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IBM Shows Off Brain-Inspired Microchips
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at IBM have created microchips inspired by the basic functioning of the human brain. They believe the chips could perform tasks that humans excel at but computers normally don't. So far they have been taught to recognize handwriting, play Pong, and guide a car around a track. The same researchers previously modeled this kind of neurologically inspired computing using supercomputer simulations, and claimed to have simulated the complexity of a cat's cortex — a claim that sparked a firestorm of controversy at the time. The new hardware is designed to run this same software much more efficiently."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Computer
Chips from the brain have been known to attack starships. Watch out Captain Dunsel. It's clear that IBM is using Star Trek as a source of ideas. Gene Roddenberry has predicted the 21st century again...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
... and very timely of The Register to bring it up: http://www.reghardware.com/2011/08/18/heroes_of_tech_david_may/
If it gets out of control, we just need the equivalent of either a laser pointer or catnip to bring it to its knees.
This project attempts to build something as close to a brain as we currently can. However, trying to replicate something by copying only its most outwardly obvious features probably won't work, and IBM's attempt to recapitulate thought reminds me of the fiasco that were the cargo cults, where natives created effigies of technology they didn't understand because they thought through their imitation of colonizers, cargo would magically be delivered to them. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult:
(begin quote)
The primary association in cargo cults is between the divine nature of "cargo" (manufactured goods) and the advanced, non-native behavior, clothing and equipment of the recipients of the "cargo". Since the modern manufacturing process is unknown to them, members, leaders, and prophets of the cults maintain that the manufactured goods of the non-native culture have been created by spiritual means, such as through their deities and ancestors, and are intended for the local indigenous people, but that the foreigners have unfairly gained control of these objects through malice or mistake.[3] Thus, a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief that spiritual agents will, at some future time, give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.
(end quote)
Computational folks can still make progress studying how the brain works, but I think we should focus on understanding first which problems brains solve better than computers, and second which computational tricks are used that our computer scientists haven't yet discovered. Merely emulating a close approximation to the best understanding we have of neural hardware looks splashy, but isn't guaranteed to teach us anything, let alone replicate human intelligence.
IBM has been working fast and furious ever since Kwabena Boahen showed them a chip (that actually was based on neural architecture) that matched the performance of their massive Blue Brain cluster, but used something like 5-10 W. Sounds like they're still playing catch-up. http://science.slashdot.org/story/07/02/13/0159220/Building-a-Silicon-Brain
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
And they taught it to drive ? My cat is a terrible driver.
It's MUCH worse than that. What you are looking at, is a sneak peek at the new PS4 architecture. There will be 23 and a 1/5 of those processors, cut into thirds, and connected via a new carrier pigeon based data bus. To make PS3 developers feel at home, the dev tools will be based upon the open source 'brainfuck' compiler, and the processor fragments will be physically arranged in the shape of a finger flipping you the bird. Here's hoping for a pre-christmas launch date!
As best I can tell from the scant information in the article, this is merely a hardware implementation of standard neural network architectures. Many of these were described, as software implementations in the mid-1980s by Rumelhart, McClelland et. al. in their two volume work*Parallel Distributed Processing*. Many of the putatively revolutionary features of this implementation, like on-board memory and modifiable connections are described. Since that time, neural network technology has advanced quite a bit, as can be seen by inspecting journals such as *Connection Science*, or *Neural Computation*. So, despite all the hyperbole here, as best I an tell, this is not really news.
An interesting article about the 'Great Brain Race' which also mentions IBM's SyNAPSE project can be found at IEEE Spectrum. http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/moneta-a-mind-made-from-memristors/0