US computer giant IBM announced on Thursday that it has developed prototypes of computer chips that mimic the way the human brain works.
Computers, like humans, can learn. But when Google tries to fill in your search box based only on a few keystrokes, or your iPhone predicts words as you type a text message, it’s only a narrow mimicry of what the human brain is capable.
“These chips are another significant step in the evolution of computers from calculators to learning systems, signaling the beginning of a new generation of computers,” said Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research.
The chips represent a significant milestone in a six-year-long project that has involved 100 researchers and some $41 million in funding from the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. That’s the Pentagon arm that focuses on long-term research and previously brought the world the Internet. IBM has also committed an undisclosed amount of money.
According to IBM, which has been conducting artificial intelligence research since 1956, the chips could lead to computers able to ingest complex, real-time information through multiple sensors and translate it into action.
For example, a cognitive computing system monitoring the world’s water supply could issue tsunami warnings using a network of sensors that monitor inputs such as temperature, pressure, wave height and acoustics.
“Making sense of real-time input flowing at an ever-dizzying rate would be a Herculean task for today’s computers, but would be natural for a brain-inspired system,” IBM said.
“Imagine traffic lights that can integrate sights, sounds and smells and flag unsafe intersections before disaster happens,” Modha said.
So far, IBM said, it has managed to carry out simple applications using the prototype chips like navigation, pattern recognition and classification.
The prototypes offer further evidence of the growing importance of “parallel processing,” or computers doing multiple tasks simultaneously. That is important for rendering graphics and crunching large amounts of data.
The uses of the IBM chips so far are prosaic, such as steering a simulated car through a maze, or playing Pong. It may be a decade or longer before the chips make their way out of the lab and into actual products.
The project is part of the same research that led to IBM’s announcement in 2009 that it had simulated a cat’s cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain, using a massive supercomputer. Using progressively bigger supercomputers, IBM had previously simulated 40 percent of a mouse’s brain in 2006, a rat’s full brain in 2007, and 1 percent of a human’s cerebral cortex in 2009.
A computer with the power of the human brain is not yet near. But Modha said the latest development is an important step.
“It really changes the perspective from ‘What if?’ to ‘What now?'” Modha said. “Today we proved it was possible. There have been many skeptics, and there will be more, but this completes in a certain sense our first round of innovation.”
Earlier this year, an IBM supercomputer known as Watson defeated two human contestants on the popular US television quiz show Jeopardy!
Watson, named for IBM founder Thomas Watson, is capable of understanding natural human speech and quickly providing answers to complex questions.
Watson was the latest machine developed by IBM to challenge mankind — in 1997, an IBM computer named “Deep Blue” defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match.
