Brain Based Computers Make Their Debut

November 24, 2008

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Chips modeled on the human brain are bring advances in speech recognition, telephony, and all sorts of specialized computers. Bring on the Terminators!

"I know you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."

Since I was just a little iTodd, I’ve been fascinated by robots and sentient computers. The robot from Lost in Space, Rosie the robot maid from the Jetsons, R2D2 and C3PO - these were my friends and inspiration. Even the scary computers like the evil HAL 9000, from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, didn’t stop me from trying to build my own thinking machines at home. If it had screws, I would unscrew them. If it had bolts, I would unbolt it. I was after the guts of the machine, soldering iron in hand by age 12. I’d even construct fake faces and eyes for my creations, using airline tubing from my aquarium to give my machines a circulatory system. My poor mother couldn’t keep a vacuum or radio without my destroying it, and I was justifiably banished from even thinking about touching the TV. But I never managed to create anything that did more than smolder and threaten to burn down the house. I eventually gave up and moved on to other pursuits, like building haunted houses in the basement. But I never really lost my interest in cutting edge gadgets, machines, science, and computers.

Thinking machines like the kind that suddenly try to overthrow the human race in countless movies are fun to ponder because they are still so far off; but they are still close enough that we can actually imagine it happening - that’s the fun of it. Researchers have been working on speech recognition, computers which are increasingly able to learn from their mistakes, and even robots which are free to roam around on their own. But none of these advances really approaches a free thinking device.

An incredibly thought provoking article in Business Week details the work of a researcher who has been building computers which are based upon the principles of the human brain. Computers are number crunchers, they do things well that involve computations. However, using computations to understand the subtleties of conversation or emotion just doesn’t work well. Which is why researcher Lloyd Watts has been building chips modeled on functions of the inner ear and cerebral cortex to solve problems that normal computers aren’t suited for.

His chips are able to discern the difference between your voice an the background noise of cars and trucks, allowing for clearer mobile communications. But that is just the beginning of what brain science may be able to do for computing and communications. IBM has reportedly been selected for a $4.9 million Pentagon grant to research the creation of intelligent computers.

Isn’t this the reason that Sarah Connor had to go back in time in the Terminator movie? She needed to stop the invention of the thinking machines which would eventually turn upon their creators and destroy the human race? I’m kidding of course, but the research of brain based devices could eventually open a myriad of ethical issues, even as it changes the way we think about the role of computers and what they can accomplish.

Written by Todd · Filed Under Business, Mobile, Telecom