- [Narrator] Computers these days.
They just don't learn.
(electronic crescendo)
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- Wish you could be as smart as a computer?
Well, computer engineers wish they could build
a machine as smart as you, or even your dog.
Okay, so there're certain tasks that computers
are obviously better at than we are.
For example, quick, what's the square root of 7,013?
Now, while all of you were trying to cheat
by opening up a calculator app,
whatever device you're actually watching this on
could've calculated the answer to 1000 decimal places.
But can that same computer take a picture of me
and recognize what it's looking at?
With dedicated facial recognition software,
written by humans, I must add, it probably can.
But that requires a lot of work
on the front end to make it happen.
You see, when it comes to recognizing visual images,
or a style of a piece of music, the natural architecture
of a human or even an animal brain is at a huge advantage.
So, what if we could make computers think more like brains?
Now, a computer is based on von Neumann architecture.
That's where you have a CPU and a separate memory bank.
That CPU performs operations based on binary data.
That's essentially an electrical on or off switch,
and it can really only do one of those at a time
until an entire program is fulfilled.
Now, your brain is also an information unit,
but it works in a very different way.
It's all based on the neuron.
Neurons can communicate with other neurons
through electrical and chemical signals,
and you have a web of around 80 to 100 billion neurons
in your brain.
They're constantly making and breaking
and reinforcing connections as you form new ideas.
Now, it's true that your brain
executes individual computations at a rate much slower
than the computer chip, but your brain
actually has some enormous advantages.
For one thing, it's massively parallel.
See, a traditional computer has to solve operations one
at a time, while your brain can be working
on millions at the same time.
It also is really energy-efficient.
It uses a fraction of the wattage
that IBM's Watson supercomputer used.
You know, that's the one that beat the human champions
on Jeopardy.
And finally, your brain is naturally designed to learn,
or, in computer terms, to reprogram itself.
As it does work, it redesigns itself to do work better.
Check this out.
In 2012, researchers with the Google Brain Project
created a neural network of 16,000 processors.
Then they fed it 10 million random,
unlabeled Youtube thumbnail images,
and the computer learned to recognize cats!
(high-pitched meow)
Of course it did.
Essentially, it had to invent the concept of a cat,
which is pretty much what a human naturalist would have
to do if they went to a alien world
and saw alien life forms.
You classify stuff based upon visual similarities,
and you make the rules up from there.
Meanwhile, on a slightly smaller scale,
the semiconductor company Qualcomm has a neuro-inspired chip
in development that could have some amazing implications
in machine learning.
In one demonstration, they had a robot working
on this system, navigating to different white spots
on a floor covered with colored tiles.
Now, here's the crazy thing.
No one programmed the robot to do that.
The robot just behaved on its own
and then got positive reinforcement,
essentially a "good robot" message every now and then
when it did the right thing.
You know, in the short term, these brain-inspired computers
may help us with everything from energy efficiency
to sensory input to big data, but in the long term,
that's where things get really interesting.
Maybe we'll no longer have to program computers.
Maybe we'll just have to teach them.
And now I've got a question for all of you out there.
If you had a robot with brain-inspired learning hardware,
what would you teach it, and what would you not teach it?
Let us know in the comments below,
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