How AI Works

4NEURAL NETWORKS: BRAIN-LIKE AI

Connectionism seeks to provide a substrate from which intelligence might emerge. Today, connectionism means neural networks, with neural being a nod to biological neurons. Despite the name, however, the relationship between the two is superficial. Biological neurons and artificial neurons may possess a similar configuration, but they operate in an entirely different manner.

Biological neurons accept input on their dendrites, and when a sufficient number of inputs are active they “fire” to produce a short-lived voltage spike on their axons. In other words, biological neurons are off until they’re on. Some 800 million ...