AGS TechBlog
A source and journal of ideas

Today, I noticed the article, “Linking Brains, Computers” by Lee Gomes in the Wall Street Journal, Online Edition.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121554314155636505-sVIxBrTvKgZgQUFUCQbN_pBncKw_20080808.html

Because I am a sharing kind-o-guy, here is the note I sent to Lee:

Lee,

            I just saw your WSJ article from July 9^th. I appreciate you taking the time to point out the fallacy of comparing synapses to transistors. I hope that was your main point in reporting yours and Dr Koch’s view on the subject.

            I may agree that a statement like the following is rubbish: “We are close to producing human level cognitive performance in a computer because of the transistor count.”

            However, I would totally disagree if the statement was more like this: “We don’t understand the brain well enough to produce superhuman cognitive performance from a computer.”

            We already have many machines that outperform humans on many, many tasks. Examples are databases for fact recall, data mining systems for analyzing large data sets, straightforward number crunching for problem solving speed, etc.  Just like a robotic backhoe can dig ditches faster than a human with a shovel; computers are much better suited to some tasks than humans.

            It is not clear at all that we need to understand every detail of how the human brain works in order to make machines that can do better than humans on important tasks.

            And of course, I could care less whether or not a computer can be made to interact and dialog with me on the full breadth of interesting topics spanning from good wines to music, poetry and other arts.  For that activity, we already have humans…..

Sincerely,

Stu Rodgers
AGS TechNet
“Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Modeling and Engineering”
Dayton, OH
www.agstechnet.com