For decades computer scientists have strived to build machines that can calculate faster than the human brain and store more information. The contraptions have won. The world’s most powerful supercomputer, the K from Fujitsu, computes four times faster and holds 10 times as much data. And of course, many more bits are coursing through the Internet at any moment. Yet the Internet’s servers worldwide would fill a small city, and the K sucks up enough electricity to power 10,000 homes. The incredibly efficient brain consumes less juice than a dim lightbulb and fits nicely inside our head. Biology does a lot with a little: the human genome, which grows our body and directs us through years of complex life, requires less data than a laptop operating system. Even a cat’s brain smokes the newest iPad—1,000 times more data storage and a million times quicker to act on it.
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Add CommentGood diagram, however there is something very misleading about comparing computer computation to human computation that is never pointed out. The 8.2 BM flops of the supercomputer is running an algorithm specifically suited for it. All algorithms are not the same, if that same computer tried to simulate the brain, it would grind to a halt, perhaps going 1000 times slower for the same power output because of all the data shifting it would need to do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the brain, 1 neuron can connect to 10,000 others across the other side of the brain. Trying to simulate that in present hardware would overuse the computer bus, and it would spend practically all the time waiting for data to arrive rather than computing.
Agreed. Jeff Hawkins points out the fallacy of comparing a brain to a computer in his 2004 book "On Intelligence."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeurons are slow compared to transistors, but neurons operating in parallel are not the same as computers operating in parallel. According to Hawkins, "A human can perform significant tasks in much less time than a second. For example, I could show you a photograph and ask you to determine if there is cat in the image. Your job would be to push a button if there is a cat, but not if you see a bear or a warthog or a turnip. This task is difficult or impossible for a computer to perform today, yet a human can do it reliably in half a second or less. But neurons are slow, so in that half a second, the information entering your brain can only traverse a chain one hundred neurons long. That is, the brain 'computes' solutions to problems like this in one hundred steps or fewer, regardless of how many total neurons might be involved. From the time light enters your eye to the time you press the button, a chain no longer than one hundred neurons could be involved. A digital computer attempting to solve the same problem would take billions of steps. One hundred computer instructions are barely enough to move a single character on the computer's display, let alone do something interesting.
... So how can a brain perform difficult tasks in one hundred steps that the largest parallel computer imaginable can't solve in a million or a billion steps? The answer is the brain doesn't "compute" the answers to problems; it retrieves the answers from memory. In essence, the answers were stored in memory a long time ago. It only takes a few steps to retrieve something from memory. Slow neurons are not only fast enough to do this, but they constitute the memory themselves. The entire cortex is a memory system. It isn't a computer at all."
My cat can lick its butt. Lets see IBM do that.
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That's nothing. My cat can lick [beat] my butt. He's tough.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSupercomputers can compute really fast but they aren't intelligent in the Turing-test sense. They aren't even intelligent in the biological sense. No robot with computer brain can beat a cockroach in mobility and survival in the wild. So far no computer is smarter than a cockroach.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK, I have a cochroach. Do you want it? As exchange I do not require a supercomputer, it is enought with a brand new Ipad or Samsung Galaxy. Fair deal?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe human brain has to do more than retrieve a memory of a cat. The picture has to be analyzed to determine if there is a cat (in any position or form). A computer can store an image of a cat, and can use software to rotate or otherwise manipulate the image for comparison. These tasks are more similar than your description implies. The human brain is far more efficient at doing this task. But a lot more than just memory is involved. It is possible that the computer algorithms are just not very efficient. Human brains have the benefit of a very long period of evolution and natural selection to make them good at such tasks -- recognizing animals quickly was a survival requirement. Computer programming has had less than my lifetime to evolve! And pattern recognition might not have been a priority for most of that time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, I agree with your main point that computers and brains do not operate in the same ways. But the tasks may still be similar.
An article in a recent SciAm on Embodied Cognition should be read by all. The concept that the brain is a computer seems to be debunked by this new paradigm, backed by decades of research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere do you get the figure of 2.2 petaflops? I thought they were still arguing over the order of magnitude, ever since someone pointed out that Ray Kurzweil (who gave the widely-quoted figure of 10 petaflops) wasn't a neuroscientist.
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