Big News for those interested in Artificial Intelligence

Remember this name:

SENTIENT TECHNOLOGIES

These guys are on the cutting edge of the Artificial Intelligence space and they just closed a big round of funding. The companies you usually hear about is DeepMind because of Google or Vicarious because of Ashton Kutcher and other investors.

Sentient Technologies is interesting and different because they want to scale A.I. into different verticals now. It's what they call Distributive Artificial Intelligence. This is very interesting because A.I. in this scenario will have nodes that look at smaller data sets and then that information will be distributed to the whole.

So say you have million computers connected through something like the internet. You will then have A.I. nodes that will analyze small sets of data within this million computer network and then distribute this information to the whole system. This way they can analyze big data quickly and efficiently.

This is why A.I. will be such a boon to humanity. This is because it will make decisions and do some of the thinking for us. We already see it in things like recommendation engines or an algorithm that decides who will get a credit card or a mortgage. They make a good point when they say we need to start thinking about how many decisions do we want A.I. to make for us as these things get more advanced. Eventually A.I. will make better decisions for us.

How much do we lean on it and if we lean on it to much, do we lose some of what makes us human?

Here's more:

Sentient Technologies (USA) LLC, which has been quietly developing technology to distribute artificial intelligence software to millions of graphics and computer processors around the world, emerged Monday with $103.5 million in new funding.

Sentient, which has about 60 employees, has been operating in stealth in San Francisco under the name Genetic Finance Holding Ltd. The company was started nearly seven years ago by a team that worked on the technology that later became Siri, the voice recognition software in Apple Inc.’s iPhone that understands and learns from human speech.

Chief Executive Antoine Blondeau said Sentient so far has proven its technology in the trading space, where it started out, and also in medical research. The company worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory team on detecting sepsis, which is a top killer of patients in intensive care units, by analyzing blood pressure in more than 6,000 patients in real time and predicting within about 30 minutes whether a patient was likely to succumb.

Artificial intelligence has been a popular area of investment, with many startups claiming to develop products in this area. But Mr. Blondeau argues that none of them so far have figured out how to scale and distribute artificial intelligence to the extent that Sentient has, although he does acknowledge work done at Google Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. and says they are potential partners for Sentient.

He said Sentient combines technologies in evolutionary computation, which mimics in software the way biological life evolved on Earth, and deep learning, which looks at the way nervous systems are architected and work. These technologies are used either independently or together and are scaled across millions of nodes.

blogs.wsj.com...

So say if they put millions of these nodes to analyze data used on the internet. These nodes can independently analyze data on a network of computers in New York then distribute that information to nodes in Las Vegas or spread out throughout the world and the A.I. will analyze and learn from this information.

Here's a very good video that lasts 13:23. The Founders of the company answer some questions.

a reply to: neoholographic

I haven't heard of this before. Thanks for posting it up.

a reply to: neoholographic

That's Bad JuJu

Fo Sho Mo Fo

I don't want a machine to think for me.

Artificial intelligence will be controlled by the elite.

a reply to: Trueman

You took the words right out of my mouth. Its who site at the top of the corporation that will control and vet everything humans see and ultimately what they know.

I think in certain areas such as medical research etc this is a good idea, perhaps in the movement of resources etc but AI does not have a conscience, merely a capacity to be efficient and effective - but will it consider suffering its actions could cause or the repercussions of its actions?

Yes this could be a great move forward but with the power held in so few hands today and those hands so bloody with greed, I would certainly not be happy with this amount of ease for the elite to rule the world.

I, for one, welcome our new Skynet Overlords.

Technology already does too much thinking for us. Concerning AI in particular, would it have rights? Would i be able to, say, marry it? Could it earn a living wage? Would it be like a real person? At what point does artificial intelligence cross that line from software into spirit? these guys are going to open a can of worms we are ill prepared for.

a reply to: neoholographic

I love the idea of humans creating a machine, for lack of a better word, that will eventually figure out what defective parasite's we are as a species.

IMO we are already destroying our selves with technology we don't understand but force into existence out of greed, vanity, and the everlasting human trait " notice me, OH please notice me ".

I only hope I live long enough to see the consequence's of human arrogance .

a reply to: neoholographic

Totally sounds like we are creating the Geth.

First thing out of AI's mouth will be "USURY is not logical" and will be promptly shut down

originally posted by: Trueman
I don't want a machine to think for me.

Artificial intelligence will be controlled by the elite.

I know right. ......just what we need more things thinking FOR us.....

Like the inability to think for ones self isn't already a problem that is ever present in our society

a reply to: Battleline

I'm quite sure watching everyone you know and love die an unnatural death, will not be as exhilarating and joyful an experience as U suppose it might be

I am very skeptical about this company.

All this company is doing is coming up with a big list of "if -- else if" statements and perhaps a faster way to process these types of statements using distributed computing. Not that big a deal as far as I can see.

You can't have sentience without consciousness, by the normal definition of these words.

I don't think that machines can feel pain or pleasure. Consciousness seems to exist ONLY in living creatures, to humans and higher life. It is probably based on quantum effects, maybe founded on microtubules?

www.sciencedaily.com...

One thing I am pretty sure of -- Sentience IS NOT massive scaling of distributed AI. Sentience is wholly different. I think this company and its precepts are just an epistemological mess actually. Best of luck to them. I sincerely wish they would prove me wrong.

a reply to: ManBehindTheMask

Have you read your signature lately, my sediment's exactly .

originally posted by: Battleline
a reply to: ManBehindTheMask

Have you read your signature lately, my sediment's exactly .

Lol yes i have, I was pondering one night many years ago the need for people to have a "devil" they could attribute things to, then I got to thinking, Lets say he was real, then he probably takes a lesson or two from US!