Documenting the Coming Singularity

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

How to Build Gods (Rough Cut)

I apologize if the title of this post offends anyone, but it really is an good way to describe what this video is about; that is, building artificial super-intelligence.

There is a substantial qualitative difference in the predictions being made today and those made in the 50s concerning human-level artificial intelligence. Isaac Asimov was clearly off when he set his AI, HAL, in the year 2001. But at that time, no one had any idea what kind of computational power would be needed to achieve that goal, nor did they have decades of Moore's law from which to extrapolate.

Today, we have pretty good idea what kind of power will be required, and we have a pretty good idea when it will be available. IBM is currently involved in a project to simulate an entire cortical column, which is how the neocortex is wired. Once they have completed the first one, they will add others. A brain will be built. And fairly soon.

I encourage you to watch this video which, according to YouTube, is a rough cut of a film called "Building Gods." You'll then have a sense of how imminent these astonishing developments really are.



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1 comments :

Anonymous said...

2001 was Arthur C. Clarke, not Isaac Asimov.