Coming: Intelligent Automation

Great Links About the Coming Revolution in Automation
By the Blog Author

The Structural Jobs Fiasco No One Knows How to Deal With from 2014 (includes a grueling, 15-minute video about automation): 

http://wolfstreet.com/2014/10/08/the-structural-jobs-fiasco-no-one-knows-how-to-deal-with/

The middle of this linked article leads to this 15 minute video, “Humans Need Not Apply.”  In the middle of the video is a diagram that displays the heart of artificial intelligence programming, a neural network that consists of:

             Inner Layer

             Hidden Layer
             Output Layer

The “hidden layer” is set up in a manner that mimics the wiring of the cerebral cortex of the brain.

Footnote

For decades, I contended that the human brain doesn’t have and doesn’t need a central processing unit (CPU) as exists for computers since the CPU was invented by John von Neumann in 1947.  Computers still run on CPU architecture.  So I have stated many times that computers will never “really” achieve genuine artificial intelligence until they achieve a design that doesn’t need the CPU.

But a neural network with a hidden layer will provide a substitute kind of brute force intelligence if the memory available is large enough… millions and millions of bytes… which are now available on modern computers.  For details and a diagram of the neural network that is identical to the above video, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network

As a result of these searches, I retract my former contention that genuine artificial intelligence certainly requires a computer without a CPU.  If the hidden layer has huge memory capacity, it may exhibit intelligence.  Which means the article and video linked above are to be taken very seriously.

PS:  I have ordered a 1965 paperback that includes the novella “The Midas Plague,” by Frederick Pohl.  It describes an analogy to a world where machines make everything.  It hasn’t arrived yet.  I only ordered it because of the deserved fame and genius of Pohl.  I read some of his stories back in the 1960s and early 1970s, but not this one.

PPS:  The political left (weary sigh) has already rolfed up the notion that intelligent automation will create permanent high unemployment and therefore make a mandatory free base wage (sometimes called a “negative income tax”) absolutely necessary.  My personal view is that this approach is an incompetent bribe that will be fiercely resented by the recipients.  The new unemployed need to interface with artificial intelligence and plot their own futures.  Trapping intelligent people into living as couch potatoes will result in millions of resentful addicts.