Author	: Bill Kochman
Publish	: Oct. 8, 2011
Update	: Nov. 6, 2025
Parts	: 04

Synopsis:



This is an updated version of a one-part article I wrote in October of 2011. While parts of it are somewhat dated, some of the information it contains is still very interesting and relevant, because a lot of the latest technology is partially or even fully based on the technology that came before it. In fact, as you will discover, I have added a lot of new info to the article, so that it is now a four-part series. Thus, even if you have read it at some point in the past, you will want to read it again. So shall we begin?

Back in August of 2011 the IBM Corporation announced that it had designed two new prototype computer chips which it said were unlike any chips which had ever been created before. An integral part of the SyNAPSE -- or Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics -- Project, these two cognitive computing chips -- which IBM called "Neurosynaptic Chips" -- did much more than simply rely upon data with which they had already been pre-programmed. This is in fact what standard computer processors do. Or perhaps I should possibly state "did". After all, it really all depends on in what year you read this particular series. It may very well be that by the time you get around to actually reading it, old school, standard computer chips may no longer even exist, given the rapid pace at which computer chip technology is developing at this current time.

One of the goals of IBM researchers at the time was to create a brand new generation of computers -- which they referred to as cognitive computers -- which would be able to mimic a human brain. Such computers would theoretically be able to analyze sights, sounds, smells and other environmental stimuli around them. In short, they would be able to electronically "reason". The result of this electronic "decision-making" is that they would be able to formulate their own theories, and determine what would be the best course of action to take, based upon the data they had collected and analyzed. In other words, they would be a true "thinking machine", unlike current computers which are rather stupid machines which can only do what they are actually programmed to do.

The goal was to use these "thinking machines" in a wide range of useful applications, such as at traffic lights, in grocery stores, at power and water distribution centers, at utility agencies, in everyday electronic devices that we use, etc. As IBM project leader Dharmendra Modha explained at the time, "We want to make something like the brain." Researchers at the IBM Almaden Research Center near San Jose, California stated that the aforementioned new chips would be used in this new line of computers.

IBM's long-term goal -- or research objective -- was to build a system with 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. At that scale, it is referred to as "human brain-scale". This is a term that is used in computing, neuroscience and artificial intelligence to refer to systems or models which approach -- or match -- the computational complexity, storage capacity and efficiency of the human brain. That is no small feat indeed!

According to one online press release during that time, one of the two prototypes contained the equivalent of 262,144 programmable synapses, while the other chip held 65,536 synapses. However, even this achievement was merely a small step towards their ultimate objective, which was actually to create a computer chip would be one-square-centimeter in size, and which would contain the equivalent of one million neurons and ten billion synapses.

While that may seem very impressive at first glance, out of curiosity, I conducted some online research in order to find out approximately how many neurons and synapses one's adult brain contains. While no precise figures are really known for obvious reasons, it has been estimated to be some 86 billion neurons, and between 100 trillion to 500 trillion synapses. Thus, it seems to me personally that for all their talking, modern scientists have a very long way to go before they will ever create an advanced computer network which possesses the full capacity and capabilities of the human brain.

At any rate, IBM's invention of their Neurosynaptic Chips was not only an important step towards the creation of cognitive computers, but also a major step towards achieving their goal of Artificial General Intelligence which is a significant step above Artificial Intelligence. I explain the actual difference between these two concepts in my companion article entitled "AI, Chatbots, Daemons and Demons", which you will find listed at the end of this same series. Just click the link in order to be taken to it.

Earlier, I mentioned human brain-scale to you. Well, it turns out that some scientists involved in this particular field of research view reaching human brain-scale as a necessary step towards achieving Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI. So, in essence, human brain-scale actually signifies a benchmark for technological advancement where artificial systems -- such as the aforementioned cognitive computers -- can truly rival the complex, parallel processing capabilities of a biological brain.

Regarding the capacity and capabilities of the human brain, it is interesting to note that our brain is very energy-efficient, capable of processing the equivalent of an exaflop -- that is to say, a billion-billion mathematical operations per second -- using only about 20 watts of power. So achieving this level of performance with similar energy efficiency is a major goal for brain-scale computing. As it turns out, the two chips created by IBM were in fact described as relying upon very low power consumption.

