ChiLab

Machines 'to match man by 2029'

Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted.

Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent, said Ray Kurzweil.

The engineer believes machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health.

"It's really part of our civilisation," Mr Kurzweil explained.

"But that's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us."

Machines were already doing hundreds of things humans used to do, at human levels of intelligence or better, in many different areas, he said.

Man versus machine

"I've made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029," he said.

... continue reading

CHIMPION BEATS CHAMPION

Did this chimp do a ChiLab Memory course?

In a memory competition on Channel Five, a seven years old male chimp, Ayumu, did three times better that the British memory champion, Ben Pridore., a 30-year-old accountant from Derby. Among his developed memory skills, Pridore is capable of memorizing in under 30 seconds the order of a pack of shuffled cards.

In the game, both participants had to watch a computer screen on which a group of 5 numbers flashed up before being quikcly blanketed by white squares. In just a blink of eye time, they had to touch the squares in order of the numbers from the lowest to the highest .

Ayumu got almost 90% right! His opponent could manage merely 33% correct.

Perhaps it is time for us to stop the sense of superiority being the self-declared smartest species on the earth…

“THE CHILAB METHOD”

by ChiLab Managing Director Bruce Stinson

When I first started seriously researching the area of personal development, around twenty years ago, there were many things which surprised me. Perhaps the most striking realization was the amount of material that was readily available, while most people seemed to have hardly encountered any of it.

Of course, those working in areas such as sales had been exposed to the work of renowned American trainer Tom Hopkins and many others. (I found out recently that my mother attended a Tom Hopkins seminar some ten or more years before I also attended one.) In previous generations, quite a number of people had found the work of Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People) and Dr Norman Vincent Peale (The Power of Positive Thinking) of great help to them in all aspects of life.

Yet the fact remained that it was only a minimal percentage of the population who had made such discoveries and utilized such tools in the area of their own personal development.

Then along came Stephen Covey with “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” – perhaps the best-selling personal development book of all time, followed by the work of Wayne Dyer, Anthony Robbins and countless others.

So I read, researched and wrote, trying to find the real keys in this plethora of advice. I suppose, at the time, as well as learning myself, I was looking for a way to put a lot of extremely useful information into a formula or format which would take the most important aspects of all of these wonderful pieces of personal advice and make them extremely user-friendly.

The more I read, the more I felt that something might be missing. And the more I read, the closer I came to identifying that missing link.

... continue reading

CREATIVITY FOR CHRISTMAS

The gift that keeps on giving!

ChiLab has programmed some special Creativity classes for the Christmas season.

With discounts available, these classes are the ideal way to give a very useful present to someone you care about, or maybe to simply spoil yourself.

Hong Kong is regarded as lacking in creativity and innovation – numerous articles in the press and letters to the editor tackle this subject time and time again.

ChiLab’s Creativty and Innovation Module helps people of all ages become more innovative in all of the challenges life hands out every day.

Please go to the Links for:

Full detail of Creativity For Christmas.

Full detail of the topics and objectives of Creativity and Innovation Class.

The dates of these classes.

TEN PER CENT USAGE OF THE BRAIN? DEBUNKING THE DEBUNKERS

THE TEN PER CENT “MYTH”

There are a slew of websites out there – and regular articles in the press – where people of a certain scientific bent “debunk” the widely proposed theory that we only use ten-per- cent of our brain.  They say it is rubbish, and they come to that position from all sorts of perspectives.  The problem with these debunkers is that, like a lot of students at exam time, they have misunderstood the question and the arguments they are mounting are, at best, off the point.

The idea that we only use around ten per cent of our brain’s potential has been around for some time. Einstein is said to be one who made the argument although there is no proof of that.

Those who argue that this assertion is false, often fall back on their own work or that of other scientits who have shown, using various imaging techniques, that all parts of the brain are in action at some time when various thoughts or processes are happening (not all at once and not all in one process).  They say this could not be observed if only ten per cent of the brain was in use.

Aren’t they missing a huge point?

... continue reading