Later this year, Intel will roll out their next-generation, 45-nanometer Nehalem architecture. In terms of clock rates, this means 3.0 GHz and above, but remember that these numbers cannot be used for straightforward extrapolations of processing power. Essentially, these processors will have significantly higher performance than the last generation.

Semiconductor experts believe we have 12 to 15 years of Moore’s law until chips hit the 16 - 11 nm mark and the conventional silicon-based paradigm becomes obsolete. Obviously, hundreds of millions of investor dollars will be put towards developing post-silicon or three dimensional architectures before then.

The Intel Core 2, a chip released in 2006, operates at between 533 and 1333 million instructions per second. By comparison, the human brain has about 100 billion neurons firing 200 times per second. If we assume that each unique firing event represents a functionally meaningful computational operation (doubtful), then the computing power of the human brain is about 20 trillion operations per second, roughly 20,000 times faster than the Intel Core 2.

If the computing power of a typical computer chip keeps doubling every two years or so, as it has for at least 50 years, then we will have home computers with computing power equivalent to the human brain in 2038. Of course, there is no guarantee that the doubling trend will hold. It could stall, or accelerate beyond what we expect.

Human brain-equivalent computing power is something that humanity has never had access to, but it’s just around the corner, historically speaking. It makes you wonder how humanity might utilize computers with such power. If recent news is any indication, such computers will likely be used to implement artificial intelligence (AI) systems for military purposes.

For a while, these artificial intelligence systems will be too stupid to be any real threat — except to those on the business end of military hardware controlled by them. But eventually, they will be cleverer than human beings, and pose a serious threat to humanity in general. People are already hooking up artificial intelligence systems to deadly weapons.

I’m not worried about artificial intelligences suddenly deciding they dislike being bossed around, then turning on their creators. This is anthropomorphic thinking. An AI programmed to obey its creators will not spontaneously turn on them, because it will lack the self-promoting tendencies of creatures sculpted by Darwinian selection. An AI could be exceptional at working out missile trajectories, analyzing enemy troop movements and intelligence data, but incredibly poor at acknowledging itself as a entity worthy of any special entitlements. Casual thinkers fail to realize that our Darwinian instincts correspond to specific neural structures, incredibly unlikely to arise in artificial minds by sheer chance.

The problem arises not when an AI rebels against its programmers, but when it interprets its own programmed goals in ways the programmers did not intend. There are innumerable conceivable examples, but imagine an AI programmed to destroy people against the government of its home specific country. This AI might end up massacring millions of the country’s own citizens with objections to their own government. Surely, if George W. Bush had a pet AI with control over nuclear facilities with such programming, most Americans would be dead by now.

It is not hard to imagine how such an AI might become a threat to humanity in general. An AI programmed to eliminate violence may come to the conclusion that the best way to reduce violence permanently would be to destroy all humanity, judging the immediate violence to be a necessary compromise for avoiding long-term violence over thousands of years. Given access to its own manufacturing hardware, this scenario is feasible.

Even though the notion of a human-equivalent artificial intelligence may seem fantastic to some, I expect to see it within my own lifetime, and within the lifetime of many of my readers here. I have considered several solutions to the challenge of rogue AI, but before I mention them, do you yourself have any? If so, please describe them in the comments.

Try to avoid mentions of fictional scenarios. Think for yourself: Hollywood is not an appropriate intellectual crutch.