Another interesting fact regarding our human brain is that its memory capacity is estimated to be around 1 to 10 petabytes of data storage, or potentially up to 2.5 million gigabytes. Wow! Furthermore, brain-scale models -- such as large AI models with a hundred trillion parameters -- require petabytes of memory to store. So again, given these figures, it is easy to understand why creating cognitive computers, and also achieving Artificial General Intelligence is no easy task. Taking it beyond that to Superintelligence -- which we'll be discussing later on in this series -- is even more challenging. In fact, to date, IBM has never invented a complete, human-brain-scale cognitive computer as a singular product. There exists no single, fully-realized artificial brain. Such a thing remains in the realm of science fiction.

However, as I point out in "AI, Chatbots, Daemons and Demons", the smart technology gurus who are at the helm and forefront of the current endeavors, have continued to work on it, except they are taking smaller incremental steps. In fact, as many of you will already know, we already have Artificial Intelligence systems in the form of personal assistants and chatbots which can mimic human thought, speech, communication and behavior to a convincing and accurate degree. Furthermore, they possess the skills to write complicated computer code, to create music and artwork, to write papers and books and much more. Where this will all lead remains to be seen.

Regarding IBM's endeavors with cognitive computers more than a dozen years ago, in 2011 IBM developed and introduced to the world its AI supercomputer known as Watson. Named after IBM's founder and first CEO, industrialist Thomas J. Watson, it was developed as part of the DeepQA -- Question Answering -- project. What made Watson unique was its ability to both process and understand natural language, and then to respond with relevant answers. A natural language -- also known as an ordinary language -- is a language that occurs organically in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change and in forms such as written, spoken and signed. In short, we are talking about languages such as English, French, Spanish and the many other human languages of the world.

The Watson AI computer system was able to learn, adapt, and hypothesize, which is not a skill that is possessed by much more rigid traditional computers. In that same year, Watson impressed the world when it beat two of the champions of the popular television game show "Jeopardy!" -- Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings -- and thus won the first-place prize of one million dollars. IBM donated the full amount to charity. To continue, since 2011, the IBM Corporation has continued to develop and evolve its AI computer technology. In fact, in 2014 the SyNAPSE Project produced a more advanced chip it dubbed the TrueNorth chip. This chip boasted over a million neurons and 268 million programmable synapses. On May 9 of 2023, IBM likewise introduced Watsonx, which was a major step up from the original Watson.

Due to the current popularity of AI-driven chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok, some of my readers will be familiar with the phrase Large Language Models, or LLMs for short. Without getting too technical, LLMs are basically how chatbots work. They're trained on huge amounts of data -- the LLMs -- which they then process and use to communicate with and respond to users in an intelligent, human-like, natural language fashion. According to Wikipedia, Watsonx.ai is a platform which allows AI developers to access a wide range of LLMs under IBM's own Granite series, as well as a number of other LLMs.

While I haven't personally signed up with their platform, I imagine that it is similar to other AI companies where you can build your own chatbot, and if you possess the required skill set, deploy the chatbot on your own website, just as I have done with the Bill's Bible Basics chatbot. For those of you who may be interested, you will find the BBB Chatbot at the following URL. In fact, there is a chatbot icon on just about every page of the Bill's Bible Basics website so that you can access our free chatbot from anywhere on the site. So give it a go. I think you will be impressed. But please take a minute to first click or tap on the link that says "Read me first for best results". By so doing, you'll have a much more engaging, rewarding and accurate session with our chatbot:

https://www.billkochman.com/chat.html

While at that time in 2011, the general public was given very limited information regarding the wonderful, useful ways in which this futuristic technology would eventually be used to benefit society as a whole, there was one worrisome footnote to all of this which, quite frankly, really bothered me. For Phase 2 of the SyNAPSE Project, the IBM Research Center was awarded twenty-one million dollars by DARPA. For those of my readers who may not be familiar with it, DARPA -- or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- is an agency of the US government under the umbrella of the Department of Defense -- recently renamed the Department of War -- headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. This agency is primarily responsible for the development of new technologies which are designated to eventually be used by the US military in warfare. In fact, when I visited their website's "About" page in 2011, it said the following:

----- Begin Quote -----

"DARPA's original mission, established in 1958, was to prevent technological surprise like the launch of Sputnik, which signaled that the Soviets had beaten the U.S. into space. The mission statement has evolved over time. Today, DARPA's mission is still to prevent technological surprise to the US, but also to create technological surprise for its enemies."

----- End Quote -----

Today, in November of 2025, when I revisited the page, it had been updated. Following are a few excerpts from the page:

----- Begin Quote -----

The DARPA mission is to create and prevent technological surprise for our national security.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an independent research and development agency within the U.S. Department of War (DoW).

