Programming of policies for such systems can’t rely on black-box learning algorithms, but usually involves strict mathematical specifications for every aspect of their work.Altogether, AI agents are coming in all shapes and colours, but the trend is that peripheral gadgets are getting smaller while data centers are growing.Quantum worldWhile this section might appear disconnected from the topic of intelligence, I believe that physics and, in particular, quantum physics deserves specific attention for a number of reasons.Source: physics.stackexchange.comFirst of all, QM is the common ground for all artificial and biological agents..Workings of both semiconductors and biochemical agents are fundamentally based on quantum effects..While it doesn’t make much sense to talk about intelligence on the atomic or sub-atomic level, it’s totally possible to build universal computers from all kinds of materials.Second, mathematical tools developed over 300 years ago to calculate planetary motions became the foundation for backpropagation and gradient descent..More than that, probability theory, statistical mechanics and matrix mechanics are fundamental for QM and are close relatives of the modern AI..Currently, Deep Learning is like alchemy, but I believe physics can help us understand it much better than we do now.Third, the rise of quantum computing..While quantum computers are still in their infancy, current experiments already show significant speed-up potential for certain kinds of optimization problems..For example, Boltzmann Machine is a kind of ANN that is intractable in most practical scenarios, so practitioners came up with a restricted variation that became one of the first deep neural nets..However, maybe quantum computers will allow us to harness the full power of BMs as well as many other probabilistic models.Lastly, QM is much harder to understand than anything else described above..Probability amplitudes, violation of classic probabilistic logic and vague picture of everything that happens on the sub-atomic level are just the tip of the iceberg..Ironically, while many people criticize artificial neural networks for poor interpretability, even humans fail to describe quantum physics in intuitive terms.Biological AgentsIn contrast to AI agents which exist for only about 100 years, biological ones are here for about 3 billion..There are millions of species on earth, and all of them have something in common: DNA.Source: evogeneao.comWhy DNA is so important?.Generally, it is the “central nervous system” of the cell.. More details