Neuromorphic hardware – a path towards human-level artificial intelligence

Recently we have seen a slew of popular films that deal with artificial intelligence – most notably The Imitation Game, Chappie, Ex Machina, and Her. However, despite over five decades of research into artificial intelligence, there remain many tasks that humans find simple which computers cannot do. Given the slow progress of AI, for many the prospect of computers with human-level intelligence seems further away today than it did when Isaac Asimov's classic I, Robot was published in 1950. The fact is, however, that today neuromorphic chips offer a plausible path to realizing human-level artificial intelligence within the next few decades. Starting in the early 2000's there was a realization that neural network models – based on how the human brain works – could solve many tasks that could not be solved by other methods.