The day when computers become more powerful than their human creators has come a step closer with the announcement that computer giant IBM is to take charge of a US government funded programme to make electronic circuits that operate like a brain.
The research, which falls into the category of ‘cognitive computing’, will bring together specialists from several different fields including neurobiologists, psychologists and computer and materials scientists.
US defence agency Darpa has allocated $4.9m of funding for the project which could lead to faster data analysis, decision making and image recognition.
It is hoped that the research will pave the way for computers that can process conflicting or seemingly random information and come up with organised or coherent responses and data; a computer that can make a decision without relying on outside influences.
IBM will work alongside five US universities in an effort to mimic the biological workings of a brain. It is believed that by combining the expertise from many different disciplines it will be possible to create an electronic system based on the way neurons are stimulated and behave in a brain.
Neuroscientists have already made breakthroughs in the study of how the brain works and they have been able to create simple ‘wiring diagrams’ that show how neurons and synapses are linked and operate. Researchers have also been able to use computer code called neural networks to replicate the way neurons behave and believe that what they have found is akin to learning.
Researchers hope to gain more of an understanding of how the complex workings of the brain are able to change and adapt to different situations. If they can replicate that then the holy grail of artificial intelligence would be a real possibility.
The work could single a huge breakthrough in computing and would have far reaching consequences, not just for computing, but for science and technology as a whole. A computer that is able to operate outside the confines of programmed information to make decisions and form answers would be free from the limitations placed on it by its creators and operators; in short, it could be described as ‘thinking’.
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