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posted by martyb on Sunday October 08 2017, @09:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-Robot dept.

From Quanta Magazine, A Brain Built From Atomic Switches Can Learn:

Now engineering researchers at the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA], are hoping to match some of the brain's computational and energy efficiency with systems that mirror the brain's structure. They are building a device, perhaps the first one, that is "inspired by the brain to generate the properties that enable the brain to do what it does," according to Adam Stieg, a research scientist and associate director of the institute, who leads the project with Jim Gimzewski, a professor of chemistry at UCLA.

The device is a far cry from conventional computers, which are based on minute wires imprinted on silicon chips in highly ordered patterns. The current pilot version is a 2-millimeter-by-2-millimeter mesh of silver nanowires connected by artificial synapses. Unlike silicon circuitry, with its geometric precision, this device is messy, like "a highly interconnected plate of noodles," Stieg said. And instead of being designed, the fine structure of the UCLA device essentially organized itself out of random chemical and electrical processes.

Reminds me of Mike from Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress!


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  • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Monday October 09 2017, @07:08PM (1 child)

    by Sulla (5173) on Monday October 09 2017, @07:08PM (#579364) Journal

    I hope this means I will be able to get a robot brain to put in a robot body.

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
  • (Score: 2) by rylyeh on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:18AM

    by rylyeh (6726) <{kadath} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:18AM (#579534)

    Fine - but no drive to reproduce or to self-preserve please! Please? PLEESE? Gelfling Friend...

    --
    "a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."