Some trees just don’t get barked up

Now and then, someone asks me for an old document and as I search for it, I stumble across others I’d forgotten about. I’ve been rather frustrated that AI progress hasn’t kept up with its development rate in the 90s, so this was fun to rediscover, highlighting some future computing directions that offered serious but uncertain potential exactly 20 years ago, well 20 years ago 3 weeks ago. Here is the text, and the Schrodinger’s Computer was only ever intended to be silly (since renamed the Yonck Processor):

Herrings, a large subset of which are probably red

Computers in the future will use a wide range of techniques, not just conventional microprocessors. Problems should be decomposed and the various components streamed to the appropriate processing engines. One of the important requirements is therefore some means of identifying automatically which parts of a problem could best be tackled by which techniques, though sometimes it might be best to use several in parallel with some interaction between them.

 Analogs

We have a wider variety of components available to be used in analog computing today than we had when it effectively died out in the 80s. With much higher quality analog and mixed components, and additionally micro-sensors, MEMs, simple neural network components, and some imminent molecular capability, how can we rekindle the successes of the analog domain. Nature handles the infinite body problem with ease! Things just happen according to the laws of physics. How can we harness them too? Can we build environments with synthetic physics to achieve more effects? The whole field of non-algorithmic computation seems ripe for exploitation.

 Neural networks

• Could we make neural microprocessor suspensions, using spherical chips suspended in gel in a reflective capsule and optical broadcasting. Couple this with growing wires across the electric field. This would give us both electrical and optical interconnection that could be ideal for neural networks with high connectivity. Could link this to gene chip technology to have chemical detection and synthesis on the chips too, so that we could have close high speed replicas of organic neural networks.
• If we can have quantum entanglement between particles, might this affect the way in which neurons in the brain work? Do we have neural entanglement and has this anything to do with how our brain works. Could we create neural entanglement or even virtual entanglement and would it have any use?
• Could we make molecular neurons (or similar) using ordinary chemistry? And then form them into networks. Might need nanomachines and bottom-up assembly.
• Could we use neurons as the first stage filters to narrow down the field to make problems tractable for other techniques
• Optical neurons
• Magnetic neurons

Electromechanical, MEMS etc

• Micromirror arrays as part of optical computers, perhaps either as data entry, or as part of the algorithm
• Carbon fullerene balls and tubes as MEM components
• External fullerene ‘décor’ as a form of information, cf antibodies in immune system
• Sensor suspensions and gels as analog computers for direct simulation

Interconnects

• Carbon fullerene tubes as on chip wires
• Could they act as electron pipes for ultra-high speed interconnect
• Optical or radio beacons on chip

Software

• Transforms – create a transform of every logic component, spreading the functionality across a wide domain, and construct programs using them instead. Small perturbation is no longer fatal but just reduces accuracy
• Filters – nature works often using simple physical effects where humans design complex software. We need to look at hard problems to see how we might make simple filters to narrow the field before computing final details and stages conventionally.
• Interference – is there some form of representation that allows us to compute operations by means of allowing the input data to interact directly, i.e. interference, instead of using tedious linear computation. Obviously only suited to a subset of problems.

And finally, the frivolous

• Schrodinger’s computer – design of computer and software, if any, not determined until box is opened. The one constant is that it destroys itself if it doesn’t finding the solution. All possible computers and all possible programs exist and if there is a solution, the computer will pop out alive and well with the answer. Set it the problem of answering all possible questions too, working out which ones have the most valuable answers and using up all the available storage to write the best answers.