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Will Computers Replace Humans?

Dr. Wu Feng

February 25, 2012

An interactive session led by Dr. Wu Feng

KTU Booklet

Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech.
Director of the Synergy Laboratory and site co-director of the NSF Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing.
Adjunct Professor in the Department of Cancer Biology and Translational Science Institute at Wake Forest University and at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech.

... As of June 2011, the fastest computer in the world performs approximately 10,000,000,000,000,000 mathematical calculations per second. How many such calculations can you perform per second?

... In February 2011 on the show Jeopardy!, IBM's Watson supercomputer trounced its human counterparts: Ken Jennings, the record holder for the longest championship streak on Jeopardy!, and Brad Rutter, the biggest all-time money winner on Jeopardy!

... At present, unofficial reports indicate that Google uses more than 1,000,000 computers to deliver search results for its Google search engine. That is, Google uses computers to perform search rather than humans.

... While K-Mart was the "king" of discount department stores back in the 1980s, Walmart has become the undisputed king of discount department stores, and K-Mart filed for bankruptcy in 2002. What happened? Walmart invested heavily in computer technology to manage its supply chain while K-Mart did not. In short, Walmart replaced humans with computers to manage its supply chain.

Does the above forecast a future where computers will replace humans? Why? Why not?

Please join me on a thought-provoking journey to answer the question: "Will computers replace humans?" Expect a wild ride where we will likely produce even more questions than answers :-).

Dr. Feng has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech since 2006 as well as director of the Synergy Laboratory and site co-director of the NSF Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Cancer Biology and Translational Science Institute at Wake Forest University and at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech. Previous professional stints include Los Alamos National Laboratory (1998-2006), The Ohio State University (2000-2003), Purdue University (1998-2000), University of Illinois (1990-1996), IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (1990), and several start-up companies, including Vosaic (1997), EnergyWare (2008-2010), and Abokia (2010-now).

Current research interests in Dr. Feng's Synergy Lab encompass large-scale and high-performance computing with applications to science, engineering, and health. Examples of such projects include "Computing the Cure for Cancer," video cards for supercomputing, mpiBLAST (http://www.mpiblast.org/), Supercomputing in Small Spaces (http://sss.cs.vt.edu/), and The Green500 (http://www.green500.org/).

Dr. Feng received a B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering and in Music (Honors) in 1988 and an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Penn State University in 1990. He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996.

February 2012 - Hands-On Exhibits
After the interactive session the students were escorted by their parents to lunch and then to the hands-on portion of the event. There the students enjoyed the experience of interacting with various exhibits from the Virginia Tech community.