Quantum leap: Towards an era of singularity, where machines will out-think humans

SoftBank’s Vision Fund recently invested in CloudMinds, a Chinese startup developing a “cloud brain” or cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI). To build this cloud AI, the four-year-old startup is looking to pool in the power of millions of robots by connecting their “brains” to the cloud and letting them perform different tasks simultaneously. The company has already put on the market a cloud brain-powered smart robot called XR1.

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, futurist Ray Kurzweil and many computer scientists and science-fiction writers believe machines will one day surpass humans — in numbers and thinking power.

Startups like CloudMinds are gearing up for that era, commonly referred to as singularity — not the cosmological event where space-time collapses to form a black hole, but a tipping point for the human race when machines will become exponentially smarter than Homo sapiens through the development of artificial general intelligence.