Artificial Synapse Created For Synthetic Brain

Zothecula writes "It's probably still going to be a while before autonomous, self-aware androids are wandering amongst us. That scenario has come a little closer to reality, however, with researchers from the University of Southern California having created a functioning synapse circuit using carbon nanotubes. An artificial version of the connections that allow electrical impulses to pass between neurons in our brains, the circuit could someday be one component of a synthetic brain."

AI isn't far off

[CrazyJim1]

AI just needs to solve video cameras and laser range finders into a 3d representation. Once AI knows what is in its environment, robots can do all sorts of tasks and even understand natural language as a programming language. You can even make an AI which appears self aware by giving it desires to do different tasks, but that is kinda wreckless in my opinion. This AI isn't really that far off in the future. I know I'll be developing it when we got the software for turning environments into 3d levels. Imagine the Google cars driving down streets and instead of just taking picture, they're databasing the world for some sort of awesome MMORPG Cannonball run across continents. Imagine taking a video camera into the city and turning it into a big quake level. Once this is doable, it is going to be a race to have vision recognition of what is being looked at, who knows what player will do it? Open source I'm looking in your direction.

Re:Self-assembly, too?

[Hognoxious]

For that it would need to be able to interface with plain old mark one grey matter, and there's nothing (wishes side) in the article to suggest that it can.

Until it can do that, why is this any better than simply emulating the connections with software?

Re:Whatever you say

[camperslo]

The Androids would most likely be upset with software patents, a stifling inhuman rights abuse.

Why do robot brains need synapses?

[MMC Monster]

Just because biological brains have synapses, do computer brains need them as well?

Serious question. I don't know where AI is or where it's taking us.

This is more useful to study human neurology.