P. W. Singer author of Wired for War: http://www.ted.com/talks/pw_singer_on_robots_of_war.html In this talk, Peter Singer shows how the widespread use of robots in war is changing the realities of combat. He shows us scenarios straight out of science fiction -- that now may not be so fictitious. He studies robotic and drone warfighters -- and explores how these new war machines are changing the very nature of human conflict. History says that only humans wage war. This is about to change. In 25 years, robots will be at least 1 billion times as smart as they are now. Men fight with remote controlled drones in far-off countries and then go home and help their kids with their homework. From an American perspective the use of drones plays to our technology strengths but to the people we are fighting, we appear weak and lacking courage.
Intel Developer's Forum
If you attended the Intel Developer’s Forum in 2008, you heard in the first five minutes of Justin Rattner's talk that the question is not whether the Singularity will happen or when it will happen, but what will it take for us to make it happen.” http://intelstudios.edgesuite.net/fall_idf/jr/f.htm
Smart Phones
http://www.osnews.com/story/22134/Palm_Unveils_Pixi_webOS_Phone_Forgets_to_Add_Wifi
Car Crashes:
New crash avoidance technology could prevent or lessen severity of accidents.
New automotive technology on the road today could reduce car crashes by as much as one-third, according to the findings of an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Travel/technology-reduces-severity-car-crashes-fatalities-injuries/story?id=8523234
iQ Toyota Augmented Reality Technology:
Not sure about this quote:
"It takes about 7.5 KWH of electrical power to refine a gallon of gasoline. An electric car can go 25 miles on that much power."
A Robot with Artificial General Intelligence requires a Robot Mind with memory, sensory data, communications within the robot and conceptualization. Typically it is found that the most efficient implementations of intelligence are made by incorporating a model of the robot within the robot’s mind. To aid in navigation, it is also efficient to have a model of the environment within the Mind as well. Social Intelligence also requires communications between various beings in the society. The faster the communications between robots and the faster the data is processed by each robot, the more Intelligent the Robot species may be said to be.
The current Ethernet standard that one might use in one’s home to connect his or her computers and robots together for the purposes of communications has gone from 10 Megabits per second to 100 Megabits per second and is now at “up to” 1000 Megabits per second which is the same as 1 Gigabit per second. By comparison, human nerves are capable of 1000 pulses per second, hardly in the same ball park with Robotic systems. The advantage of humans at this point is that they have a brain with 100 billion such nerves with up to 10,000 connections each.
Summary:
Human nerves: up to 1000 pulses per second.
Early Ethernet: 10 million bits per second
A few years ago: 100 million bits per second
Today in one’s home: 300 million bits per second
Today in data centers: 10 billion bits per second.
Tomorrow in data centers: 40 billion bits per second available by the end of 2009.
By 2010 in data centers: 100 billion bits per second
By 2015 in data centers: 1000 billion bits per second
Picture it as follows. If you want to communicate at 40 billion bits per second this year, you can do it up to 1 meter on a copper conductor backplane which connects multiple processor cards. By using twisted pairs of copper wires, you will be able to go up to 10 meters. By using multimode fiber optics, you will be able to go 100 meters.
Next year, you will be able to do those things at 100 billion bits per second. In addition you will be able to communicate over 10 and 40 kilometer distances using single mode fiber optic cables.