Are memristors the future of Artifical Intelligence? DARPA thinks so
New Scientist has recently published an article that discusses the memristor, the long theorized basic circuit element that can generate voltage from a current (like a resistor), but in a more complex, dynamic manner -- with the ability to "remember" previous currents. As we've seen, HP has already made progress developing hybrid memristor-transistor chips, but now the hubbub is the technology's applications for artificial intelligence. Apparently, synapses have complex electrical responses "maddeningly similar" to those of memristors, a realization that led Leon Chua (who first discovered the memristor in 1971) to say that synapses are memristors, "the missing circuit element I was looking for" was with us all along, it seems. And of course, it didn't take long for DARPA to jump into the fray, with our fave DoD outfit recently announcing its Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics Program (SyNAPSE -- cute, huh?) with the goal of developing "biological neural systems" that can "autonomously process information in complex environments by automatically learning relevant and probabilistically stable features and associations." In other words, they see this as a way to make their killer robots a helluva lot smarter -- and you know what that means, don't you?
Read - New Scientist: "Memristor minds: The future of artificial intelligence"
Read - DARPA: "Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics"
Read - New Scientist: "Memristor minds: The future of artificial intelligence"
Read - DARPA: "Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics"
Filed under: Science
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
B3astofthe3ast @ Jul 14th 2009 5:59AM
Has pandoras box been opened?
Shinigami @ Jul 14th 2009 7:28AM
AI that never forgets? Ha, girlfriends are scarier than that.
LondonConsultant @ Jul 14th 2009 8:27AM
I knew a girl at school called Pandora. Never got to see her box, though.
EB @ Jul 14th 2009 9:08AM
I've seen a stripper named Pandora. Got to see her box when she was on stage.
Benhur @ Jul 14th 2009 6:08AM
DARPA is actually spending most of its resources on getting the acronyms to fit. All the rest is just "science".
Ende @ Jul 14th 2009 6:09AM
Aww... the military and their acronyms... (gonna get us all doomed eventually)
dboobis @ Jul 14th 2009 6:16AM
Can someone just explain this a bit better because the article has confused me. From what I can tell, these things are kinda useless, as they adapt to the present current flowing through them. So if the current changes, they change. Which means that remembering what the previous current was is irrelevant, as the next current to pass through it will just overwrite that. I can't be right on this, so I'd like to know what I'm missing here...
Hung @ Jul 14th 2009 6:51AM
Well, you have some options.
(1) Physics II (Electricity and Magnetism); it's a 1 semester course, credited no different than biology. Lab included.
OR
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#Memristor_theory
wodahS @ Jul 14th 2009 6:20AM
This enables processors to save a wider array of values, forget 1's and 0's, it's more human like now (or will be).
RitchieB @ Jul 14th 2009 6:34AM
I for one... meh, who am I kidding!
I am actually wondering who the hell comes up with these acronyms? Seriously, some of them are billiant! It's like the British Army and it's love of TLA's (three letter abreviations).
peepeepants @ Jul 14th 2009 6:50AM
While billions of dollars are spent for machines that will eventually go insane and start spraying people with lasers and napalm- using children as fuel- I hope that there is some underground resistance that is making advances with electromagnetic pulse weapons, or else we're all screwed.
I mean that seriously.
There better be some fatass geek muthafucka in his mom's basement, who watches too many sci-fi movies and truly believed all this intelligent-power-hungry-robot shit before Terminator 2 et al, who is working on some crazy anti-intelligent-robot weapons. Because if there's not some eccentric reject making some seemingly useless weapons NOW, then by the time old ladies' heads start lopping off from knee mounted razor blade cannons, it's too late. It's not like the movies where one can just go into some basement and MacGyver some "this just might work..." weapon. We need that one EMP dude who also has made communication devices that are based on encoding/decoding messages by means of fluctuating the resonant frequency of plants through song.
If you're out there reading this, saviour of The People..... Good luck, and godspeed. And also start working out and washing your face, cuz nobody's ready for an obese and acne covered hero.
munir.werlin @ Jul 14th 2009 6:51AM
hmmm intel's font
thisisit @ Jul 14th 2009 7:22AM
"Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics Program"
...or simply, SKYNET.
.
Chris @ Jul 14th 2009 8:32AM
@peepeepants
I predict that the one that will eventually save us all is none other than Benjamin J Heckendorn.
Addiktion @ Jul 14th 2009 8:36AM
I don't mean to spoil the fun but as far as I'm concerned robots don't do anything unless they are told to do something. Maybe the people you should be worrying about are the ones who will be controlling the robots that are doing the killing. It will be a human being on the other side I can guarantee that. As much as I dig movies like Terminator or irobot there is no evidence suggesting robots will ever kill humans unless we program them to do so. I think the real problem is within ourselves. Lets stop killing each other mmkay?
HyperHacker @ Jul 14th 2009 8:56AM
Yeah, computers never do things you didn't tell them to. Oh wait.
borgax @ Jul 14th 2009 8:49AM
You're right about how it will function and the method used will be determining the time it takes to change to the resistance from the new current, thereby allowing you to calculate what the previous resistance was.
borgax @ Jul 14th 2009 8:51AM
Clearly meant as a reply to dboobis. Let's see if this one actually replies to myself or not...