How is it possible that a human brain is not a finite-state machine? How can the human brain possibly work any differently at an atomic/cellular/electronic level then a computer does?

Genetic Algorithms prove that a computer can recalculate possible solutions in a manner that helps arrive at a correct conclusion. Further, the fact that humans can sometimes be stumped is very analogous to a genetic algorithm that was unable to successfully arrive at a correct solution.

A couple years may be too soon... but saying that we won't have the power to do it in 100 years is like when it was said that no one will need more that 637kB for a personal computer.

A computer can perform calculations faster than MOST human brains... however there are people who have beaten computers at calculating ridiculous numeric calculations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi). In fact, I believe that if the human brain where "programmed" to do calculations it would out perform current computers easily... but the difference being that the "thinking" algorithm we have is not optimized for numeric calculations, but instead it is optimized for learning, recalling, idea association, and short cut finding/adjusting. Further, I believe that the first true A.I will have intelligence on par to that of the original single celled organism... barely anything that would actually be considered A.I by "SciFi" Standards and it will eventually evolve it's self to higher and higher levels of intelligence until it eventually surpasses that of humans.. Although, I suppose, it may also be possible that humans are already "learning" and gaining intelligence at the "most optimized" speed so perhaps A.I will always be X steps behind.

I think that thinking some one will eventually write some code, hit F5, and see... "Hello Dave, I think therefore I Am." is extremely far fetched... Infants take a month to learn how to roll over... and a year+ to even say a single word that has any relevance to exterior factors... It seems pretty likely that A.I will model True intelligence and I think initial the initial learning phase (An infant is not at the initial learning phase, evolution has been working on it for millenia) is one that won't be able to be skipped.

A computer can perform calculations faster than MOST human brains... however there are people who have beaten computers at calculating ridiculous numeric calculations

Examples of the problems presented to Devi included calculating the cube root of 61,629,875, and the seventh root of 170,859,375.[3][4] Jensen reported that Devi provided the solution to the aforementioned problems (395 and 15, respectively) before Jensen could copy them down in his notebook

Right, I suppose it was an exaggeration to claim she beat a computer, but the point was that if a human brain were to be wired to be used exclusively for calculations, I'm sure it could beat a computer.

Right, I suppose it was an exaggeration to claim she beat a computer, but the point was that if a human brain were to be wired to be used exclusively for calculations, I'm sure it could beat a computer.

Which was exactly my argument.... I was saying precisely that a human brain is no more than an extremely powerful computer. Our brains are made of the same matter and use the same electricity, it stands to reason that either, 1) A synthetic brain could be designed to do the same thing more efficiently or 2) Our brains are completely optimized such that a synthetic brain could at best match our thinking ability.

Comparing the computational power of a "laptop" to a human brain makes no sense. This is irrelevant.This is even absurd. Train your laptop to speak... you''ll get your answer

Computers are good to execute fastly algorithms humans order them to do, that's it. Talk to your laptop ... and ask it what intelligence is, you'll be very disappointed about its response ... Anyway, the problem is still the same : WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE ? This is not a stupid phylosophical question (like if it was out of the field of this 'discussion" ...., and an easy and unfair way to skip the question ). This is the CORE of this (stupid) discussion

I do think we will be able to reproduce artificially intelligence, even better intelligence, but this has nothing to do with decision tree or negamax or whatever, ... it would anyway be the product of a reverse-engineering that we will not completely understand ...

Grimshaw, my main objection to what you wrote is that we are talking about surpassing human intelligence, and replicating how a human brain works is only one possible way to do it. But a more promising way to do it is to concentrate in tasks where currently humans are better than machines (e.g., cooking) and try to make machines that do better at those tasks, possibly using completely different mechanisms than humans.

We have machines that can go very fast, but they don't move on legs like animals do; we have machines that fly, but they don't flap their wings the way birds do. I think we can build machines that are good at many tasks that one would consider part of intelligence, and we don't need to worry about what consciousness is or any other nonsense.

In related news, I am only interested in solving problems where progress can be measured. Consciousness is something that doesn't interest me much.

I'm trying to think of a good analogy because I think I am being misconstrued.

The first point I am trying to make is that Both computers and Brains are physical objects, each of them are powered by electricity and make calculations based on the flow of that electricity through their components. At a fundamental level it is impossible that a synthetic brain can not be created as their is no magical, or impossible element a brain possesses that can not be simulated.

The next point Is that pure computational power does not "cause" intelligence, it is the application of that computational power from which intelligence emerges. A Lamborghini has more Horse power than a tractor trailer, but the tractor trailer applies it's horse power to be able to pull much heavier loads (through torque) than the lamborghini does. While this statement can indicate that a brain actually processes data slower, it is my opinion that a human brain has more raw processing power than current computers.

Comparing the speed at which an action is done between two machines is not indicative of which machine is working faster. For example, if you wanted to retrieve data from a database you have a multitude of options. Suppose one machine does a simple "Select X,Y,Z from TBL" while another uses a complex and well designed ORM. The first, naive implementation will execute more quickly simply due to the reduced number of instructions that need to be processed, but the ORM version will be much more flexible and complete.

The "intelligence" algorithm, will be/is orders of magnitude more complex than any algorithm a computer has ever been given, which is why a computer can complete particular problems more quickly than a human... but the "intelligence" algorithm is still nothing more than an algorithm, which when properly understood will be just as easily followed by a synthetic brain (computer) as a human brain.

The comparison of computational power between the human brain and a computer was meant to illustrate the following:

If the computer is running the simple select, and the brain is running the ORM and the brain is outputting the solutions more slowly then the computer... then I believe that the human brain running the simple select would easily outpace the computer...

This doesn't rely on a definition of "what is intelligence"... no matter how it is defined, it will ultimately be an algorithm, which a computer will be able to run.

You say that a computer can only do what it is told to do, and while I completely agree, I also believe that there exists a method in which we could tell a computer to learn, comprehend, imagine, innovate and create. And I believe this because i think that at the most fundamental way our brains must work as some form of computational device that is running a series of definable algorithms.