Rattner: Machines more intelligent than us by 2050

Author: Tim Smalley
Published: 22nd August 2008

Justin Rattner worryingly believes that machines have the potential to become more intelligent than humans by 2050.

In a rather distressing look into the future of how man and machine will be closer together in the future, Justin Rattner said that robots could be more intelligent than us by 2050.

“The industry has taken much greater strides than anyone ever imagined 40 years ago,” he said. “There is speculation that we may be approaching an inflection point where the rate of technology advancements is accelerating at an exponential rate, and machines could even overtake humans in their ability to reason, in the not so distant future.”

Rattner explained that if robots are to become more personal, they need to be able to move and manipulate objects in cluttered and dynamic environments. They need to understand and be able to analyse and adapt to what’s going on in their surroundings using sensors.

He demonstrated two robots developed in Intel research labs during his keynote – the first one looked fairly harmless, and just got on with tidying away some mugs that’d be left out for it. The second, however, was a little more menacing.

It was able to follow an apple around using an electric field pre-touch sensor in its arm. It then reached out and grabbed the apple from Rattner, uttering “found it, got it” in the process. It then passed the apple back to Rattner and he took a bite from it. It was as if this was a prompt for the robot to go a bit crazy, as it started reaching out to grab Rattner’s arm, again uttering “found it, got it” as it got hold of him.

I’m not sure about you, but I’m not exactly comfortable about what might happen in the future – I don’t want some crazy bat robot reaching out to grab my neck, while uttering “found it, got it” as it tightens its grip. Maybe those movies about Robots taking over the world might come true in the end? Discuss in the forums.