ruffrecords said:
Read some interesting articles on AI in the latest issue of New Electronics. A group from Manchester University have build a 1200 board system where each board contains and ARM processor which simulates 1000 neurons and one million connections. The whole assembly is said to equate to about 1% of the human brain or to be equal to the brain of a small mammal.
The strongest interest in machine learning (ML) right now is deep learning, which extends neural nets to large numbers of layers and neurons. Inspired by the human brain, but humans actually don't know a whole lot about how are own brains work. Each neuron is a simple decision making node.
I think the distinction between AI and ML is important - but more philosophical that scientific. At what point does an algorithm that can emulate something become 'intelligent'?
A deep learning algorithm in recent years could beat humans at Chess or Go. But no machine learning algorithms have become as good as humans at navigating rough terrain (i.e. things animals have evolved to be very good at). While something like chess SEEMS like a significant thing to be good at, it isn't actually something animals have evolved to be good at. Who knows - maybe humans are actually terrible (in an absolute sense) at some of these things we consider so challenging.
Current work of several researches is concentrating on reducing power consumption the ultimate target being the mere 20W consumed by the human brain. Early works has led to a single chip equal to an insects brain which apparently holds out the possibility of autonomous drones.
There are many amazing comparisons that show what incredible technology animals are (if you want to consider them technology). Processing power, energy use, memory capacity, plus things like the maneuvering capability of insects.
Another human capability that we don't even consider challenging is facial recognition. Deep learning has been trying to do this as well as a human for years.
We are probably too far to turn back - but once weaponized drones are released the world might get a 'bit' more chaotic. Really one of the greatest imminent dangers civilization faces. I think it is safe to assume governments are putting a lot of R&D into this. And when individuals have attached firearms to remote control drones and posted videos to youtube, one can only imagine what military forces could deploy. And if they put AI into independent, autonomous drones? What could go wrong.
I guess it won't be long before we see PC based Producer applications that can take a bunch of sh*tty tracks and polish them into a gold record.
I've seen some attempts at using 'AI' to write songs. Again it comes back to emulating versus creating. At what point does a machine learning algorithm become intelligent or legitimately creative? And if a ML algorithm made a song, would anyone really care about listening to it? Similarly, if every bunch of tracks were combined, processed, and polished into the same 'gold' record sound, wouldn't everyone want to hear something different? Could AI learn how to continually evolve or move forward to make the next hit record?
Every generation loves the music they listened to when they were 25 yrs old and it HAD to be different that the music their parents loved. Would 'AI' be able to learn how to evolve like that?
