Brain-like Circuits Made, Capable of Performing Human Tasks

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara successfully constructed a circuit of about 100 artificial synapses, which was proven to perform a simple version of a typical human task like image classification. It is said to be a significant step in the field of Artificial Intelligence. The circuit isn’t even close to human brain because it has very low synapses at 100 compared to 10¹⁵ (one quadrillion) synaptic connections found in the brain but it has still managed to perform the typical human task for the first time.

“The memory state is stored as a specific concentration profile of defects that can be moved back and forth within the memristor,” said Strukov. The ionic memory mechanism brings several advantages over purely electron-based memories, which makes it very attractive for artificial neural network implementation, he added.

Even though Conventional computers can do this, memristor-based technology which behaves like an ‘analog’ brain, managed to successfully classify three letters (“z”, “v” and “n”) by their images in presence of noise.

“While the circuit was very small compared to practical networks, it is big enough to prove the concept of practicality,” said Merrikh-Bayat. According to Gina Adam, as interest grows in the technology, so will research momentum.

The human brain remains a model of computational power and efficiency for engineers because the ability of the brain to accomplish certain functions in a fraction of a second what computers would require far more time and energy to perform.

AI is getting better day by day and it won’t take us too long to witness a complete AI in functioning stage. What do you think? Is it a right step or is humanity in danger? Let us know your views in the comments section.

Thank you UC Santa Barbara for providing us with this information.