The Bio-Inspired Edge of a New Cold War PUBLISHED DATE: 11....

The Bio-Inspired Edge of a New Cold War PUBLISHED DATE: 11. SEPTEMBER 2020 Original article was published by BINARY DISSENT on Artificial Intelligence on Medium

If you are following the emergence of neuromorphic processors, no doubt some of you would have already read about “Darwin”, the neuromorphic chip being developed in China:China successfully developed ‘Darwin,’ a neuromorphic chip based on Spiking Neural Networkshttps://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-12/scp-csd122215.php This Chinese developed neuromorphic processor is comparably on an equal level with Brainchip’s Akida or Intel’s Loihi or even IBM’s TrueNorth. It is a spiking neural processor, or events based processor— offering hardware artificial intelligence, belonging to the third generation of neural networks. Each are biologically inspired, designed to mimic networks of biological neurons and synapses.“AI is the new electricity. It has the potential to transform every industry and to create huge economic value”I am not too sure about the performance of each in comparison to Darwin or if it’s even capable of edge learning like Akida (as far as I am aware is Akida’s unique selling point — incremental learning at the edge).

However, Darwin’s emergence on the other side of the chasm to the east, in this fast heating race to the edge with artificial intelligence, is not to be overlooked.‘Darwin NPU 2’ developed to process information fasterhttps://www.miragenews.com/darwin-npu-2-developed-to-process-information-faster/The recent release of information about “Darwin NPU 2”, along with the neural processor Tianjic, made me take note of the fact that there is now a serious competition building up in the east and the west, with both sides now restricting exports to the other.U.S. government limits exports of artificial intelligence softwarehttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-artificial-intelligence/u-s-government-limits-exports-of-artificial-intelligence-software-idUSKBN1Z21PTChina Is Gunning To Be The World Leader In AI Chips While Restricting Exportshttps://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonytrippe/2020/08/31/china-is-gunning-to-be-the-world-leader-in-ai-chips-while-restricting-exports/#438028c66d4e

Each side with their own bio-inspired processors, developing along their own pathways, possibly never to cross the void. It truly is the east’s neural inspired chips versus the west’s neural inspired chips. Brainchip, and other emerging companies developing similar technologies, are at the forefront of this new cold war, whether they like it or not. Brainchip has recently received an export approval and “can now export all of its artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, without having to apply for additional licences” in order to “target non-restricted customers in Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan”. Brainchip CEO, Lou DiNardo has recently stated that the company is no longer pursuing China, stating it “has some troublesome issues we would have to deal with”.Meanwhile, IBM has been working with the United States Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) on the“experimental Blue Raven, with its end-to-end IBM TrueNorth ecosystem will aim to improve on the state-of-the-art by delivering the equivalent of 64 million neurons and 16 billion synapses of processing power while only consuming 40 watts — equivalent to a household light bulb.” The desired goal is for “possible fielding on a drone in the next five years”

Peter van der Made, author of the book “Higher Intelligence: How to Create a Functional Artificial Brain” and founder of Brainchip Inc, gives a clear vision for the future of wars:One thing that politicians have not fully realized yet is that future wars will not be fought primarily with bombs and guns, but with AI. The nation with the best AI strategy will win. They will be able to use autonomous search and destroy vehicles, infiltrate and disrupt the enemy’s computer systems by invasive AI bots, disrupting their manufacturing abilities and food distribution systems, and create a chaos in traffic management and energy generating plants. Various forms of AI, both programmed and hardware based, will be used to defeat an enemy without ever firing a shot. The writing is already on the wall.Space is the final frontier and neuromorphic chips are expected to be blasting off and exiting the Earths atmosphere, as indicated by Brainchip’s recent partnership with Vorago to radiation harden their chips, suitable to operate in the extremities of space. We can no doubt expect China to be following closely behind, as they are also recently making headlines with some reusable rockets, in the shadow of Blue Origin and SpaceX’s historic achievements:China says it has launched and landed a reusable spacecrafthttps://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/08/1008213/china-says-it-has-launched-and-landed-a-reusable-spacecraft/To further elucidate these two converging trends, there are some articles below, highlighting a new cold war between the East and the West with A.I in the place of nuclear weapons of the Soviet era. I read into this an indicator for what we should expect to become more prevalent over the next decade, especially as these neuromorphic chips leave the science labs and head out to change the world as we know it.