Transcript
In another milestone toward the ultimate goal of teaching machines to learn like people do, IBM has created two computer chips that process data like human brains absorb information.
IBM isn't saying how much the company has invested in the project, but it is a matter of public record that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, provided more than $40 million in funding for the effort. One hundred researchers worked on it for six years.
According to an Associated Press article, so far the IBM chips are only being used to steer a virtual car through a maze on a simulator, or for playing simple computer games like Pong. The earliest the chips are expected to be used in products that reach the marketplace is about 10 years from now.
But they are already changing the definition of what inanimate objects can do, because they are proving they are capable of reacting to information they were never programmed to handle. This offers the potential for a new type of computer intelligence that could one day surpass our own in reasoning ability.
Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research, told the AP that the two new chips are designed much differently than conventional chips. They include parts that act like the digital equivalents of "neurons" and "synapses", and each "core" includes functions for computing, communication, and memory.
Modha explains, "You have to throw out virtually everything we know about how these chips are designed. The key, key, key difference really is the memory and the processor are very closely brought together. There's a massive, massive amount of parallelism."
The new effort is the latest step in a fascinating line of research known as" cognitive computing." Previous breakthroughs include IBM's use of a supercomputer to simulate 40 percent of a mouse‘s brain in 2006, the entire brain of a rat in 2007, and in 2009, both a cat's cerebral cortex and 1 percent of a human‘s cerebral cortex.
The ultimate goal is to create a computer that can think and reason with the full capabilities of the human brain. While that goal may be many years away, Modha believes the development of the chips proves it is only a matter of time. As he puts it, "It really changes the perspective from 'What if?' to 'What now?' Today we proved it was possible."
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