clicky

I wonder how many of us will live to see the first production models...

They will be scaleable and low energy. Initially these might be expensive but if they are that low powered they could make a huge impact in servers centres.

Servers tend to be doing the same thing repetitively, possibly many times over simultaneously (e.g. get web page, send web page, get web page, send web page). I'm not sure a 'neural' chip is best suited to that job given the description. From the description it'll be much more useful in 'workstation' level tasks like image processing and trend spotting in datasets. You have a 'dumb' server with lots of throughput sending you piles of data then you have a 'neural' chip in your workstation that's sifting and processing it as you define exactly what you're looking for.

Possibly also if we can make a piece of electronics that works more like a nerve cell, it's easier to get it to work with the output a nerve cell gives out (and to give output a nerve cell can process) so it might be a step nearer to honest-to-goodness cybernetics.

And the rise of the machines. Terminator style?

Cybernetics fascinates me, but then I am a Terminator fan... Once saw a documentary on a woman who, long story short, was having her severely depressed mood changed with a Mean Machine-style dial that enabled electronic pulses and consequently drugs to help her

Such a chip could be very handy for cybernetic connections. It might start out for aiding disabled people but how long before it becomes used as a way of installing information so that people can take exams? This technology might make exams a waste of time, as you could program all the relevant skills to someone.

You're talking about William Gibson's biosofts or the skills downloading from The Matrix. Be hard to do for anything that requires motor training but purely intellectual skills like languages would seem a possible candidate. There's a world more to do though, before you get 'downloadable skills'. Just having a chip that can talk to a neuron is like having a wheel and you're talking about building a space shuttle.

I do not think that this will be an instant solution. It might take decades from the time that they manage to integrate it to the brain. I think that the first uses will be motor skills for those with spinal injuries. Though eventually this will get used in other ways.