Graphcore is a start-up company that has recently secured $30m “to deliver massive acceleration for machine learning.” One of its latest findings has been posted by Mark Frauenfelder at boingboing: “brain scans” of Graphcore’s Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), which is likea rudimentary brain that can performbasic processes related to learning and memory. Here’s an image of its computational graph (used to help interpret information from data):
Image of Computational Graph for Graphcore
As for the most pressing concern: when will these things take us over? We do not know yet. But meanwhile we might spend our time pondering the kind of questions we’ve come to think ofas being typical at the Core, and perhaps even for the folks at Graphcore: the relation between appearance and reality. When that reality has to do with our perception of it, then introspection can only get us so far at a proper understanding. It reached its limits centuries ago, for the processes of the brain responsible for our sensation are not accessible to reflective analysis. We need the mediation of the kinds of instruments and machines that companies like Graphcore are working to develop. What’s truly interesting is that– *STATIC*… HELLO, MY NAME IS IPU:
READ HIS FULL POST AT boingboing
