PetaVision

Scientists have achieved a new performance record of 1.144 petaflops for a supercomputer called RoadRunner. They have run a computer program called PetaVision on this supercomputer. PetaVision is basically a computer generated model of the human visual system. Researchers have been able to simulate over a billion visual neurons and trillions of synapses with this model. This sounds similar in principle to the Blue Brain project that I mentioned previously. Researchers are now able to study the entire human visual cortex in real time on a computer. This is a fairly complex computational task to perform.

I'm somewhat skeptical about how useful this will actually be, but it should definitely give scientists a much keener insight into the workings of the human brain. This breakthrough may eventually lead to computers that become increasingly good at analyzing and recognizing images. This is obviously just a first step towards the ultimate goal of having computers that can analyze images as good or better than a human can. The human brain can recognize and classify items in about 200 milliseconds. This is around 162 times faster than current computers can perform such operations. Computers have already been used in the past to read people's emotions. So technology like this may find use for surveillance, as a computer will literally be able to read people's intentions. A sophisticated artificial intelligence might be able to tell if a person was nervous or not. It could conceivably locate a terrorist out of a large crowd. Artificial intelligences might also be used in satellite surveillance to potentially spot any suspicious activity going on in rogue nations. There are many other potential uses of this technology in the future.

(Image Credit: LeRoy N. Sanchez, Records Management, Media Services and Operations)