EVERYTHING that RISES... ANGELO DALLI IS AN AI VETERAN WHO BELIEVES ITS TIME HAS COME. HE SPEAKS TO THE BLOCK’S IVAN BORG ABOUT THE RECENT SURGE IN AI, AND HOW IT COULD CONVERGE WITH OTHER EMERGING TECH, LIKE BLOCKCHAIN.
I
ntelligence means different things to
made his mark as an entrepreneur, with several
different people. No matter how you
winning exits already under his belt.
define it, there’s no denying that Artificial
Intelligence has somehow gone from the stuff of science fiction to a revolution that’s not only
of Artificial Intelligence I ask him how he defines intelligence, period. He explains that the picture
possible, but is looking increasingly likely. And
of AI created by popular culture isn’t always
there’s no better man to walk us through the story
helpful. “You hear a lot of misleading claims that
so far, and to give us a glimpse into what’s next,
we’re creating an artificial brain,” he tells me.
than AI luminary Angelo Dalli.
“There is this system called neural nets in AI. They
His jovial demeanour and the sheer breadth of his interests belie a true commitment to the cause
50
Before picking Angelo’s brain on the intricacies
are a crude approximation of how the brain works. There is a little inspiration and grounding from biology, but it’s very different from how the brain
of Artificial Intelligence done right, and a level of
works. Take a one centimetre cube of brain matter
associated expertise that very few can match.
and try to join it to another similar size cube by
Angelo Dalli has been sinking his teeth into
tracing all the connections between them – there
innovative tech since 1995. His work in the fields
isn’t enough computing capacity in the world yet
of search engine technology, intelligent transport,
to do it. I think we are very far away, although I do
big data, online gaming – and even language – has
believe that at some point computers will be on
left him with an enviable track record. He’s also
par with human intelligence”.
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Issue 1