Want more information? IBM’s Watson AI software

In 2011, Watson competed on the television quiz show Jeopardy! as a test of its abilities. In a two-game, combined-point match aired in three Jeopardy! episodes running from February 14–16, Watson bested Brad Rutter, the biggest all-time money winner on Jeopardy!, and Ken Jennings, the record holder for the longest championship streak. Watson received first prize of $1 million, while Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter received $300,000 and $200,000, respectively. Jennings and Rutter pledged to donate half their winnings to charity, while IBM divided Watson’s winnings among two charities. This was the first man-versus-machine competition in Jeopardy!’s history.

The Study of Intelligence

Intelligence is most widely studied in humans, but is also observed in animals and plants. Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines or the simulation of intelligence in machines.

Numerous definitions of and hypotheses about intelligence have been proposed since before the twentieth century, with no consensus yet reached by scholars. Within the discipline of psychology, various approaches to human intelligence have been adopted, with the psychometric approach being especially familiar to the general public. Influenced by his cousin Charles Darwin, Francis Galton was the first scientist to propose a theory of general intelligence; that intelligence is a true, biologically-based mental faculty that can be studied by measuring a person’s reaction times to cognitive tasks. Galton’s research in measuring the head sizes of British scientists and laymen led to the conclusion that head-size is unrelated to a person’s intelligence.

Alfred Binet, and the French school of intelligence, believed intelligence was an aggregate of dissimilar abilities, not a unitary entity with specific, identifiable properties.

I really think some of these robots are fantastic. They really demo some of the advanced strides in robot motion that are going ahead. Yeap, strides… motions… I made an awful pun.

More so than the physical engineering behind these robots, I really admire and am interested by the software engineering that control these robots. The programming and artificial intelligence structures that must be used to control this motion accurately are fantastic. Artificial intelligence elements must predict necessary adjustments for robotic leg motor must be very quick and accurate to deal with unstable surfaces, such as the walker on ice in the video above.

I admire the guys who engineered and programmed these robots. Legged robotic motion is still one of the biggest challenges facing modern robotics in my opinion, with computer vision and object recognition being the most problematic.

Does anyone else interesting in robotics or artificial intelligence have any other examples of robotic motion? Or how about a great demo of computer vision in action?

I still find this idea to be fascinating along with all the moral, scientific and philosophical arguments that arise from such a concept. Already small rodent brains have been successfully modelled in computer systems. Henry Markram states that many of the mysteries of the human brain can be solved by computing modelling. Mental illnesses, memory and perception are all made of the neurons and electrical signals within the human brain, this is a given. However, Markram plans to find all of these links via a supercomputer software simulation of all ~ 100,000 million synapses within the human brain.

What do you think about this topic? A full simulation of the human brain and that of many other mammals – will this put an end to animal brain testing and will it assist in finding cures for various mental illnesses and memory problems in human beings?

Henry Markram, the director of the AI Blue Brain Project, has already simulated many parts of lower life-form brains, such as rat. He announced at this year’s TED Global conference that “It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,” and comically added that “… if we do succeed, we will send a hologram to TED to talk.”

One of the primary uses of this artificial brain, it is stated, will be research into and the hope for cures of various mental illnesses. This is an admirable goal indeed and shows how projects that initially seem set in motion initially for research purposes, can be directed to a humanitarian cause. This is fantastic is my opinion, but it was certainly not the first thing that crossed my mind regarding the idea of the creation of a functional human.

If you are like myself, and believe that we (as humans) are the sum of our parts, you most likely do not believe in a ‘soul’ or spiritual presence that defines us as who we are. In which case, you believe our personality, memories, our will and those things often referred to as being part of a ‘soul’ are all in fact, stored within our human brains. All our actions, decisions and motivations as a species have therefore been dedicated by the neural impulses within our brains, ignoring overriding environment factors. Assuming this is indeed the case, if we were to create a fully functional human brain (be it artificial), then what would we actually be creating?

If you believe what was just assumed, we would be creating an ‘entity’ capable of actions, decisions and motivations and would have a personality, memories and will. In which case, could it be deemed to have a ‘soul’ if such things are to be believed in? It would, regardless of spiritual meaning, have all the attributes we commonly refer as being part of a ‘soul’. What does this mean? If fully functional, the brain would be conscious, be capable of thought, decisions and learning right from wrong. Would this give the ‘entity’ rights?

I expect the arguments that this ‘entity’ is only artificial, but then again, many humans who have electronic or mechanical implants are, in part, artificial. It could also be said that the ‘entity’ is merely a computer. The counter-argument in this case is obviously that so are we. We may be biological in nature, but the human brain is merely that; a biological computer, even using electronic impulses sent from neuron to synapse to neuron, causing all of our own personal processing and data storage in the form of thoughts and memories.

Please, feel free to give your opinions. What do you think of the idea of an artificial brain? Should it be seen a life form, of sorts? Or do you simply not believe that the creation of an artificial human brain will be possible within the next 10 years, or indeed ever?