Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Using PageRank in a Brain

Following up on my post about modeling & consciousness...

The use of a PageRank-like algorithm would explain some behaviors of the human brain. The most popular ideas or concepts require less processing time to recall, and the less popular take more. Likewise, the most popular pages show up first in a Google search, and you have to dig down deeper to find the less popular. The PageRank algorithm constantly updates; as new pages are indexed, the scores of the pages they link to are refreshed, just as the neural connections between frequently access bits of memory are strengthened in the human mind.

Other people have suggested that PageRank works like the human brain, and it makes a lot of sense to me. The amount of information collected by a brain (of any type) is vast, and requires some efficient method of determining what's important and what's not.

Outline of Conscious Modeling Framework

First post in a long time. I had trouble falling asleep last night, and this is the idea that was floating around in my mind:

  1. Scan input for modeling (this input could be a sentence, image, or even perfect knowledge of a closed system provided by some form of perception).

  2. Identify & label things (nouns) as "objects," actions (verbs) as "functions," etc.

  3. Use (& dynamically update) dictionary/knowledge base to fill out this working model by expanding characteristics & features of the component items to some reasonable limit.

  4. Cross-reference with Google-like search of memory using something akin to PageRank to generate connections, etc.

  5. Update PageRank scores with new data collected from current modeling.

  6. Commit new ideas into permanent model.


But can something as simple as this be robust enough to build a foundation of consciousness from?