Brainlike Computers, Learning From Experience
This will turn the digital world on its head
Erin Lubin/The New York Times
JOHN MARKOFF | NYTimes
Computers have entered the age when they are able to learn from their own mistakes, a development that is about to turn the digital world on its head.
The first commercial version of the new kind of computer chip is scheduled to be released in 2014. Not only can it automate tasks that now require painstaking programming — for example, moving a robot’s arm smoothly and efficiently — but it can also sidestep and even tolerate errors, potentially making the term “computer crash” obsolete.
based on the biological nervous system, specifically on how neurons react to stimuli and connect with other neurons to interpret information.
allows computers to absorb new information while carrying out a task, and adjust what they do based on the changing signals.
performs some functions that humans do with ease: see, speak, listen, navigate, manipulate and control.
Google researchers were able to get a machine-learning algorithm, known as a neural network, to perform an identification task without supervision. The network scanned a database of 10 million images, and in doing so trained itself to recognize cats.
new processors consist of electronic components that can be connected by wires that mimic biological synapses. They are known as neuromorphic processors
Dharmendra Modha, an I.B.M. computer scientist: “Sensors become the computer, and it opens up a new way to use computer chips that can be everywhere.”
I.B.M. announced last year that it had built a supercomputer simulation of the brain that encompassed roughly 10 billion neurons — more than 10 percent of a human brain.