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Saturday, August 20, 2011

To Be Human Or Not To Be Human.....This Is IBM's Question

A German privacy commissioner has ordered websites to stop using Facebook's "like" button.  http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/08/18/ibm.brain.chip/index.html?hpt=te_bn9

German officials want to ban the like button on Facebook.  They say it leeks too much information about a person and the tracking that happens is preposterous.  If that's not enough to make you cringe......how about this......have you heard about IBM's new computer brain chip project that is supposed to mimic human thinking?  I'm not sure I totally buy into this....maybe I should......finally someone is inventing the computers we were promised in school years ago.  We were told they would take over doing much of human work and the '40 hour' work week would shrink......I don't know about you, but hours in the work week have done nothing but climb for those on a salary. 

DARPA's newly funded $21 million dollar project is set to work with universities around the U.S..  Forecasted outcomes are for a computer to monitor sight, sounds, smells and of course data.....the point is not just data alone.....it's supposed to be able to analyze and do some cognitive thinking.  At first.....this sounds like it really is going to be an amazing technology.  They go on to site examples of how they want to create a computer that could warn against potential tsunami's or "when a tsunami is likely".....I suppose they must have meant to better predict tsunami's....we're supposed to already have an alert system for advising when a tsunami is likely......we can see how well it's worked in the past and the need for a new improved system.

How about a warning system for unsafe intersections.....maybe if they were a little more specific on how that function might work.  When I think about a computer shutting down intersections all I see is unnecessary traffic back logs due to a computer malfunction.  The other warning they talked about was a grocery store sensor to detect site, sound and temps and then advise "that produce may have gone bad".  Come again..."that produce MAY have gone bad?"  O.K. maybe we should be looking at it another way....how about to monitor sight, sounds, smell, temp's and to advise of unripe conditions BEFORE produce goes bad and to be able to have the manager react by fixing the temps and putting the produce on sale to turn the product BEFORE it smells bad and is ready for the trash.  I know Giant Eagle needs that system fast.  I swear every time I go into that produce section it's infested with bugs, the produce doesn't just look rotted....it is rotted and I'm not sure how they make money selling produce that looks like it should be in the trash.  I'm all for a new computer to help that problem or is that just a new produce manager with good eyesight and a good sniffer.

So...I'm not sure how much I believe in the "human thinking computer" abilities quite yet.... but I have to hand it to DARPA.....it sounds like you finally decided to work on the promises made 20 years ago about computers shrinking.....the then.... '40 hour' work week.  Now they need to work on a better way to showcase a potentially amazing new technology......maybe next time you should look at who and what your marketing campaign looks like before you release it..... especially when it's government spent money in an economy like this.  They could have at least sited better examples of what this new project would be able to do......or maybe it's  just noise to try and scare the American public AGAIN.  Don't get me wrong....I am all for tech advancement, but if we are discussing millions of dollars here.....shouldn't we be siting amazing capabilities for the future of "human thinking computers"?  I mean where's the accountability here.....the strategy......where's the CEO or the marketing director cracking the whip on this government project campaign......I mean it made me shake my head in disbelief of how they presented this info to the public

I was all for DARPA the other day with the license to fail.....but let's be a little more strategic when we put info into the media.....shouldn't they make it sound like they have a better strategy than Sponge Bob?.....come on.....get it together man.   Ciao for now.  Who 2Be 2Day 2Change 2Morrow.


 

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