Machines Pensantes

This is the first of a couple columns about a growing trend in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it is likely to be integrated in our culture. Computerworld ran an interesting overview article on the subject yesterday that got me thinking not only about where this technology is going but how it is likely to affect us not just as a people. but as individuals. How is AI likely to affect me? The answer is scary.

Robert X. Cringely, 16/04/2014

Via Pierre Tran, Monika Fleischmann

Neuroscientist Henry Markram says he can build a supercomputer replica of the human brain. Now he has $1.3 billion to prove it.

"Even by the standards of the TED conference, Henry Markram’s 2009 TEDGlobal talk was a mind-bender. He took the stage of the Oxford Playhouse, clad in the requisite dress shirt and blue jeans, and announced a plan that—if it panned out—would deliver a fully sentient hologram within a decade. He dedicated himself to wiping out all mental disorders and creating a self-aware artificial intelligence. And the South African–born neuroscientist pronounced that he would accomplish all this through an insanely ambitious attempt to build a complete model of a human brain—from synapses to hemispheres—and simulate it on a supercomputer. Markram was proposing a project that has bedeviled AI researchers for decades, that most had presumed was impossible. He wanted to build a working mind from the ground up.

In the four years since Markram’s speech, he hasn’t backed off a nanometer. The self-assured scientist claims that the only thing preventing scientists from understanding the human brain in its entirety—from the molecular level all the way to the mystery of consciousness—is a lack of ambition. If only neuroscience would follow his lead, he insists, his Human Brain Project could simulate the functions of all 86 billion neurons in the human brain, and the 100 trillion connections that link them. And once that’s done, once you’ve built a plug-and-play brain, anything is possible. You could take it apart to figure out the causes of brain diseases. You could rig it to robotics and develop a whole new range of intelligent technologies. You could strap on a pair of virtual reality glasses and experience a brain other than your own..."

Via gawlab

Il n'est pas encore là que l'assemblée se tait déjà. Dans une atmosphère quasi religieuse, les quelque 250 Londoniens sagement assis face à l'estrade attendent l'arrivée de l'oracle américain, en silence. Démarche un peu gauche et sourire bon enfant, Nate Silver, le saint patron des "nerds" (le sobriquet désigne les obsessionnels du chiffre et des nouvelles technologies), apparaît enfin, avec quelques minutes de retard.

Il est là, costume gris et lunettes rectangles, avec des airs d'oiseau tombé du nid, face aux mines imprégnées de ses fidèles, aussi sûr de ses algorithmes que de son aura. Des mois avant le scrutin présidentiel américain du 6 novembre 2012, il annonçait une confortable victoire de Barack Obama. Faisant ainsi mentir les analystes et autres experts qui pronostiquaient un vote serré. Quelques autres ont, eux aussi, prévu l'élection du candidat démocrate, mais aucun n'a annoncé des résultats exacts dans la totalité des cinquante Etats américains.

 

 

Via Aurélien BADET