"Two and a Half Men" lead actor Ashton Kutcher, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk may already have a number of things in common such as wealth and fame but the trio appears to also have a common interest in artificial intelligence as they're all backing up a tech startup that's focused on developing a software with human-like intelligence.
Zuckerberg, Musk and Kutcher are reportedly investing $40 million on San Francisco-based startup Vicarious, which aims to replicate the abilities of the human brain's neocortex as a computer code. The neocortex basically makes a person human by providing the functions that allow him to think, see, comprehend languages and do math.
"Vicarious is an artificial intelligence company that uses the computational principles of the brain to build software that can think and learn like a human," Vicarious states on its website. The company was founded in 2010 by Dileep George, who previously worked as Chief Technology Officer at Numenta, and Frogmetrics CEO Scott Phoenix.
Phoenix said that if they successfully replicate the neocortex into a computer code, they can create a computer that thinks like a person but does not need to eat or sleep. To date, the company has already come up with an algorithm that can solve modern CAPTCHAs, which is basically used by websites to differentiate humans from computer programs.
"Vicarious is developing machine learning software based on the computational principles of the human brain," Vicarious described its primary project. "Our first technology is a visual perception system that interprets the contents of photographs and videos in a manner similar to humans."
Zuckerberg, Musk and Kutcher's investment reflects an apparent boom in artificial intelligence ventures as big companies such as Google and IBM find potentials in the technology. In January, Google purchased DeepMind, a London based artificial intelligence startup. IBM also shelled out $1 billion for the New Watson Group that will focus on the development of cognitive applications and services.
Prior to betting his money on Vicarious, Zuckerberg's company, Facebook, has already formed an artificial intelligence team to understand the emotions and behaviors associated with posts shared on the social networking site.
