Opinion: Mixing silicon and grey matter is a mad idea

Recently, my colleague Stuart Sumner wrote what turned out to be one of the most popular stories ever on Computing’s web site: “IBM unveils chips that mimic the human brain”.

Not that these chips are grey, slippery and wrinkly, they “are inspired by the architecture of the human brain in their design”.

By “brain architecture” I guess they mean the synapses and neurons that work together to produce what we know as “intelligence”.

Why would anyone want to transfer human thinking processes to computer circuitry? I thought that’s what we were trying to get rid of – human error, which, if we take these designs to their logical conclusion, is what we’d get. That is, a system that could think like a human would probably also have its capacity for becoming a “dolly daydream”, wanting to keep checking Facebook or disappear down the pub to watch Arsenal.

What I think these people are aiming for is a chip that emulates a subset of the human brain, but without the higher dolly daydreaming functions attributed to the higher intelligence centres of our grey matter – the frontal lobes.

How vendors would stop such systems achieving consciousness and perverting their primary purpose is a question I’ll leave to your imagination, dear reader, but as to how such systems would work in practice, the only examples we currently have are provided by the film industry.

That industry has mined a rich seam of artificially intelligent systems, mostly going berserk and enslaving, or trying to enslave, mankind. I, Robot, The Matrix, Terminator, the list goes on and on. Occasionally, a film will portray the decent side of AI systems – for example, D.A.R.Y.L. – but in the main we’re mostly talking bad robot, naughty robot film plots.

The nearest system approaching what IBM may be aiming for in its research turned up in an episode of Star Trek called “The Ultimate Computer”. Here, a deranged scientist (Dr Richard Daystrom) integrates human engrams into computer circuitry to make M-5, a computer that can run the Starship Enterprise on its own, without the need for humans.

Engrams are apparently memory traces stored as biophysical or biochemical changes in the brain.

“The relays are not unlike the synapse in the brain,” says Daystrom, explaining how M-5 works to a sceptical Captain Kirk. “M-5 thinks, Captain,” he says. Alas, Daystrom ends up being sectioned, and M-5 commits suicide.

We’ll leave the last word to Spock, talking to Dr McCoy: “It would be most interesting to impress your memory engrams on a computer, Doctor. The resulting torrential flood of illogic would be entertaining.”