How can looking at how the human brain functions help scientists create a better computer? Essay sample

 

 

Creating artificial intelligence still remains one of the most challenging tasks for there is nothing as smart as the actual human brain. Artificial intelligence can be only a copy of the organ that generates all the brilliant ideas of the mankind. Computer scientists get inspired by the brain structure and its functions. We have more than 100 trillion neurons that give our brain an incredible power to differentiate and classify objects, learn, analyze, and generate new ideas. Scientists have not managed to put this great potential into a machine yet.

 

Mimicking human brain sounds okay for an average person, but it is far from okay for a computer scientist. Even neuroscientists do not fully understand how a complex brain structure creates even more impressive cognitive capacity. Neurons take very little energy to function as compared to supercomputers that consume megawatts of energy. This fact proves that all human attempts to create artificial intelligence are still very far from what evolution has done in the past millions of years. Potentially, it is still possible to copy the brain function, but the computer model will be much simplified.

 

Parallelism is a key feature of the human brain that computers do not have yet. Neurons are connected in a parallel manner, which allows us to do several cognitive tasks at a time. A computer core processes a long queue of tasks but only in a sequence. Sequential processing takes more time and consumes more energy as compared to parallelism. Because of this, our brain can process the double amount of information over a period of time. Creating machines with a parallel circuit can put scientists closer to creating AI.