“Tom Gruber, one of the inventors of the artificial intelligence voice interface Siri that now lives inside iPhones and the macOS operating system, shared a new idea at the TED 2017 conference today for using artificial intelligence to augment human memory,” April Glaser reports for Recode. “‘What if you could have a memory that was as good as computer memory and is about your life?’ Gruber asked the audience. ‘What if you could remember every person you ever met? How to pronounce their name? Their family details? Their favorite sports? The last conversation you had with them?'”
“Gruber said he thinks that using artificial intelligence to catalog our experiences and to enhance our memory isn’t just a wild idea — it’s inevitable,” Glaser reports. “And the whole reason Gruber says it’s possible: Data about the media that we consume and the people we talk to is available because we use the internet and our smartphones to mediate our lives.”
“Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has started a new company called Neuralink to build wireless brain-computer interface technology,” Glaser reports. “Musk shared his idea for the technology, which he calls ‘neural lace,’ at Recode’s Code Conference last year.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Sounds like a dream for Alzheimer’s patients. Could also be a nightmare for many people depending on how selectively you can choose what – and what not – to remember with crystal clarity and whether or not you have Yahoo-type security (i.e., laughable and nonexistent) storing these memories.
You know how, after a wild night, you decide to delete a bunch of shots in Apple’s Photos app? Someday, you’ll be deleting memories in Apple’s Memories app.
Anyone who has seen the show Black Mirror, knows one possible outcome.
Total Recall
It already is doing so. Who won the 1959 World Series…Hey, Siri!
That isn’t an example of enhancing memory, in fact, it is the opposite. 😉
It astonishes me every time I read something like this that so many of the people that actually work in the field of computer intelligence are so clueless about what actually constitutes, you, know *intelligence*. Information is not what gives rise to consciousness. We really need to start calling them algorithms again and be done with it, this hype cycle just won’t die.
Reminds me of the old Monty Python sketch from circa 69 with all the old dears walking around with artificial brains attached to their heads to replace their memories. What is mere ludicrous seeming comedy one day is clearly in many cases the most delicious wicked futurist insight to some unspecified day in our future.
What happens when someone hacks the interface feeding these memories into your consciousness, and gives you fake memories?
A whole new meaning to alternative facts.
Firstly, we will never have computer generated memories. The science is way too much to get into here, but trust me or do your own research.
Secondly, the piece seems to imply that humanity is inherently flawed, when it is our limitations that actually cause us to strive for grander visions of things (including what the article itself is discussing! Irony much?). Someone really needs to knock some of these folks in the Valley off of their delusional high horses.
Postscript: does anyone else think the Amazon Echo ad where the guy is reading his daughter a story and has to ask Echo for basic knowledge he should have learned in junior high school is just plain sad?
I got a totally different impression of that ad. My impression was that the dad was enhancing ‘reading time’ with ‘sounds’ and at the same time teaching his child how to ask questions of Alexa. It definitely didn’t give me the impression that he had to ask Alexa because he didn’t have basic knowledge.