From: turbocrazed@webtv.net
Date: Tue May 09 2000 - 16:29:09 MDT
Professor Hugo de Garis, physicist, lately of Melbourne and now of Kyoto
in Japan, fears that his experiments may ultimately lead to the
extermination of the human race. What do you think?
At the Kyoto Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute, Professor
de Garis switched on a machine with which he will build the world's
first neural circuits for a true artificial brain.
In the next 12 months the cellular automata machine (CAM) in his
laboratory will create a device composed of 75million silicon neurons,
similar in capability to those in a human brain.
The neuron networks are built up so that their connections are random,
as they
are in the human brain. Most of them fail in production and are
discarded by a
system based on Darwin's theory of evolution. Even so, the circuits are
built,
tested, accepted or rejected at blinding speed, many thousands every
minute.
When it is finished some time in 2001, this artificial brain or
"artilect" will
go into a four-legged robot called Robokitty.
By then work will have begun on the next generation of the artificial
brain which, Professor de Garis says, could be finished about 2007 and
would have more
than 10 billion neurons. This would bring it to about the level of a
village idiot but within reach of the 23billion organic neurons
contained in the cortex
of a human male (19 billion in a female).
Then comes the third generation, which Professor de Garis expects to be
finished
about 2011 - a fearsome creation of 1000 billion neurons, vastly larger
than that
of a human.
"By then," says this unconventional Australian, "I expect we'll be in a
debate
about whether we should proceed any further.
"Long-term I am very worried about the political impact of brain
building.
"Since I am helping to pioneer this brain-building field, I feel a
strong moral
obligation to stimulate discussion on this enormous question. Do we
allow the
artificial intellects to take over or not?"
Futurologists, such as the American computer engineer and author Ray
Kurzweil, agree with him. While they themselves are riding and driving
the technological revolution, they also see its scary side. A massively
powerful artificial brain could easily develop contempt for its
comparatively puny human makers, says Professor de Garis, who predicts
that such a question could be this century's burning issue.
On one side will be those afraid of the consequences of the science. On
the other those who see it as part of human destiny and who say that if
artilects
are created by humans, then humans can set the boundaries for the
artificial intelligence.
Professor de Garis is not so sure about humans retaining control,
particularly
when it comes to a silicon brain 40 times smarter than your average man.
These,
he says, should be coming out of the CAM machines by the second half of
this century.
Some see parallels with the debate raised by the cloning of Dolly the
sheep.
The CAM machine with which Professor deGaris is working was built by
Genobyte, a US company based in Boulder, Colorado. It produces
microscopic modules on silicon chips each of about 1000 artificial
neurons. Such electrical connections in our human brains control our
movements, our senses and, perhaps most ominously when it is seen in an
artificial environment, our emotions and our imaginations.
In his profile on his personal website, the professor says: "My dream in
life is
to build artificial brains with billions of artificial neurons, and see
brain-like computers become a trillion-dollar industry within 20 years."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000126/A46070-2000Jan25.html
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