologist at         are real?” []
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