DailyDirt: Skynet Is Just A Little Behind Schedule… (original) (raw)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Artificial intelligence projects are making significant progress (even though humans seem to keep moving the goalposts for what qualifies as AI). We haven’t created any self-conscious computers yet, but some chips and software are more closely mimicking how the human brain works. There still isn’t much agreement on how to measure intelligence, though if researchers just continue working on different approaches to creating thinking machines, maybe we’ll figure out more about both ourselves and how to make computers learn and interact like people.

• A project called Learn EVerything about ANything (LEVAN) is developing an artificial intelligence that scours the internet to learn from text and images that might teach it about… anything (well, anything visual). So far, LEVAN only “knows” about a few hundred concepts, but perhaps it just needs more input. [url]
• IBM is making a chip called SyNapse that mimicks how the human brain functions using artificial neurons. Neuromorphic chips have been around for a few decades, but only now are they becoming powerful enough to perform practical tasks. [url]
• A virtual psychologist named ELLIE might not be that much more advanced than ELIZA, but real human patients seem to be more willing to tell a computer about their problems (rather than other real humans). Seems like a nice project, as long as patients don’t freak out when it says, “Describe in single words. Only the good things that come to your mind. About your mother.” [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: ai, algorithm, artificial intelligence, biomimicry, brain, chatbot, eliza, ellie, levan, neural networks, neuromorphic chips, neuron, synapse
Companies: ibm