MIT’s new Mind Machine Project (MMP) aims to create “intelligent machines” by “revisiting fundamental assumptions” in all of the areas encompassed by the field of AI, including the nature of the mind and of memory, and how intelligence can be manifested in physical form, says Neil Gershenfeld, professor of media arts and sciences.

Key research areas: looking at a range of models, trying to integrate them and aggregate them; computers learning “ways to reason that work with, rather than avoid, ambiguity and inconsistency”; and making computers that “run with the fine-grained parallelism the brain uses.”

MMP group members span five generations of artificial-intelligence research, epitomized by Marvin Minsky, Patrick Winston, Neil Gershenfeld, Ed Boyden, and most recently, David Dalrymple, who started started graduate school at MIT at age 14, and Peter Schmidt-Nielsen, a home-schooled prodigy who, though he never took a computer science class, at 15 is taking a leading role in developing design tools for the new software.

One of the projects being developed by the group is a form of assistive technology they call a brain co-processor. This system, also referred to as a cognitive assistive system, would initially be aimed at people suffering from cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. It would monitor people’s activities and brain functions, determine when they needed help, and provide exactly the right bit of helpful information at just the right time. It could also find applications for people without any disability, as a form of brain augmentation.

In the longer run, Minsky still sees hope for far grander goals. For example, he points to the fact that his iPhone can now download thousands of different applications, instantly allowing it to perform new functions. Why not do the same with the brain? “I would like to be able to download the ability to juggle,” he says. “There’s nothing more boring than learning to juggle.”

Source: MIT News