In a recent post, I talked about the need for us to stay aware of developments that control our evolution through technology. And, in a post on my lifestream blog I indicated my belief that artificial intelligence software should be open-source. (This position is debatable, of course, since one could argue that our nation might have national security interests at stake that require advancing further in AI than other nations. The “open-sourcing of science” is always “open” to these sort of criticisms.)
In a way, I realize that my desire for us all to stay aware of developments in this area is idealistic: advances in AI, genetics research, nanotechnology, and neuroscience occur every day, and it is just not possible to keep up with all of the advances. And the technical details are often far too complex for the lay person to understand. However, I do my best to at least stay abreast of highlights, and will share them with you from time to time. This also helps you learn new things, and that is an essential part of any personal development plan.
So, with that in mind, I want to share two articles with you:
- The New Scientist article Memristor minds: The future of artificial intelligence is a fascinating description of a new sort of electronic “device” that may mimic how key parts of our brains work. Weighing in at about 2,500 words, the article does go into a fair amount of detail, but it is written well and I thought it was pretty straightforward to understand.
- O’reilly Radar has a fascinating article entitled Sequencing a Genome a Week. Also a rather lengthy article, this gives a really good update on the status of genome sequencing and of the technology involved. The people doing this research are working with just astounding amounts of data, generating terabytes per day.
I was pleased to know from the latter article that much of the genome sequencing work uses open-source software. I was surprised to know that they are using Perl extensively.
Anyway, if you choose to not to read the linked articles, I’ll give you this quick take-away: they describe advances that seem consistent to me with the prediction that we will reach The Singularity within the next 25 – 40 years. By that time, we will have created a superintelligence, one that is so advanced that our present minds could not understand it. If we are able to “inherit” this intelligence through nanotechnology, genetics, and neuroscience, then we will survive and become significantly different than we are. Hopefully, that will be the point when we can leave some our shortcomings behind.
Something to think about.