Thursday, January 24, 2013

Are we close to being GOD?

Ignore the title, I am NOT a creationist but the title makes sense if you remember that a large number of people believe that a supreme being created humans.

2 pieces of information caught my eye this week.

And last year IBM Watson was able to beat 2 champions at Jeopardy. 

Putting these together let my imagination make the next leap to connect the missing links.  

But lets start with the background:

  • 3D printing is taking off in a big way.  Recently, Gael Langevin posted about how he had created a 3D printable robot that could move and follow voice commands.  The best part of the story is that you can download the files for the project as they are "open source". 
  • So now anyone with a 3D printer and some skills can assemble a robot that talks, moves and obeys voice commands.
  • The DNA project will require help from a company that can create synthetic DNA strands.  They would make the strands in the right sequence using a cipher to convert bits (1 and 0's) into the ACGT nuleotides.  Once you have the DNA you need a sequencer to read the sequence and then convert it back to binary code which can be read by a computer.  
  • DNA is a very efficient way to store information.  1 gram of DNA can store as much information as can be burned on 1 million CD's
  • DNA does not require any energy.
  • The cost of DNA sequencing is dropping and in a few years we will probably see these become mainstream.  
  • Next combine the DNA sequencer with the robot and store the DNA containing the worlds information on it, and power it with IBM Watson's AI and you have something close to a human being?  There is just something amazing thinking about DNA storing all the necessary information on board a humanoid that can speak talk and respond to voice.
  • Sure there are lots of missing pieces still but we do live in exciting times!

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