As we all wonder what IBM is currently doing! Recently, IBM experienced heavy decline in their profits while Microsoft and Google still roughly maintaining their positions. At present, Microsoft and Google are more focused in updating their cloud products. And guess what IBM is doing? Well, among other things, IBM is looking to build human-like computers.
IBM is more into neurology where they have a crazy idea of creating a human brain connection with computers. Some of us call it as Artificial Intelligence. But, IBM is ahead of the curve. The researchers are using neural computing which marks the beginning of cognitive computing. It would be a best innovative accomplishment to date, if IBM succeeds.
IBM aims to connect perception, action and cognition — which are the part of human brain capabilities — with computers.
The researchers are also aiming to develop in such a way that the computer could learn things just like human beings learn. Dharmendra Modha is the lead researcher of this project. He has revealed that their team are creating programs using special blueprints which they termed it as ‘corelets’.
They started the project on 2008 (Synapse project). In 2009, they experimented on a cat’s brain. Then, they decided to experiment on human brain. They found that there could be a possibility of creating human brain chips by connecting them to computers, which will then turn them into human-like computers.
Later, IBM introduced neurosynaptic chip in 2011 which consisted of 256 neurons and 256 axons connected to 65,536 synapses. IBM also revealed that their dream is to create 10 billion neurons and 10 billion axons connected to 100 trillion synapses.
Recently, IBM had announced that they are into phase 3 of thee project. In addition, they have published their innovations in science journals and gone on YouTube:
This research project had been undergoing for around 6 years, and it is an expensive project. So far, the US government had funded more than 40 million dollars for this particular project and who knows from where else IBM has received funding. Hopefully all that money is put to good use, sooner rather than later.