The Progress Report on AI and Robotics

We think about this current decade we’re in as the decade of biotech. The next decade is really the decade where artificial intelligence and robotics are going to begin to mature and impact society in an extraordinary fashion.  Of course, AI and Robotics are here today, they’re just extraordinarily niche.  We don’t have Hal and we don’t have iRobot coming out and interacting with us on a daily basis.

But the fact of the matter is the seeds for both of those are here.  Today, the brain is computing on the average of about 10 to the 16th cycles per second and the average $1,000 laptop is computing about 10 to the 111th cycles per second, but at the current rate of Moore’s Law it’s estimated that the average laptop will be computing at the rate of the human mind in less than 15 years.  We’re going to start to see super computers with the capability of the human brain now in this next year or two.

So the question is will this level of intense capability really bring about systems that can effectively pass the Turing test and be seen to have the personality capabilities of humans?  At the same time robotics are growing extraordinary. We’re going from robots that are just in, if you would, the automotive manufacturing plant to robots like those being built by Scott Hassan at Willow Garage, which are really meant to interact as home-based humanoid type robots.

So we have a huge potential to create increased productivity in the home and release us from the daily drudgery to increase productivity, increase the global economic output, but it’s really when you combine AI & Robotics together that you have magic happening.

We’re going to start to see tremendous shifts in the work place, tremendous shifts in new forms of opportunities, businesses, and of course as always when we have disruptive exponential technologies, companies coming out of no place and companies literally thrown by the wayside that were based on last century’s technologies. 

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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