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ARM chip OG Steve Furber: Turing missed the mark on human intelligence

Slx

I think what we're more likely to end up with is a very cool processor tech, but not a brain.

I actually suspect that we'll mimic a brain probably using some combination biotech and nanotech, not traditional semiconductor technologies.

Neurology has levels of subtle control over signals that digital electronics aren't really near. We are still processing data with switches, while your brain is processing data with living cells and biochemistry.

Even the references to processor frequencies don't necessarily make sense as it's not necessarily using sampling of signals and seems to have an ability to deal with analogue inputs in pure analogue form without needing to quantising them.

It also isn't a general processor and uses specialist signal processing "technology" incredibly tightly adapted to handle specific sensory inputs.

There's a *lot* more research to be done to hack brain technology but I just think we have a history of assuming that brain systems and whatever the cutting edge of contemporary computer systems is should be directly comparable.

As someone described it before - it's a bit like being presented with an alien computer system and a multimeter.

Even though our brains are us, they're far more alien in technology terms as we didn't design or build them, they have no particular reason to be easy to understand or follow as they're not "designed" and they are self repairing / not repairable and they're painfully complex. The "wiring" doesn't even necessarily follow any logic that would make sense to someone analysing it as it "happened" upon solutions in evolutionary steps.

My view of it is that it's a problem that will be solved in a technology radically different to semiconductor switching processors.

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