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An artificial brain as powerful as a human’s remains a distant goal, but scientists are inching closer. This week IBM announced that by using a brain-simulating algorithm called BlueMatter, researchers created an artificial brain simulation that packs more brainpower than a cat.

Researchers used an IBM supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore Lab to model the movement of data through a structure with 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses, which allowed them to see how information “percolates” through a system that’s comparable to a feline cerebral cortex [San Jose Mercury News]. The team’s previous effort two years ago, modeled after a rat brain, simulated only about 55 million neurons.

The staggering surge in computing power has engineers like IBM’s Dharmendra Modha drooling over the possibilities for more brain-like computers. By reverse engineering [the] cortical structure, Modha says, researchers could give machines the ability to interpret biological senses such as sight, hearing and touch. And artificial machine brains could process, intelligently, senses that don’t currently exist in the natural world, such as radar and laser range-finding [Popular Mechanics].

It should come as no surprise that the design suggests such military applications, as DARPA provided much of the funding. But like the Internet and other technologies originally developed for the military, BlueMatter’s abilities could lead in a multitude of directions. “As our digital and physical worlds collide, there is a tsunami of information,” Modha said. “There is a need for a new kind of intelligence that can sort through, prioritize and extract the most important information, much like how the brain deals with sight, sounds, tastes, touch and smell” [San Jose Mercury News].

Related Content:
80beats: Watson, an IBM Supercomputer, Could be the Next “Jeopardy!” Champion
80beats: At the New Singularity University, Ray Kurzweil Will Train Young Futurists
80beats: Computers Take the Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence, But Fall Short

Image: IBM Almaden research lab, Stanford University

A computer is being prepared to compete in the quiz show Jeopardy, and if its developers at IBM have their way, it could well become the next great contestant to beat. The computer, called Watson, will have to interpret the question, process puns and other word games, search through its database and determine the correct answer, all within less than a second—the reaction time of “Jeopardy” players [PCMag.com].

Its developers are aiming not at a true thinking machine but at a new class of software that can “understand” human questions and respond to them correctly. Such a program would have enormous economic implications [The New York Times]. Watson will not be connected to the Internet, and instead will have to rely on its own content database–just as a human contestant must rely on her own store of knowledge.

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Researchers have built a robot that doesn’t just perform pre-programmed tasks like a factory worker, but instead is capable of generating its own hypotheses and then running experiments to test them–like a scientist. The robot, named Adam, was set to work investigating the genetics of brewer’s yeast, and made 12 small discoveries. Lead researcher Ross King says that Adam’s results were modest, but real. “It’s certainly a contribution to knowledge. It would be publishable,” he says [New Scientist].

Adam isn’t a humanoid robot; instead it’s comprised of a sophisticated software program run on four computers, and a room full of lab equipment to carry out commands. The researchers gave Adam a freezer full of yeast strains and a database containing information about the yeast’s genes and enzymes, and asked Adam to determine which genes code for specific enzymes. The robot came up with hypotheses, devised experiments to test them, ran the experiments, and interpreted the results. In all, Adam formulated and tested 20 hypotheses about genes coding for 13 enzymes. Twelve hypotheses were confirmed. For instance, Adam correctly hypothesised that three genes it identified encode an enzyme important in producing the amino acid lysine. The researchers confirmed Adam’s work with their own experiments [New Scientist].

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The future, according to author and technological soothsayer Ray Kurzweil, is going to be awesome. In his books, he maps out a future for humanity in which we live forever, supported by a fleet of cleverer-than-human artificial intelligences who solve such trivial problems as hunger and disease, while simultaneously creating ever more intelligent computer minds, racing technological progress forward according to his Law of Accelerated Returns [Telegraph]. Now, Kurzweil is opening a new school, Singularity University, that will gather smart people together and encourage them to bring that future to pass.

Kurzweil dreamed up the school with Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, and got backing from Google and NASA; it will be housed on the NASA Ames base in California. The university takes its name from Kurzweil’s recent book, The Singularity Is Near, in which he argues that exponential advances in technology will shortly transform human life beyond all recognition…. This is Kurzweil’s own take on the widespread science-fiction use of the term “singularity” to refer to the day when artificial “intelligence” and/or processing power surpasses that of the human race’s collective brains. Sci-fi writer Vernor Vinge probably did most to hijack the word “singularity” from its use in physics to describe the breakdown of normal principles near a black hole [The Register].

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Five sophisticated computer programs chatted with human examiners this weekend and tried to convince the judges that they were conversing with another human being, vying to be the first to pass the Turing Test for artificial intelligence. Although none of the programs achieved their goal of duping 30 percent of the judges, several came quite close to that threshold and all fooled at least one judge. Said organizer Kevin Warwick: “…although the machines aren’t yet good enough to fool all of the people all of the time, they are certainly at the stage of fooling some of the people some of the time” [Telegraph].

The contest draws on the ideas of British mathematician Alan Turing, who came up with a subjective but simple rule for determining whether machines were capable of thought. Writing in 1950, Turing argued that conversation was proof of intelligence. If a computer talked like a human, then for all practical purposes it thought like a human too [AP]. Since 1991, an annual competition has been conducted in which judges chat simultaneously with computer programs and their “confederate” humans, and try to determine which is which.

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Small helicopters have learned to fly themselves through challenging aeronautic routines with an “apprenticeship” to an expert radio control pilot, researchers say. The clever robots were first steered through the maneuvers several times by the pilot while the helicopters’ computers recorded every movement; then the computers used an algorithm to determine the “ideal trajectory” that the pilot was aiming for on each loop or flip, and replicated those motions when they set off on their own into the wild blue yonder.

Researchers say the helicopters’ self-taught skills are particularly impressive due to difficulty of flying helicopters and their nature to always tend to an unstable state. “The helicopter doesn’t want to fly. It always wants to just tip over and crash,” said Garrett Oku, the pilot [TG Daily]. Because helicopters have to constantly adjust to changing wind currents, the inventors couldn’t simply program them to fly a set routine.

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Last weekend, teams of robots maneuvered through an urban warfare training course in southwest England, dodging sniper fire and swerving around roadside bombs. But this wasn’t a new television show featuring battling bots; the robots were competing in the the U.K. Ministry of Defence’s Grand Challenge, which spurred competitors to build autonomous spy robots.

The ministry is eager to develop uncrewed surveillance vehicles that can help the military identify enemy positions in a town or city before sending in troops. The MoD earmarked £4.5m to stage the contest and develop the technologies for the battlefield…. If future work goes well, the technology could be at the disposal of the army within 18 months [The Guardian].

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