Intel CTO demos building blocks of shapeshifting robots

Intel sent sane journalists screaming for the exits this morning when it unveiled a nightmarish future vision where robots are more intelligent than humans, computers can change shape, electronic devices are recharged remotely, and humans are probably going to be ruled by an x86-based server farm. Wrapping up the Intel …

[Tom Chiverton]

catoms

Video ?

I've only got a small pic on http://www.intel.com/research/dpr.htm to go on, which is apperently more than you guys :-)

[Chris G]

It has to be said...

I for one bow down and worship our catomic masters........ well if I see one that is.

[Evil Mike]

Wireless Power

Wtf? Wasn't Nikola Tesla doing wireless power in 1891?

At least we're starting to catch up to the geniuses of over a century ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Age of Spiritual Machines - Kurzweil

Scary enough, If you've read "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil he predicted a lot of this stuff. It was written in 1999. The most interesting thing that he brought up was so called "utility fog", called "catoms" here. A mass of micro-robots that could changes shapes to become whatever you needed it to become. One downside, they could give new meaning to "computer virus", if there were turned loose inside a human body with instructions to destroy everything in its path.

Kurzweil also wrote "The Age of Intelligent Machines" back in 1989, and many of his 10 year predictions had come to fruition on time. His prediction is that following Moore's Law, computers will be smarter than humans by 2020, not 2058. And with the massive neural net beasts getting more and more sophisticated, and the focus on parallel processing starting to become more prevalent, 2020 seems more accurate.

[E]

Wireless Resonant Link

Was done by Nikola Tesla roughly one hundred years ago. This is described in so many textbooks and enthusiast magazine articles and places on the web that I am surprised Intel would try to rebrand it - also that the Reg did not see through the attempt immediately.

[Neoc]

Re: The Age of Spiritual Machines

yeah, and Sci-fi writers (and anime shows) have been using nanobots and nanites since the early 90s. <shrug> the concept is not new, not by a long shot.

[michael]

ok that is it

arm the emp load the shot guns and head for the bunkers the war is on!!

[breakfast]

Still not sure about machine intelligence

I still don't think we understand enough about what intelligence is on a fundamental level to start getting overly caught up in when machines are more intelligent than us. If we don't really know what intelligence is, how will we know when they are more intelligent- a computer that is better at solving IQ tests than me may not have much empathic or emotional intelligence.

I can see that hardware is getting good, but I can't see any equivalent progression in AI, although I'm sure there may be subsequent posts that can point to it...

Also, why IDF? Surely this story should have been tagged as ROTM...

[Anonymous Coward]

DWDM?

"a researcher demonstrating a laser based system where data was being modulated at 2.2Gbps. He said by tuning lasers at different wavelengths and integrating them together a 1Tbps link could be possible."

Doesn't this sound remarkably like Dense Wave Division Multiplexing?

[Solomon Grundy]

Intelligent Computers and the Singularity

Jesus, what turds. Computers haven't gotten more intelligent since they were first built - they have certainly become more powerful as far as compute cycles but alas, they are no smarter. What "AI" researchers call intelligence is like me saying that my beagle has become more intelligent because I taught him to sit and stay.

[Antoine Dubuc]

wireless

I think that Tesla claimed long distance as this here is really a few feet only. Perhaps its not the same mechanism?

Paris, for catoms are welcomed!

[Kevin Kitts]

Well...

anyone read Michael Crichton's novel "Prey"? Beware the evolving nanobots...

[Francis Boyle]

Re: Re: The Age of Spiritual Machines

I remember an STTNG episode in which Wesley does something naughty with nanobots or nanites as they were called, which pushes it back well into the eighties (especially since for an idea to appear in Star Trek it has to be reasonably familiar, at least in the SF world). So unless the the Intel researchers have made actual progress towards realising the idea, the whole thing's pretty ho hum.

[Colin]

er ... not that small actually

The Intel site says they are down to a very modest 2 inches in diameter - quite a bit less impressive than the astounding 2 mm quoted in the article ....