The Artificial Intelligence revolution has arrived. There is an excellent series, currently on BBC4, titled Hyper-Evolution-Rise of the Robots. Last night viewers were introduced to iCub, a robot with a simulated brain which learns just like a 4-year-old child. Icub is 1 metre in height and can solve complex 3D mazes, can crawl whilst avoiding obstacles and can learn what different objects are called whilst viewing the object. All you have to do is teach the iCub in the same manner that a parent would teach a child to learn a language and identify its surroundings.
According to Inserm, the medical research institute, the iCub has a “simplifies artificial brain” which allows it to “learn and understand new sentences”, even sentences which may have a new grammatical structure which the iCub had not encountered before. It is also capable of counting its own fingers.
This “artificial neuronal network” are based on the workings of the human brain where “the brain continually revises its predictions between new information and a previously created context”. This is truly revolutionary and the implications for society are vast.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility that, in the near future, our work colleagues could be humanoids with artificial brains and these humanoids could even become form part of our social network. The mind boggles. What was once the subject of what was considered far-fetched Sci-Fi movies is rapidly becoming a reality.
To view a video on iCubs capabilities, please click here>>>
