Ray Kurzweil’s prediction that “The Singularity Is Near” was given a new jolt of credibility this week, when IBM revealed it has developed a new “cognitive computing chip” designed to mimic the functions of the human brain.
Kurzeil is a futurist who notes that the amount of computing power that can be bought for $1000 double every 11 months. Kurzweil predicts this exponential explosion of computing power will continue and that eventually machines will become billions of times more intelligent than humans. Kurzweil predicts this “singularity” will occur in 2045.
IBM’s new chip is a radical change in the current 40 year old computer technology that relies on stored programs. IBM reports that this new generation of chip are, “designed to emulate the brain’s abilities for perception, action and cognition.”
From the news release:
In a sharp departure from traditional concepts in designing and building computers, IBM’s first neurosynaptic computing chips recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems, such as the brain, through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry. Its first two prototype chips have already been fabricated and are currently undergoing testing.
Called cognitive computers, systems built with these chips won’t be programmed the same way traditional computers are today. Rather, cognitive computers are expected to learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember – and learn from – the outcomes, mimicking the brains structural and synaptic plasticity.
To do this, IBM is combining principles from nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing as part of a multi-year cognitive computing initiative. The company and its university collaborators also announced they have been awarded approximately $21 million in new funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for Phase 2 of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project.
The goal of SyNAPSE is to create a system that not only analyzes complex information from multiple sensory modalities at once, but also dynamically rewires itself as it interacts with its environment – all while rivaling the brain’s compact size and low power usage. The IBM team has already successfully completed Phases 0 and 1.
“This is a major initiative to move beyond the von Neumann paradigm that has been ruling computer architecture for more than half a century,” said Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research. “Future applications of computing will increasingly demand functionality that is not efficiently delivered by the traditional architecture. These chips are another significant step in the evolution of computers from calculators to learning systems, signaling the beginning of a new generation of computers and their applications in business, science and government.”
The technology could yield many orders of magnitude less power consumption and space than used in today’s computers.”
Previous posts:
- As The Singularity Approaches — The Aim Of Education Must Be — Awake, Find Oil For Your Lamp, Get Ready
- When Computers Are Billions Of Times More Intelligent Than Humans — What Should Be The Aims Of Education?
