The lecture «Supercomputing and Superintelligence» by professor Horst Simon (Deputy Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – Berkeley Lab, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory) will take place on May 14, at 3 p.m., under the partnership between Técnico and the US embassy in Portugal – American Corners.
The lecture will take place in Abreu Faro amphitheatre (Interdisciplinary building).
Abstract
In recent years the idea of emerging superintelligence has been discussed widely by popular media, and many experts voiced grave warnings about its possible consequences. This talk will use an analysis of progress in supercomputer performance to examine the gap between current technology and reaching the capabilities of the human brain. In spite of good progress in high performance computing and techniques such as machine learning, this gap is still very large. The presentation will then explore two related topics through a discussion of recent examples: what can we learn from the brain and apply to HPC, e.g., through recent efforts in neuromorphic computing? And how much progress have we made in modelling brain function? The talk will be concluded with a perspective on the true dangers of superintelligence, and on our ability to ever build self-aware or sentient computers.
