[ExI] Suzanne Gildert on Thinking about the hardware of thinking: Can disruptive technologies help us achieve uploading?, Teleplace, 28th November 2010, 10am PST

[Giulio Prisco]

Suzanne Gildert will give a talk in Teleplace on “Thinking about the
hardware of thinking: Can disruptive technologies help us achieve
uploading?” on November 28, 2010, at 10am PST (1pm EST, 6pm UK, 7pm
continental EU).

http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/suzanne-gildert-on-thinking-about-the-hardware-of-thinking-can-disruptive-technologies-help-us-achieve-uploading-teleplace-28th-november-2010-10am-pst/

This is a revised version of Suzanne’s talk at TransVision 2010, also
inspired by her article on “Building more intelligent machines: Can
‘co-design’ help?” (PDF). See also Suzanne’s previous Teleplace talk
on “Quantum Computing: Separating Hope from Hype“.

Thinking about the hardware of thinking: Can disruptive technologies
help us achieve uploading?

S. Gildert, Teleplace, 28th November 2010

We are surrounded by devices that rely on general purpose silicon
processors, which are mostly very similar in terms of their design.
But is this the only possibility? As we begin to run larger and more
brain-like emulations, will our current methods of simulating neural
networks be enough, even in principle? Why does the brain, with 100
billion neurons, consume less than 30W of power, whilst our attempts
to simulate tens of thousands of neurons (for example in the blue
brain project) consumes tens of KW? As we wish to run computations
faster and more efficiently, we might we need to consider if the
design of the hardware that we all take for granted is optimal. In
this presentation I will discuss the recent return to a focus upon
co-design – that is, designing specialized software algorithms running
on specialized hardware, and how this approach may help us create much
more powerful applications in the future. As an example, I will
discuss some possible ways of running AI algorithms on novel forms of
computer hardware, such as superconducting quantum computing
processors. These behave entirely differently to our current silicon
chips, and help to emphasize just how important disruptive
technologies may be to our attempts to build intelligent machines.

Event on Facebook

Dr. Suzanne Gildert is currently working as an Experimental Physicist
at D-Wave Systems, Inc. She is involved in the design and testing of
large scale superconducting processors for Quantum Computing
Applications. Suzanne obtained her PhD and MSci degree from The
University of Birmingham UK, focusing on the areas of experimental
quantum device physics and superconductivity.

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