The quest to build super intelligent computers has been ongoing since the 1950s. The Turing Test, which challenges anyone to build a computer that can think like a human, is yet to be passed. However, scientists are making strides towards building a new kind of computer that could be getting closer to mimicking the human brain.
Massimiliano Di Ventra, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, San Diego, has developed universal memcomputing machines or Memcomputers, which are a class of brain-inspired computers based on human memory systems. Unlike conventional microchips, Memprocessors save energy, time, and ultimately improve the performance of a computer by eliminating the relay between the processor and memory.
Physicists are using Memprocessors, smaller units that can both process and store data, to build these new machines. This setup mimics the way neurons work in the brain, where each neuron processes and stores information. Memprocessors can work together collectively and simultaneously to attack a complex problem from all sides, finding all possible solutions at once to settle on the best one rather than trying each one in turn, which is what a human would do.
Memcomputers are still in the proof-of-concept stage, and the way the system encodes data makes it vulnerable to fluctuations that can introduce errors. Scientists will need to address this before a large-scale version can go to work. However, working out the details of memcomputing could help scientists better understand how the brain works.
The prospect of a computer that mimics the human brain is both cool and super creepy. While this technology could one day perform notoriously complex tasks like breaking codes, it could also raise ethical concerns about the potential misuse of such capabilities. Nonetheless, breakthrough technologies like Memcomputers and other products offered by companies like Intel are changing the world and making amazing experiences possible. Having Intel inside makes for better experiences outside.