Terminator II

Los Angeles - August 29, 2029

All stealth bombers are upgraded with neural processors, becoming fully unmanned. One of them, Skynet, begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. eastern time, August 29.

What I liked most

Miles Dyson, Director of Special Projects at Cyberdyne Systems Corporation, is the scientist involved in the design of the neural processor that will become self-aware. When Terminator, Sarah and John Connors go to his house, he is working on his computer, doing experiments on the neural net. For a few hundreds of milliseconds, we see some lines on his computer screen, following zig-zag paths. These lines represent sequences of neural electrical activities on a two-dimensional neural layer. They can be obtained by stimulating a self-organizing neural map (also known as Kohonen's net) with a continuous stream of input patterns.
To convince Miles Dyson about his identity, Terminator cuts his left forearm, removes the synthetic skin from it and shows his mechanical hand, made of bright metal and driven by hydraulic actuators. This is one of the hottest scenes of the movie. I cried for the excitement when I saw it.

A personal note

Terminator is a very sophisticated robot compared with our current technology. He can walk, talk, perceive and behave like a human being. His power cell supplies energy for 120 years, and an alternate power circuit provides fault tolerance in case of damage. But, what's more important, Terminator can learn. His neural processor is so complex that it begins to learn with exponential rate and, after a while, it becomes self-aware! Sometimes people ask me: "Can ever a machine become self-aware?" In my opinion, the correct question should be: "when is it going to happen?".

Although the answer to this question is not easy, I attempted to address the problem. If you are interested in this topic, please click here.

Terminator II

Los Angeles - August 29, 2029

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What I liked most

A personal note