Created in response to the launch of Sputnik in 1957, DARPA stands as our nation's commitment to never again face a strategic technical surprise.

Working with innovators inside and outside government, we have delivered on our mission many times over -- transforming the seemingly impossible into world-changing defense and national security capabilities. Often, DARPA innovations also become fixtures of modern civilian life.

We've created game-changing military capabilities -- precision weapons, stealth technology, nerve implants that return sensation to warriors who have lost limbs, and more -- that stand as a marvel to militaries around the globe.

----- End Quote -----

While the "About" page strives to give a softer tone to the overall mission of DARPA, even mentioning how our civilian society has benefited from some of the technologies which have been designed by DARPA -- including the Internet itself, which is based on the original ARPANET -- we should not lose sight of the fact that DARPA is still first and foremost a military agency, and its projects are primarily designed to assist the US military in enforcing American hegemony around the world. With this point in mind, it should be easier for you to understand why I became concerned upon learning about DARPA's involvement with IBM's SyNAPSE Project and cognitive computers.

In other words, in 2011, I realized that once the technology was perfected, it would be naive for any of us to not assume that the US Department of War had military applications in mind. Today, years later, we know this to be true. It is a well known fact that the US and other nations now regularly deploy remotely-operated drones which are capable of spying on and killing people -- sometimes civilians -- in foreign lands by firing laser-guided missiles at them. We have seen it in American strikes in the Middle East. We have seen it in Israel's retaliation against Hamas and Hezbollah. We have seen it in the Russia-Ukraine War. And the beat goes on.

In fact, let me inform you that I regularly receive an email newsletter called "Threat Status" which is produced by The Washington Times. As some of my readers may know, the Times tends to be a very conservative newspaper. It is not run by liberals or crazy conspiracy theorists. They strive to offer their readers real facts without embellishment. Well, I find it very interesting that just now when I checked my Mail app as I was working on this article update, I discovered a new edition of "Threat Status" waiting in my inbox. But what is so interesting about it is the fact that the headline in the email's subject line says "Ukraine’s digital battlefield: AI and drones rewrite the rules of war". Now is that merely a coincidence or what? Following are some direct excerpts from the newsletter:

----- Begin Quote -----

The killer robots that have been staples of science fiction and Hollywood fantasy are no longer imaginary: Ruthlessly efficient artificial-intelligence-driven machines are meting out death daily on the battlefields of Ukraine. Threat Status Special Correspondent in Ukraine Guillaume Ptak offers a deep dive, writing in a dispatch from Kyiv that the war raging on Ukraine's eastern plains is increasingly being fought by machines.

Airborne drones constantly scan the broken landscape while shooting video. Computers use algorithms to sift through hours of footage in seconds. Battlefield software fuses sensor feeds into target lists. Semi-autonomous systems use those lists to help human operators steer drones carrying explosives through electronic jamming, smoke and adverse weather.

"It's not about the future; it's about the present," says Yaroslav Honchar, co-founder of Aerorozvidka, a group of Ukrainian volunteers who have become experts on drone warfare while helping defend the country. "Artificial intelligence is already here because the battlefield demands it," Mr. Honchar says. "Sometimes we have more drones than operators, so we had to find ways to compensate."

----- End Quote -----

So as you can plainly see -- although I know that some of you already realized it -- reality is in fact catching up to what not too many years ago was just deemed science fiction. If these strikes from afar aren't already alarming enough as it is, consider cognitive drones which can actually "think" on their own, analyze data on their own, formulate decisions on their own, and if their electronic brain deems it to be a necessary and appropriate action, take offensive action on their own, WITHOUT ANY DIRECT HUMAN INTERVENTION. This is a very dangerous step into the unknown for all of us.

Sadly, not too long ago, I recall reading an online article which discussed this very thing. So, my friends, this concept of completely autonomous attack drones is no longer simply a script for a Hollywood science fiction movie. This is really something the warmongers are now working on, and which they will perfect with time. Of course, the aforementioned article was quick to add that the final decision to launch a strike would always be left to human beings. The AI-enabled drone would NOT make that decision; at least so they claim. Maybe they should talk to James Cameron and see what he thinks. I think he might hold a different opinion. Sarcasm intended.

