The time has come to develop the Strong Artificial Intelligence System

It is already possible to develop Strong AI which will be as capable as a human’s brain. These are the reasons why:

1) Hardware capabilities are already good enough.

2) Many part of AIS technology are already implemented.

3) Software development industry already able to make very complicated projects.

4) We already have proved model of Intelligence System: we know how human brain works.

Let’s consider these points in details:

Hardware capabilities are already good enough

Hardware ability of modern computers has become more than enough for Strong AI.
Hardware capability includes 3 major factors:

1) Memory
Estimated size of human memory is several gigabytes. The size of modern disks had surpassed 100 Gigabytes (that is more than human’s brain capacity).

2) Peripheral devices
Modern peripheral devices such as microphones and video cameras often outperform human’s ears and eyes. Moreover: human beings don’t have anything similar to such computer devices as modems and network adapters, which allow direct high speed communication between individuals.

3) Computational power:
Even 50 years ago computers were able to calculate with higher speed than humans. Modern computers are even faster.
Some argue that the human brain has ability to handle many processes simultaneously that the computer cannot. However, modern computers handle many processes simultaneously too. For example: show a movie, play music, calculate, and receive files from Internet at the same time.

Conclusion: computer hardware already outperforms humans.

Even if computers were weak for carrying Strong AI today, almost each year computers’ abilities are doubled (Moore’s law). Therefore if we build even very slow system today, then with every passing year the system is going to work faster just because of hardware progress. (After 20 years it would work ~ million times faster: 2²⁰ = 1048576).

The only thing which the human brain can do better today than computer --- is efficient use of brain computational power.

Learning and decisions making technologies are poorly implemented in artificial intelligent systems yet.

Many parts of Strong AI technology are already implemented

Implementation of Strong AI requires implementation of large set of technologies. In spite that Strong AI is not implemented yet, many necessary parts of AIS technologies are already implemented and tested.

Let’s look at several examples:

RDBMS as AI memory

RDBMS (database) is essential part of any complex business application. RDBMS handles huge amount of information.

Internet

Internet (Web, HTTP, IRC, ICQ, Email,…) – is modern but very useful and very popular technology. Internet can connect every computer with each other. Right now Internet allows people to communicate each other through computers. Strong AI will use Internet for:

1) Connect to human society (and knowledge base).

2) Connect to other Strong AIs (that is connect to AI society).

Software development industry is able to implement very complex projects

Strong AI project is quite complex software project. However even more complex systems were implemented in the past. Many software projects are more complex than human DNA (note that human DNA contains way more than just genocode for intelligence).

Example of existing complex software systems:

Windows, Unix, Office, SQL Sever, Oracle, Google, Quake, PhotoShop, ERP systems and so on.

All these projects were successfully implemented and are in active use. Each of these projects is more complex than single human’s DNA.

We already have working Intelligence System: we know how human brain works

We already have working intelligent system – human brain. In recent 50 years structure of human brain were explored. It is not mystery anymore. We know answers to questions:

1) We know what parts of human brain are.

2) We know what purpose (functionality) of brain parts is.

3) We know how conditioned reflex is developed in human brain. (Understanding of conditioned reflex is important, because it’s simple form of though).

4) We know how neurons and axons work. That gives us brain’s neural net model.

Bottom line: most of mysteries of human intelligence are solved already. We just need to implement them in our computers.

Conclusion

Hardware power of modern computers is huge. Modern programs don’t use all computers’ hardware resources fully. Computers idle more than 95% of the time – programmers simply don’t know how to efficiently use computers’ hardware capabilities.
Huge software projects are already successfully implemented.
We have a great working prototype – a human. Moreover we know how human’s brain works. So we may just adopt already implemented (by nature) technology.

So, the time for Strong AI development has really come.

It will be shame for us (software developers) if geneticists modify human genome and clone “improved” human before we develop Strong AI.