Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, smart robots

Stu Woo reports in the Wall Street Journal,

Within 30 years, artificial intelligence will be smarter than the human brain.

That is according to Masayoshi Son, chief executive of SoftBank Group Corp., who says that supersmart robots will outnumber humans and more than a trillion objects will be connected to the internet within three decades.

These beliefs underpin the wave of large and surprising deals the Japanese internet and telecommunications company has pulled off in the past year, he said Monday. These include starting a $100 billion technology-investment fund with a Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, buying British microprocessor designer ARM Holdings PLC for $32 billion and acquiring U.S. asset manager Fortress Investment Group PLC for $3.3 billion.

“Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, smart robots: Those are the three main things I’m interested in,” he said.

The Internet of Things is the technology world’s term for connecting everyday objects, such as refrigerators and sneakers, to the web.

…In his speech, Mr. Son said that while average humans had an IQ of roughly 100 and that geniuses such as Albert Einstein were believed to score about 200, superintelligent computers would have IQs of 10,000. He said computer chips possessing superintelligence would be put into robots big and small that can fly and swim. These robots would number in the billions and would be greater than the human population within 30 years, he said.

The chips would also be in everyday objects. “One of the chips in our shoes will be smarter than our brain,” he said. “We will be less than our shoes, and we will be stepping on them.”

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