But in my mind there is something even more worrisome. As I explain in my 2008 article entitled "Robot Wars and Skynet: Is Sci-Fi Becoming Our Reality?", if a certain government were to engage in such clandestine tactics, who would really know outside of the inner circle, and who would hold them accountable? Do you honestly believe that your government would really inform you that they are using AI-based killer machines to indiscriminately kill people? Do they tell you now? Or is it only when a foreign government complains that civilians have been killed that we the public hear about it?

When I first authored this article in 2011, I didn't have any concrete proof that this is what the US military actually had in mind. Back then, it just seemed like the next logical step insofar as drone technology was concerned. In fact, I likewise pondered the idea of what if at some point in the near future, there was nothing to prevent the US military from developing and deploying humanoid, robotic killing machines without the general public's knowledge? Clearly then, the notion of arming machines with the ability to think, analyze and take action is really sliding down a very slippery slope. Don't you agree?

Granted, back then in 2011, this kind of alarming scenario seemed to still be a number of years into our future. After all, IBM Research and other technological giants were just beginning to explore the potential of cognitive computers. However, just the fact that DARPA and the Department of War were considering such possibilities was enough to catch my attention, and to unsettle me. Yet fourteen years after my original article, here we are. As I said, such technology is in the works. My view is that if they are already talking about doing it publicly, they are probably already in the process of designing and creating these deadly machines for real in private. What do YOU think?

We have all watched as Artificial Intelligence and robots have suddenly leaped to the front of the stage during the past few years. As I mentioned earlier, AI can already do some very amazing, impressive things. And talk about the race to introduce robots to the general public. Well, it's already happening on a small scale for those individuals who can afford them. They can sing, dance, perform basic house chores, assist in medical operations and much more. On an industrial and commercial level, robots are already everywhere and growing in number by the year.

Likewise, AI has in large part already replaced many human beings at online support desks. Quite frankly, I find this trend very annoying, and in fact rather offensive. It shows how little companies really care about human customers. It seems that as long as they can maintain their profit margin by sucking money out of us, they will treat us like dirt, and not have the respect to allow us to speak to an actual human being. I am personally convinced that many of them now purposely avoid, and in fact purposely make it extremely difficult for us to reach a real person at their offices. It is as if they don't want to be bothered with us. As some of you will know, email support is the same way. I absolutely hate it when I am forced to communicate with a bot which just keeps sending me the same responses!

As some of my readers are no doubt aware, the entertainment industry is also being heavily affected by the current AI onslaught. In fact, a growing number of actors and artists are becoming quite alarmed to see how easily they can now be imitated by Artificial Intelligence. Even I have used AI to convert some of my poetry into almost 1,400 original songs at this current time. It is really quite amazing. These are NOT just low quality songs. They sound as if they are being performed and sung by REAL people. Of course, there are a few small mispronunciations here and there, but overall, the results are rather impressive. If you doubt my word, hop on over to the following URL and listen to some of my music. I think you will be amazed. There are all kinds of themes and genres to listen to:

https://www.billkochman.com/Poetry/index.html

Returning to the subject of DARPA, you should know that IBM's SyNAPSE Project wasn't the first time that DARPA had actually financed, sponsored or been involved in AI research. While in the article called "Robot Wars and Skynet: Is Sci-Fi Becoming Our Reality?", I mention DARPA's 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge, which popularized the concept of self-driving cars, that was actually a later effort to spur innovation after the initial research had already be done during the 1980s. It was at that time in 1984 that DARPA funded the Autonomous Land Vehicle -- ALV -- project. This program was a partnership with the U.S. Army and was the world's first outdoor vehicle to operate autonomously. Its goal was to give vehicles full autonomy by using cameras and LiDAR -- a light-based radar detection system -- to detect terrain and calculate navigation routes.

You know, when I first authored this article in 2011, and so boldly mentioned the possibility of Skynet becoming a future reality, there were probably a number of scoffers who rolled their eyes, accused me of taking leave of my senses, and who probably lumped me together with the thousands of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists who populate the wilderness of the web. "Skynet?" they probably questioned in disbelief. "You've got to be joking! You really need to turn off the television set, get out more, and get some fresh air!" Well, I suspect that such a dismissive attitude has probably in large part now disappeared, and with good reason.

While human pride and vanity are almost always ahead of man's actual real-world discoveries, accomplishments and scientific breakthroughs, nevertheless, it can be said that what often begins as a thought arising in the mind of a science fiction author, with time may very well become our reality. In other words, yesterday's science fiction is today's reality. If you doubt that this is so, then simply take the time to listen to some of the old radio shows, watch some of the old black and white science fiction television shows and movies, or read some of the old science fiction novels. You may be surprised by what you discover. Some of our great grandparents no doubt rolled their eyes at the mention of the possibility of humans someday being able to go to the Moon, or beyond.

