Engineering On The Edge

I remember being told as a kid that that the most impressive computer on the planet rested inside my noggin. Sure, computers could be programmed to do math faster than I could (no real achievement there), recall facts more accurately, or any other number of trained tricks, but it couldn’t think.

That notion seems to be moving by the wayside. No, we don’t have any true artificial intelligence yet, but computers are becoming ever more sophisticated in the way they work and process information. The programs responsible for this behavior have become more complex, taking into account more variables, but no one can program for every possibility. That sort of learning only comes from experience.

Intel wants to give computers a way to learn. Maybe not in full-on Skynet (we hope) mode, but at least in a way that can be helpful to users.

“Machine learning is such a huge opportunity,” said Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer. “Despite their name, smartphones are rather dumb devices. My smartphone doesn’t know anything more about me than when I got it. All of these devices will come to know us as individuals, will very much tailor themselves to us.”

Research into this area of technology will be conducted at the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Computational Intelligence in Israel. The new technology will be aimed at wearable and portable electronics that can learn about their owners, reminding people of things they might forget — such as reminding you where you left your keys.

“Within five years, all of the human senses will be in computers, and in 10 years we will have more transistors in one chip than neurons in the human brain,” said Moody Eden, president of Intel Israel.

That all sound cool, except for one thing. If people are allowed to let machines do more of their thinking for them, will that have a negative effect in some way? I present spell checkers or digital clocks to you as examples of what I mean.

Below you’ll find a video about the new research center in Israel.

Source: Reuters