Scientists replicate brain using a chip

 
Scientists are getting closer to the dream of creating computer systems that can replicate the brain. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed a computer chip that mimics how the brain's neurons adapt in response to new information. Such chips could eventually enable communication between artificially created body parts and the brain and it could also pave the way for artificial intelligence devices.

There are about 100 billion neurons in the brain, each of which forms synapses - the connections between neurons that allow information to flow - with many other neurons. This process is known as plasticity and is believed to underpin many brain functions, such as learning and memory.

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Bacteria Inspire Robotics

Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a computational model that better explains how bacteria move in a swarm -- and this model can be applied to human-made technologies, including computers, artificial intelligence, and robotics. The team of scientists has discovered how bacteria collectively gather information about their environment and find an optimal path to growth, even in the most complex terrains.

Studying the principles of bacteria navigation will allow researchers to design a new generation of smart robots that can form intelligent swarms, aid in the development of medical micro-robots used to diagnose or distribute medications in the body, or "de-code" systems used in social networks and throughout the Internet to gather information on consumer behaviors.

Simulated interacting agents collectively navigate towards a target (credit: American Friends of Tel Aviv University)

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Software to Prevent Child Abuse

Investigators estimate that there are currently more than 15 million photographs and videos of child abuse victims circulating on the Internet, or in the Darknet. By the time this material has been tracked down and deleted, pedophiles have long since downloaded it to their computers. Seeking and tracking hundreds of thousands of illegal media files in the suspect’s computer was tedious and extremely time-consuming process for investigators, until now.

Researchers from Fraunhofer Institute come up with an automated assistance system, called “desCRY”, that can detect child-pornographic images and video, from among even large volumes of data.
 

desCRY search results


The desCRY software uses novel pattern-recognition processes to navigate through digital photos and videos in search of illegal content, no matter how well-hidden it may be. The heart of the software consists of intelligent pattern-recognition algorithms that automatically analyze and classify images and video sequences combining technologies such as facial and skin-tone recognition with contextual and scene analyses to identify suspicious content.

The software searches all of the files in a computer, e-mail attachments and archives included and has many types of filtering allowing for a wide variety of search options. It can perform content-based data sorting and filtering, for instance. This way, investigators can sort files by person, object or location, for example. 
The algorithms use up to several thousand characteristics that describe properties such as color, texture and contours in order to analyze whether an image depicts child abuse. If the system is run on a standard PC, it classifies up to ten images per second, drastically accelerating the investigation works.

The Future of Computers - Artificial Intelligence

What is Artificial Intelligence?

The term “Artificial Intelligence” was coined in 1956 by John McCarthy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology defining it as the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.

Nowadays it’s a branch of computer science that aims to make computers behave like humans and this field of research is defined as the study and design of intelligent agents where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success.

This new science was founded on the claim that a central property of humans, intelligence—the sapience of Homo Sapiens—can be so precisely described that it can be simulated by a machine. This raises philosophical issues about the nature of the mind and the ethics of creating artificial beings, issues which have been addressed by myth, fiction and philosophy since antiquity.

Artificial Intelligence includes programming computers to make decisions in real life situations (e.g. some of these “expert systems” help physicians in the diagnosis of diseases based on symptoms), programming computers to understand human languages (natural language), programming computers to play games such as chess and checkers (games playing), programming computers to hear, see and react to other sensory stimuli(robotics) and designing systems that mimic human intelligence by attempting to reproduce the types of physical connections between neurons in the human brain (neural networks).

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