In a strange way, I can't help but wonder if those secular forms of entertainment are an odd type of prophecy. Or is it simply that Satan -- who the Bible tells us is the false god of this current world -- knows exactly where world events are headed, and he just wants to make sure that things stay on track?

As should be obvious to many of my readers by now, the fact of the matter is that the futuristic scenario that I spoke about just a moment ago is actually something right out of the popular "Terminator" movie franchise. For those of you who may not be familiar with the franchise, it is in fact a rather frightening picture of a possible not-too-distant world where by one means or another, our own AI technology acquires the intelligence to turn against us, or is in fact purposely turned against us by our enemies. In this future world, we have ceased being the dominant species on this planet, and we have been marked for extermination by our very own AI-based machines.

While most of humanity's wars today are fought on a physical battlefield in foreign lands -- how odd that they never occur on American soil -- as many of you will already know, for a number of years now, wars have been moving to a new theatre. That is to say, to the online arena. As technology experts will acknowledge, with each passing year, worms, trojans and viruses are becoming more complex, more intelligent, as well as more destructive. They are also becoming more difficult to discover. Furthermore, unbeknownst to so many computer users, they are also taking over more machines as well and making them their slaves. Obviously, that makes them all the more dangerous, due to the collective harm which they can inflict.

A DDOS -- or Distributed Denial of Service -- attack is one good example. Such concentrated attacks can bring a server to an absolute crawl so that no one can connect to a particular website. Large commercial websites sometimes experience this kind of attack by some disgruntled individual who has a beef with the company. Even my own BBB web server will sometimes experience this type of DDOS attack, being as there are some people who strongly disagree with my Bible-based views. In fact, over the past several days, my server has been under attack.

Taking the previous points into account, consider again the Artificial Intelligence research that has been conducted by DARPA, IBM Research, and similar technology giants. Assuming that they will achieve their objectives at some point in the coming years -- that is to say that cognitive computers will in fact become a reality, and that such technology will be implemented in different military applications, is it not also logical to assume that certain hostile governments and individuals would attempt to infiltrate, jeopardize and try to compromise such technologies?

Stop and think about this, my friends. If such troublemakers already possess the ability to infiltrate commercial online giants such as Amazon, PayPal, Facebook, Adobe and similar popular, high-trafficked Internet websites -- who one would naturally assume implement rather strong security protocols -- and steal literally millions of credit card numbers and other very sensitive, personal data today, then it begs the question regarding what such unscrupulous individuals could be capable of doing a number of years from now, perhaps due to extreme ideological, political or even religious reasons.

For the record, on rare occasions, I myself have received an email from such technology giants in which I've been informed that their website was breached by just such a very skillful hacker, and that my credit card number or login and password may have possibly been compromised. In such cases, I've been advised to update my login data. On one or two occasions in the past, I did in fact need to have a new credit card issued to me. I recall one incident where some unknown individual in Costa Rica had the audacity to purchase $50 worth of pizza at a local Pizza Hut. Well, I actually reside thousands of miles away from Costa Rica, yet somehow, that person acquired my credit card number.

Let me also remind you that while government institutions will rarely admit it -- at least not until after the fact -- some of these hackers do possess the knowledge and skill to break into government and military websites as well. So what if they were successfully able to gain access to cognitive computers at some locale which control vital facilities? It might be electrical grids, water distribution centers, or perhaps communications networks, military installations or nuclear power plants. Worse yet, what if they could access missile launch sites and initiate a nuclear war? Oh my!

Furthermore, what if said hackers discovered a way to inject their own code into some American drones? That could indeed possibly result in a very serious problem which would not be that much different from the Terminator franchise's Skynet, couldn't it? So as you can hopefully see, it does not sound so funny, ridiculous, preposterous or unbelievable anymore, does it? Granted, I'm describing some very extreme scenarios here, but the potential does exist for something like this to occur. If you doubt that this is so, please explain to me how nineteen alleged Saudi Arabians were able to pull off 9/11.

Please go to part two for the continuation of this series.


⇒ Go To The Next Part . . .

---

---

Please avail yourself of other areas of the Bill's Bible Basics website. There are many treasures for you to discover.