Towards intelligent machines

1. May 8, 2016
1
Towards
intelligent
machines
Steve Furber
ICL Professor of Computer
Engineering
The University of Manchester

2. May 8, 2016
2
65 years ago…

3. May 8, 2016
3
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/513696/deep-learning/

4. May 8, 2016
4
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2455758/g
oogle-alphago-victory-paves-way-for-an-ai-first-world

5. May 8, 2016
5
http://observer.com/2015/08/stephen-hawking-elon-
musk-and-bill-gates-warn-about-artificial-intelligence/

6. May 8, 2016
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http://futureoflife.org/2015/12/15/pentagon-
seeks-12-15-billion-for-ai-weapons-research/

7. May 8, 2016
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The Human Brain Project
A €1B EU ICT Flagship
Research areas:
•Neuroscience
•neuroinformatics
•brain simulation
•Medicine
•medical informatics
•early diagnosis
•personalized treatment
•Future computing
•interactive supercomputing
•neuromorphic computing

8. May 8, 2016
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SpiNNaker machine
• HBP platform
– 500,000 cores
– 6 cabinets
(including server)
• 500M neurons
– 500B synapses
• Launch
– 30 March 2016

9. May 8, 2016
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The dawn of Cognition
•Machines are beginning to
sense and make sense of
their environment
–driverless cars
–robot vacuum cleaners
–…?
•Understanding the brain
will accelerate this trend
•What are the
consequences?

10. May 8, 2016
10
Conclusions
•Turing’s vision of machines with human-like
intelligence has yet to be realised
•he would be surprised by this!
•AI is seen as an “existential threat”?
•but ‘strong’ AI is still far from a reality
•Deep Networks have transformed machine
learning
•speech recognition, computer vision, …
•but currently require very large machines
•Cognitive systems are a reality
•autonomous sensing and acting