Military Creating Artificial Intelligence
February 22, 2008 7:35 pm TechnologyThe U.S. military is working on creating a chip that mimics the human brain.
The key to achieving the vision of the SyNAPSE program will be an unprecedented multidisciplinary approach that coordinates aggressive technology development in the following technical areas: 1) Hardware; 2) Architecture; 3) Simulation; and 4) Environment. Hardware includes neuromorphic electronics with novel, high density, plastic, synaptic components; Architecture includes neuromorphic design from microcircuits to complete system; Simulation includes large-scale digital simulation of neuromorphic circuits and functional neuromorphic systems; and Environment includes virtual training, testing and benchmarking for neuromorphic systems.
It will be interesting to see how this research develops. One potential problem is that the human brain is very much built to function in a human body. A chip modeled after the human brain might need a human-like environment to manifest its intelligence. DARPA mentions virtual reality, while I’m sure we’ll get there, virtual reality still falls very short of replicating the human-body experience.
I found out about this through brain stimulant, and I have practically plagiarized the article. Brain Stimulant is a little known but very interesting blog that focuses on new developments in neuroscience.
February 27th, 2008 at 6:52 am
I would like to know the details on how DARPA plans on implementing this technology. It makes me wonder if they may somehow use the chip, in the near future, to plant into a cloned human being. The clone will then be manipulated or programmed to take on the tasks or risks a human being with an organic (real) brain wouldn’t accept. Or maybe they plan on using it human beings now.
Just a thought. A frightening thought.
February 27th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
That’s an interesting idea! Seings how we’ve been cloning animals for a while, we certainly have the ability to clone people. If the chip could integrate with the human nervous system, that could be a very easy way to mass produce a good soldier mind. It would aslo make it easy to upgrade/change soldiers. You would just have to swap out the chips in your clones!
Clone armies with chip brains sounds slightly far-fetched, but then again maybe it isn’t. Definitely frightening.