I consider myself a techno-optimist, but Watson’s performance in Jeopardy’s IBM Challenge has definitely exceeded my expectations. While I did predict Watson would win the competition, I didn’t think it would be so dominant. This was a contest I thought machine intelligence might win by a narrow margin, but the […]
On January 13, 2011, IBM’s Watson supercomputer competed in a practice round of Jeopardy, the long-running trivia quiz show. Playing against the program’s two most successful champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, Watson won the preliminary match. Is this all a big publicity stunt? Of course it is. But it […]
Recent reports that China is barreling ahead in its development of supercomputers should give the U.S. considerable cause for concern. China has devoted significant resources to their supercomputer program in recent years, resulting in their ranking earlier this year at the number two spot on the TOP500 list. TOP500.org ranks […]
A number of recent stories illustrate the rapid progress that’s being made in many different fields linked to artificial intelligence: Europe’s four-year AMARSi project (Adaptive Modular Architecture for Rich Motor Skills) could lead to humanoid robots that quickly acquire skills from human co-workers as well as their environments. AMARSi project […]
Listen to this original piece of music before reading this post: This music was composed by a prolific, young composer named Emi. During a brief career, Emi created thousands of works, many of them in the style of famous composers, such as Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin. These compositions have been […]
“Get Smart”, my new article about the future of intelligence is out in this month’s Mensa Bulletin. The domain of sapient entities may one day encompass not only humans, but transhumans, machine intelligences, augmented animals, distributed networks, group minds, even uploaded personalities. If so, our definition of what is intelligent […]