InfoTech: IBM says future computers will think

Don't get excited: we've had wild promises of spectacular futures in the past and they have hit the headlines, got publicity for those making announcements and then they have withered, in the case of biological data storage, literally.

But, and here a big but (one T), IBM does have a better track record of succeeding in wild ideas than most companies.

When it says it has developed a "computing core that combines digital "neurons" and on-chip "synapses" in working silicon," that sounds like geek-speak. But don't think about computers, think about sitting in front of the TV watching House, Grey's Anatomy or any other programme that bandies about medical terms. Neurons and synapses are the bits that make the brain work.

IBM Says "In a sharp departure from traditional concepts in designing and building computers, IBM's first neurosynaptic computing chips recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems, such as the brain, through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry. Its first two prototype chips have already been fabricated and are currently undergoing testing."

Bizarre: a computer company that sounds like a brain surgeon.

And IBM reckons that we will be able to throw away our current way of thinking when it comes to programming: "Called cognitive computers, systems built with these chips won't be programmed the same way traditional computers are today. Rather, cognitive computers are expected to learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember – and learn from – the outcomes, mimicking the brains structural and synaptic plasticity."

Of course, this all sounds a bit disturbing to those who enjoy SciFi for stories of robotic soldiers that second-guess their leaders and either go rogue or prevent their leaders behaving stupidly. So IBM won't let their ideas get into the hands of the military, right?

Wrong: "The company and its university collaborators also announced they have been awarded approximately $21 million in new funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for Phase 2 of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project. The goal of SyNAPSE is to create a system that not only analyzes complex information from multiple sensory modalities at once, but also dynamically rewires itself as it interacts with its environment – all while rivaling the brain's compact size and low power usage."

Translation: the rogue aeroplane or robot soldier is no longer a creature of science fiction but rather a question of a questionable future. After all, pilots cannot fly modern fighters without the computers taking over some functions in their entirety.

IBM is combining principles from nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing as part of a multi-year cognitive computing initiative.

IBM says "While they contain no biological elements, IBM's first cognitive computing prototype chips use digital silicon circuits inspired by neurobiology to make up what is referred to as a "neurosynaptic core" with integrated memory (replicated synapses), computation (replicated neurons) and communication (replicated axons)."

The company talks about clever traffic lights, gloves that smell bad produce and systems to monitor sea trends.

IBM says that it's fixed the long-standing problems with voice recognition " IBM Research scientists created Watson, an analytical computing system that specializes in understanding natural human language and provides specific answers to complex questions at rapid speeds. Watson represents a tremendous breakthrough in computers understanding natural language, "real language" that is not specially designed or encoded just for computers, but language that humans use to naturally capture and communicate knowledge."

Maybe. We've been promised the holy grail of effective voice recog so often that announcements tend to drift as "cry wolf" releases.

And AI, as we have known it, has been nothing more than a complex rules-based system where someone tells the computer what to think and how to think it then sets it off to do as it's been told. It's an obedient hound rather than a tinkerish terrier. But the new development, if it works as suggested, might actually be the first machine that thinks as we do.

The challenge, then, will be to limits its free will and its capabilities.