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Human (or any other animal for that matter) brain computational power is
limited by two basic evolution requirements : survival and procreation. Our
"hardware" (physiology) and "software" (hard-coded nature psychology) only
had to evolve to allow us to perform a set of basic actions - identify Friend or
Foe, obtain food, find our place in the social tribe hierarchy, ultimately find a
mate and multiply. Anything beyond this point, or not directly leading to this
point can be considered redundant, when viewed from the evolution
perspective. To accomplish these "life" goals, our brains evolved to a certain
physical limit (100 billion neurons per average brain, on average 7000
synaptic connections per neuron). Obviously, evolving beyond this limit was
not beneficiary for survival and procreation in the African savannas. So, we
are hard-limited by our "hardware", with the hardware spec being 1.5 million
years old.
Though, according to the saying, we all "Live and Learn" - we actually live
for a relatively short period of time, and learn effectively for an even shorter
period. So, the "training set" that each of us has been exposed to in his
infancy and childhood is limited by time. Of course, we continue learning
things and acquiring skills after we become teens and then adults - but at a
much lower, if not negligible, efficiency. We may taste a few exotic fruits,
see a new place, study a math subject or try to learn tango - but the truth is
that we learned most of our necessary survival skills (telling a person from a
tree from a lion etc.) by the age of 3. So, our brain's "training set" is
effectively limited in volume, and this limit is set by all the things we
managed to see and do while we were infants, plus a long tail of things we
picked up as adults.
So, we are limited by hardware and by the size of the training set. What
about our artificial intelligence counterparts - our "machine tools"? Well,
they are catching up and catching up fast! According to the following
estimate (image taken from www.deeplearningbook.org, the blue dots are
different artificial neural networks, #20 is GoogLeNet), computers will catch
up with us in the neuron count game by the 2050's, if not sooner.
It pays so well I have no doubt that we will continue improving and growing
and progressing - until we (knowingly or unknowingly) pass that threshold so
often mentioned in sci-fi books and movies, and we find ourselves surviving
and procreating in a world where the machines - our "tools" - outperform us
on every possible human task.
He aqu un pensamiento.
Por lo tanto, estamos limitados por el hardware y por el tamao del conjunto
de entrenamiento. Qu pasa con nuestras contrapartes de inteligencia
artificial - nuestras "mquinas herramientas"? Bueno, estn alcanzando y
ponerse al da rpido! Segn la siguiente estimacin (imagen tomada de
www.deeplearningbook.org, los puntos azules son diferentes redes
neuronales artificiales, # 20 es GoogLeNet), las computadoras nos
alcanzarn en el juego de conteo de neuronas para el 2050, si no antes.