Are Intel and Cray taking us off the cliff?

"Many changes are coming in the decade of the 2020's. Despite the bitter and acrimonious fighting in Washington, life is going on in the tech world. Our Brave New World is right around the corner." 

TECH WARNING. This might get a bit tech deep, but these are the times we live in. This is something that Elon Musk, Glenn Beck and others have been warning us about. It has to do with things (terms) called exaflops, deep learning, chatbots and turing tests. Hello? Did I lose everybody as of yet? These terms are important as we are on the cusp of making the BIG LEAP into true AI. The super highway needed to get us to AI is the super computer. And Intel and Cray are about to unleash a doozie in 2021.

Maybe some definitions would help before I continue:

• Exaflop - Computer chips which are capable of doing 5 trillion operations a second.
• Deep Learning - The "mother lode" for AI. When AI becomes truly autonomous. 
• Chatbot - A piece of software which allows the user to interface with a computer which is involved in Deep Thinking. 
• Turing Test - A test to ensure that a computer's thinking is equivalent to or indistinguishable from - a human's. 

This new computer, which is scheduled to go online in 2021, will be called Aurora. It will be part of the DOE umbrella and housed around Chicago. In the world of super-computing, being in first place, having the fastest and the baddest, is a short term event. Now every other supercomputer manufacturer will be trying to eclipse the latest milestone. But this milestone, will take us deep into the world of AI. So deep, that every supercomputer following this one should also be capable of Deep Learning.

What does all this mean? By 2030, a scant 10 years away, the world will be awash with computing power capable of Deep Learning. The question which now being asked by ethic minded people is this - will AI using Deep Learning be our slave, or our master? If it is our slave, wonderful things could be in the offing. If it is our master, things could be very, very bad for mankind. Or not. In any event, computing power, from supercomputers down to our personal devices (which were once known as cell phones), are about to take big leaps forward.

What about Quantum Computing? Yes, that is even more bizarre. That subject is for another day. 

Many changes are coming in the decade of the 2020's. Despite the bitter and acrimonious fighting in Washington, life is going on in the tech world. Our Brave New World is right around the corner. Those who embrace change, will love the next ten years. Those who hate change, will not do as well. In any event - here it comes.