It sounds like something from a science fiction novel, a harbinger of things to come. A computer that has been taught to learn. Can anything good come from this?
In June, Google’s secretive X-Labs conducted an experiment involving the networking of 16,000 ultrafast computer processors. Then they loaded 10 billion random images from YouTube videos and waited to see what would happen. And . . are you ready for it? The machine taught itself to recognize cats. Which kind of makes sense when you think about it, if it was on YouTube and it wasn’t drunk then it was probably a cat. Jeff Dean one of the scientist involved stated “We never told it during the training, ‘This is a cat.’ It basically invented the concept of a cat.”
One commentator wrote, “The frightening part of this report is that modern computers appear to be capable of independent learning through extrapolation.” Hate to burst their bubble but what it took 16,000 ultrafast processors and billions of pictures to accomplish, our two year old granddaughter did last year. Because there has never been a creation as marvellous as the one that God created on the sixth day. And that is you!
Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.