Posted on 10/29/2014 1:56:10 PM PDT by Red Badger
The new hybrid device might not need humans at all.
In college, it wasn’t rare to hear a verbal battle regarding artificial intelligence erupt between my friends studying neuroscience and my friends studying computer science.
One rather outrageous fellow would mention the possibility of a computer takeover, and off they went. The neuroscience-savvy would awe at the potential of such hybrid technology as the CS majors argued we have nothing to fear, as computers will always need a programmer to tell them what to do.
Today’s news brings us to the Neural Turing Machine, a computer that will combine the way ordinary computers work with the way the human brain learns, enabling it to actually program itself. Perhaps my CS friends should reevaluate their position?
The computer is currently being developed by the London-based DeepMind Technologies, an artificial intelligence firm that was acquired by Google earlier this year. Neural networks — which will enable the computer to invent programs for situations it has not seen before — will make up half of the computer’s architecture. Experts at the firm hope this will equip the machine with the means to create like a human, but still with the number-crunching power of a computer, New Scientist reports.
In two different tests, the NTM was asked to 1) learn to copy blocks of binary data and 2) learn to remember and sort lists of data. The results were compared with a more basic neural network, and it was found that the computer learned faster and produced longer blocks of data with fewer errors. Additionally, the computer’s methods were found to be very similar to the code a human programmer would’ve written to make the computer complete such a task.
These are extremely simple tasks for a computer to accomplish when being told to do so, but computers’ abilities to learn them on their own could mean a lot for the future of AI.
Tech Ping!....................
Exactly.
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Dave: Open the door HAL.
5.56mm
... to KILL you!
Skynet
GREAT movie!
Up there with the original Andromeda Strain and Rollerball....
Nice pull!!!
Person of Interest
So why not just do it? Why talk about it first?
The Japanese “Fifth Generation” project back in the late 1980s made the same promise.
1. It flies into a rage at "Bad Command Or Filename"
2. It chirps "I don't need to document, the code is commented."
3. It chirps "I don't need to comment the code, I know what I'm trying to do."
4. It growls "Change control is a complete waste of time."
5. It passes the Turing test with "Hello world"
6. It is capable of body odor.
7. It can type a three-line shell command with two fingers but can't type a shopping list without misspelling "mayonnaise"
8. It knows fewer that three other AIs that aren't programmers.
9. has a distinct preference for variables which are a minimum of 52 letters long.
“Nice pull!!!”
Thanks, but you should reserve judgment until Colossus is running the planet!
Time for a somewhat serious post.
It was Kurtzweil and probably others who noted that technological progress is exponential not linear. This idea of Google’s seems like an excellent example of that proposition. The advantage that computers have over human beings is that they can easily transfer information between themselves with 100% accuracy. Another advantage they have is that they can work 24 hours a day 365 days a year. It seems like an obvious conclusion that these machines, as they learn to program themselves, will improve their capability over time in an exponential manner.
That may mean an acceleration of progress for the human race or our doom.
True enough.
A new one is in the works with Will Smith........................
http://screenrant.com/will-smith-colossus-forbin-project-ron-howard-kofi-83916/
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