CAN COMPUTERS MIMIC the functions of the brain? The processing power and memory needed to match the brain’s general intellectual performance is becoming more apparent in computers every year. From supercomputers to home PCs the world in which we live has changed in a digital way. 

Figure 1. A home computer and the human brain.

According to the Journal of Transhumanism, the most powerful experimental supercomputers in 1999, composed of tens of thousands of the fastest microprocessors, can process a few million MIPS (million images per second). MIPS are the rate which the brain processes information. Thirty years of computer research shows that 1 MIPS can extract simple features from real-time imagery tracking a white line or a white spot on a mottled background. 10 MIPS can follow complex gray-scale patches, which can be used in guidance systems like smart bombs, cruise missiles and self-driving cars. 100 MIPS can follow moderately unpredictable features like roads. More computer power is needed to equal the human brain, but how much?

Brains are made of biological tissue, which consists of delicately interwoven cells and fibers. Like the computer, the brain processes information and has to solve similar problems in information processing such as understanding speech or interpreting images. (Searle, 1999). The common goal of processing information has led to current research and interactions between brain science and computer science (Boolos, 1989). We are now in a digital era where everything is computerized. Computers are controlling things from the cars we drive, telephones and even toasters. Based on research, past trends and technologies under development, it is predicted that the required hardware needed to match the human brain, will be available in cheap machines by 2020.

The products available today are only bits and pieces of what will follow. In the next 20 years all education could take place from home with artificial intelligence and a simulated classroom environment. This gives new opportunity to the instructional designers of the future. This opportunity allows instructional designers to create programs that can analyze the learners progress and determine how and when to teach the next lesson. The home of the future will have artificial intelligence that will know when to make your breakfast, start your car and know how to drive you to work. The advancements in artificial intelligence brain mimicking hardware will continue to affect our jobs and our education. Artificial intelligence and brain mimicking hardware will be the trend in future computing.

Antonio Guadarrama
Graduate Student
Department of Educational Technology