Minds of their own

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: iterations on its own, the genetic algorithm somehow found ways of exploiting physical quirks in the semiconductor material that researchers still don’t fully comprehend.

Similarly, John Koza at Stanford University has been using genetic algorithms to devise analog circuits that are so smart they infringe on patents awarded to human inventors. Koza’s so-called ‘invention machine’ has even earned patents of its own—the first non-human inventor to do so.

How soon before machines become smarter than people? The way self-programming machines are evolving today suggests they will probably begin to match human intelligence in perhaps little over a decade. By 2030, they might look down on us—if we’re lucky—as endangered critters like the blue whale or polar bear and accept we are worth keeping around for our genetic diversity.

But what if visionaries like Gibson are right, and we embrace the bionic future? With our plug-in bio-processors and learning modules, perhaps we’ll be able to outsmart the machines—or, at least, become indistinguishable from them.