Friday, February 1, 2008

Do androids dream of electric sheep ?

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

Many of you will recognize the last words of Roy Batty, the most evolved replicant, prodigal son of Eldon Tyrell. It was 25 years ago when Ridley Scott was giving birth to Blade Runner. But it was 41 years ago when Philip Dick was writing, in the 1966, the sci-fi novel "Do androids dream of electric sheep ?" that would have inspired the movie 16 years later.
The first edition of the book takes place in 1992, but this has been pushed over to 2021 in later publications. Philip Dick's universe is still pure sci-fi in 2007. How many years do we have to wait? How many other times will we have to push over the year in which Deckard will be hunting the skin-jobs? Will this ever be reality? I've not a single doubt that it will. Don't worry, I'm in good company. 

From today on in this blog myself with my colleagues will make public the theories, results and researches of the last year of what was internally called A.I. Project. The goal of the project was to create what scientists use to call a strong AI. Starting with primitive forms of life the project aims to recreate a brain that can intelligently drive a body in a simulated or real environment. We are not talking of "find the closest path" or "avoid the obstacles" kind of things. We are speaking of a form of artificial life that, inserted  in an uncontrolled environment, will act and think as a real being.

Many of you at this stage would start showing skepticism, we don't blame you. We are very skeptical too in many of our over-night sessions on Skype. But we go on. In deep we know that we can do it. We are gonna make it. From now on we will start sharing our progress, ideas and results. 
It starts now, it's our road trip.  Please fasten your belts, the journey is going to be long and difficult.

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