| The article is very confused but I think what it is trying to say the researchers are building a Hardware based Recurrent Neural Network that operates with Real Numbers (i.e. analog). Hence it will be exponentially more powerful than a turing machine. The possibility of being able to build a physical device that can harness the reals to infinite precision is a big assumption. So this device is an example of a Hypercomputer. Its existence would disprove the Chuch-Turing Hypothesis. It would also be very difficult to verify that it was actually calculating what it claimed [1]. As a hypercomputer it could by definition solve the halting problem. It is also more powerful than a quantum computer. Simple argument: a turing machine can inefficiently simulate a quantum computer. By definition a turing machine cannot simulate a hypercomputer. It could hence compute incomputable functions. And since it could tell whether a program will halt it could compute Chaitins constant. One consequence of that is the resolution of twin prime, goldbach's conjecture and other open number theory problems. It should also be able to compute Solomonoff's Universal prior and hence act in a bayes optimal manner. Strong AI. If what is claimed can be done then this is a very big deal. Some other implicit or explicit arguments in this article: - Human brain is more than a turing maching - turing machine will not be able to realize AI - "Classical computers work sequentially and can only operate in the very orchestrated, specific environments for which they were programmed." I do not buy any of those arguments. And am not sure what that last quote is supposed to mean. [1] http://www.complex-systems.com/pdf/18-1-6.pdf http://www1.maths.leeds.ac.uk/~pmt6sbc/docs/davis.myth.pdf |