Nanobots are officially one step closer to taking over the world. Scientists have created a tiny chemical “brain” which will some day be able to guide swarms of nano-machines.

The nano-brain is made of 17 duroquinone molecules and measures a measly two billionths of a meter across. It was able to control eight microscopic machines simultaneously in tests.

Scientists have high hopes for using nanobots in medicine and Dr. Anirban Bandyopadhyay, creator of this nano-brain, believes that his device may one day offer a solution for steering them through a body.

“That kind of device simply did not exist; this is the first time we have created a nano-brain,” he said.

The nano-brains are essentially molecular CPUs, currently capable of processing 16 bits of information simultaneously. Researchers say that they have already built faster machines, capable of 256 and 1024 operations.

Currently their functions are very limited, but eventually they could be used for a variety of tasks. Nanobots have huge potential to help us, and they seem more useful than ever now that we can control them.

That’s right, we could have a real Terminator on our hands by 2029, at least according to Ray Kurzweil, a leading US inventor. We’re not necessarily talking killing machines here, but Kurzweil believes that by that time machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence.

The engineer predicts that machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body. Kurzweil thinks that these robots would boost our intelligence and health.

“I’ve made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029,” he said. Read more »