Issue (WIWE) status: Submitted, Unpublished

Wild Card's progress: Fully-fledged

This Wild Card came from: 
Scientists/researchers

Likelihood timeframe and scenario features : 
now-2050+

Wild Card's description: 

In October 2010, the Tianhe-1A system at China's National Supercomputer Center achieved a performance level of 2.57 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second). As a result, the Cray XT5 “Jaguar” system at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in the U.S. is now ranked in second place, given that Jaguar achieved 1.75 petaflop/s.

The supercomputing performance race and the growing efforts to create electronics that can mimic and emulate the amazing power of a human brain have recently been boosted with the introduction of the missing 4th electronic component, the so-called "memristor". Before its introduction, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have been based on three elements of electronic circuits: resistors, capacitors and inductors. As reported in the New Scientist Magazine “within the past couple of years, memristors have morphed from obscure jargon into one of the hottest properties in physics. They have not only been made, but their unique capabilities might revolutionize consumer electronics."

As a result of the growing supercomputing and AI competition, scientists in China and the USA decide to embark in the ultimate challenge for their systems, that is, the production of artificial humour.