quantum computers

[steveo]

was listening to a interview the other night where a fellow was talking about quantum computers and that one was close to being developed, maybe at MIT. Basically the cpu's arn't measured in MHz but in atoms...that is a 5 atom cpu which is Billion's of times faster than anything on the domestic market. The fear was that these QPC's may begin thinking for themselves and their first conclusion was that carbon based units (us) were no longer needed. The interviewer did make the point that even at these kinds of speeds the QPC's were lagging when compared to the human brain in terms of processing. Be that as it may this kind of technology seems intriguing, as does nano technology, and I wonder what the future holds in this area. Is the sky really the limit and just how far has technology come that remains hidden from the public eye?

S

[mjc]

Resistance is futile...you will be assilimated.

[Budfred]

The scenario of the computers deciding we are obsolete and taking over is a very old one. Asimov's Robot novels took care of the problem with the rules of robotics. I would assume that we would program any superpowerful computer with similar laws, beginning with the rule that humans are not to be harmed. I can see a human misapplying technology, but I doubt technology would be motivated to eliminate humans.

Budfred

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Sounds HORRIBLE!

I'm going to lock myself in a fortress and prepare for allout war on the cyborgs!?!

Do you mean assimilated, eliminated or TERMINATED!!!

http://www.movieprop.com/tvandmovie/terminator/Terminator2-Endoskeleton.JPG

I'll Be Bach. :D

[bassvax]

Was that on the Art Bell program per chance? I remember hearing similar talk of this nature there recently.

Hope Art makes quick and less painful recovery! While not always up there with reality....still entertaining!

Give that puter to gov officials...might get things processed a little faster....lol...yeah right!

[RKBA]

steveo,

There's nothing particularly new about atomic scale computers - they've been in development for quite sometime now, as have quantum computers. BTW, quantum computers have nothing to do with the atom based computers you mentioned. Atom based computers (transistors actually, that use one or more atoms as their "gate" instead of a semiconductor material) are serial processing devices just like conventional semiconductor devices except for their size and extreme difficulty in manufacturing. Quantum based computers however, are essentially parallel devices that explore all computational possibilities at once. IIRC, the last one I heard of could hold the equivalent of 2.5 bits of data and could perform some simple arithmetic calculation. I do however, have a reference for the atomic-scale transistor you mention because I remember reading about it in a recent issue of Science News (http://www.sciencenews.org/). Science News is a small weekly newsletter (usually a dozen or so pages) that contains a brief news announcement about most of the latest scientific advances, and is written in terms a layman can understand. I highly recommend it.

Please see "Shrinking toward the Ultimate Transistor" (http://www.sciencenews.org/20020810/bob9.asp) in the Aug 10, 2002; Vol. 162, No. 6 issue. It isn't anywhere near being manufactured commercially however. It's a laboratory curiosity and probably will be for a long while.

Even if (and that's a very big "if") massively parallel computers could be manufactured that matched the human brain in parallel processing power (billions of CPU's), and if artificial intelligence techniques were developed that could mimic the way the human brain goes about processing information (remember that it's an analog parallel processor, rather than digital like traditional computers), we would still have solved only half the problem.

In my opinion, one other thing that's just as important as processing power is the number of I/O sensory and motor channels to which the human brain is connected. Consider that each square centimeter of human skin has thousands or perhaps even millions (depending on the area of skin) of analog sensors that measure temperature, pressure, and pain - and there are other types of sensors as well. Although the number of muscles the brain controls are far fewer than that, they are nonetheless considerable in number.

Contrast that to the typical computer that has only a mouse and keyboard with which to sense the outside world. Even if it were intelligence, how much do you think it could learn with such sensory deprivation? How smart do you think a human being would be if he or she were deprived of virtually all sensations and means for interacting with his/her environment from birth? Not very.

Sure, we could hook up a couple of video cameras and some ADC's with temperature and pressure sensors to it for input and a few DAC's controlling motors for output (and in fact I develop computer firmware for just such systems), but we could never hope to begin to equal the rich sensory environment with which we humans interact daily.

As for computers attacking humans, that's already happened many times. Dozens of humans have been killed by computers run amok. In the one case I recall (the very first, I believe), the failure was electro mechanical in nature rather than due to a logic failure or deliberate intent however. One of the hydraulic hoses that controlled a large commercial "robot" manufacturing arm ruptured, crushing a worker to death against a wall.

Run, run, the robots are coming... http://ron.dotson.org/pic/pi_freak.gif
(Sorry I couldn't help myself)

-- Ron

[steveo]

Bassvax...yup, heard it on C2C a few months back. Art is set to return right after Labour Day after being out with illness the past couple of months.

RKBA...that's one heck of a reply so thanks for posting it, clears up a few things eh.

Gotta run, start swathing today which will only take a hour to do 1000 acres being the crop is only 18 inches high :(

[bassvax]

Did Steveo just say he had some crop circles to go make? lol

Old back injury for Art....haunting him now :( I used to listen to him at night at work on the web....couldn't get any stations with him out here in the boonies. But now......it's all about the cash.....gotta pay like $6.95 a month if I want get it on the net :(

[steveo]

Bassvax...as tempting as it is to hijack one of the swathers in the dead of night and have some fun in the field I'm sure my sister wouldn't dig that to much. Today I watched two hawks feast on mice in the swaths I cut, two coyotes mulling about and a moose who came to see what all the fuss was about. Once I start the canola I'll see lot's of deer bounding about. They use the canola for cover during the day and I'm sure they hate it when I come rumbling through.

On a side note, last year around this time a crop circle popped up in a field about ten miles east of the field I was cutting. Made the news around here in both the paper and TV. You can imagine the headlines...Aliens visiting central Alberta? It wasn't that elaborate of a circle from what I remember, not like the ones in England.