It is sad to realize that in the era of technological progress, the human brain is still a mystery. In addition, we are spending millions of dollars developing giant supercomputers and using enormous amounts of energy from nonrenewable resources to power these devices. And the relatively small human brain in many respects is still superior to the most powerful computers.
A supercomputer requires 82,944 processors and 40 minutes of operation to simulate one second of human brain activity.
Last year, the K supercomputer was used by scientists at Okinawa University of Technology in Japan and the Julich Research Center in Germany in an attempt to simulate 1 second of human brain activity.
The computer was able to recreate a model of 1.73 billion neurons (nerve cells). However, the human brain contains about 100 billion neurons. That is, there are about as many neurons in the human brain as there are stars in the Milky Way. Despite the fact that the computer was able to successfully simulate 1 second of brain activity, it took 40 minutes.
An employee of the Korea Science Institute checks supercomputers in Daejeon, South Korea, November 5, 2004.
Promotional video:
Supercomputer K in 2011 was the fastest computer in the world. Its capacity is about 10.51 petaflops, or approximately 10,510 trillion operations per second. Technologies are developing rapidly, so now K is already in fourth place, in first place is Tianhe-2 (33.86 petaflops, 33 860 trillion operations per second). Thus, in three years we managed to triple the computing power of the most advanced computer.
To make these numbers clearer, the iPhone 5p produces roughly 0.0000768 petaflops. In total, the world's fastest computer is about 440,000 faster than the graphics of the iPhone 5, but slower than the human brain.
A study by Martin Hilbert of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, published in Science in 2011, quantified the world's ability to process information. Hilbert formulated it as follows: "People around the world can perform 6.4 * 1018 operations per second on ordinary computers of 2007, which is comparable to the maximum number of nerve impulses that occur in one human brain per second."
The brain is cheap: it comes for free
With the exception of rare congenital abnormalities, we are all born with brains. It took $ 390 million to build Tianhe-2, Forbes reports. With intensive work, it consumes over 17.6 megawatts of energy, the area of the computer complex is 720 square meters. meters. Other supercomputers are more energy efficient and consume about 8 megawatts.
For comparison: 1 megawatt equals 1 million watts. A 100-watt light bulb draws 100 watts when turned on. As a result, the fastest computer consumes as much energy as 176,000 light bulbs.
Dr. Jeff Layton, a computer technologist at Dell Computer Corporation, writes in a blog post, "These systems are very bulky, expensive, and energy intensive."
Of course, the brain also needs energy. He gets it from food, which requires fuel to produce in a modern agricultural system.
The computers we use in our daily life are useful. But some experts question the usefulness of supercomputers.
The South China Morning Post published an article on China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer: “Unlike personal computers, which can perform a wide variety of tasks, from word processing to gaming to web browsing, supercomputers are built for specific tasks. To explore their full computational power, scientists have spent months, if not years, writing and rewriting codes to train a machine to do its job effectively."
A senior fellow at the Beijing Computer Center, who asked to remain anonymous, told the South China Morning Post, “The supercomputer bubble is worse than the real estate bubble. The building will stand for decades after it was built, and the computer, no matter how fast it is by today's standards, will be junk in five years."
Which is faster: a computer modem or a human brain?
Many scientists have tried to measure the speed of information processing in the human brain. The numbers they give vary and depend on the approach used. Comparing the speed of the modem and the "speed" of the brain can hardly be classified as an exact science.
First, you need to consider how many bits per second your brain can process, then see how many bits per second a modern computer can process on average. In other words, you need to compare how long it takes for a computer to download an image from the Internet, and how long it takes for you to analyze what you see before your eyes.
Dr. Thor Norrethranders, professor of philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, has written a book called The User's Illusion: Reducing Consciousness, in which he claims that the mind processes about 40 bps and the subconscious mind processes 11 million bps.
Austrian theoretical physicist Herbert W. Franke argued that the human mind can consciously assimilate 16 bps and consciously keep 160 bps in mind. For this reason, he notes, the mind can simplify any situation to 160 bps.
Fermin Moscoso del Prado Martin, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Provence in France, has determined that the brain processes about 60 bps. In an article in Technology Review, he said he wasn't sure about the upper limit. That is, he cannot claim that the brain is incapable of processing more than 60 bps.
Now let's see how fast your computer is at home.
One megabit per second equals 1 million bits per second. Home modems can operate at speeds ranging from 50 megabits per second to several hundred megabits per second. This is a million times faster than your conscious mind and at least five times faster than your subconscious mind. That is, computers are clearly superior to the brain in this respect. Of course, these numbers are inaccurate, because much is not completely clear with the human subconscious.
However, while people are relatively slow to take in information, the way they know how to process it is impressive.
We learn and we invent
Scientists are working to create computers that can be creative. But at present, the most advanced artificial intelligence in this regard is inferior even to the brain of people who lived thousands of years ago.
Author and electrical engineer Ryan Dube, in an article for MakeUseOf.com, comments on a statement by writer Gary Marcus: "The fundamental difference between computers and the human mind is memory organization."
Dube wrote: “To find information, a computer uses virtual memory locations. In turn, the human brain remembers where the information is thanks to hints. They are themselves a unit of information or memory associated with the information to be found.
“This means that the human mind is able to connect with each other an almost unlimited number of concepts in a variety of ways, and then, upon receipt of new information, remove or restore these connections. This feature allows people to go beyond the already studied information and create new inventions and art, which is a distinctive feature of the human race."
The brain is poorly understood, and its benefits are not fully disclosed
National Geographic illustrates how difficult it is to create an accurate model of the human brain. The February issue of the magazine, New Brain Science, describes how scientists created a 3D model of a part of the brain of a mouse the size of a grain of salt. To map this tiny section in detail, they used an electron microscope and divided it into 200 sections, each as thick as a human hair.
“To map the human brain in a similar way would require more data than any text in every library in the world,” writes National Geographic.
In 2005, researchers at the University of California and California Institute of Technology found that only a few of the 100 billion neurons in the brain are used to store information about a particular person, place, or concept. For example, they found that when people were shown a photo of actress Jennifer Aniston, one particular neuron in the brain responded. And in the photo of actress Halle Berry, another neuron was already reacting.