‘Scientists create test tube intelligence’
Scientists have now taken a major step towards creating artificial intelligence, not in a robot or a silicon chip, but in a test tube. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a circuit of interacting molecules that can recall memories based on incomplete DNA patterns, just like the human brain. “The brain is incredible. It allows us to recognise patterns of events, form memories, make decisions, and take actions,”
says Lulu Qian, senior post-doctoral scholar in bioengineering at Caltech, the journal Nature reports. “So we asked, instead of having a physically connected network of neural cells, can a soup of interacting molecules exhibit brain-like behaviour?” said Qian, who led the study. The researchers “trained” the neural network to “know” four scientists, whose identities are each represented by a specific, unique set of answers to four yes-or-no questions, such as whether the scientist was British. After thinking of a scientist, a human player provides an incomplete subset of answers partially identifying the scientist. The player then conveys those clues to the network by dropping DNA strands that correspond to those answers into the test tube. Communicating via fluorescent signals, the network then identifies which scientist the player has in mind. —IANS
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