C+ Gang - The Computer and the Brain | Computer Machinery and Intelligence - Week 6

Question of the week: Is the machine inadvertently superior to the human brain?

We started unpacking this question by differentiating between what machines can do similarly and things it cannot and as we found out, the texts contained more evidence to what can be replicated and imitated. For example, the Kurweill reading says that — among other things — the concept of the universality of computation (his second important idea) can be used in computer intelligence (his fourth important idea) to "conclude that a von Neumann machine can simulate a brain's processing". With that point made clear, we then discussed how the reverse — that a human brain could simulate a computer — is not really possible in most cases. To support this idea, we argued upon the idea of human memory being pretty limited in the sheer amount of things it could remember, a problem not present in machines. For example, there is almost no way someone could remember the contents of every single one of their birthday dinners as we constantly forget unnecessary information of the like. However, a computer would be able to remember right to the amount of strawberries on your 5th birthday cake.

Following that, we also dived deeper into Turing's text, specifically the imitation game and the section on digital computers. When it comes to the imitation game, we understood that it was strictly an exercise in having machines try and behave as a human and not the opposite. In fact, Turing makes it clear that "If the man were to try and pretend to be the machine he would clearly make a very poor showing.", simply because complicated mathematical formulas would be solved instantly by computers whereas a human being would take much longer, among other things. On top of that, the three parts of the digital computer — store, executive unit, control — provide a much better framework for understanding patterns than human memory. So, when it comes to doing a variety of tasks, computers will always be superior. Finally, most of the oppositions we had to the idea, such as machines lacking emotions, were addressed in the section called "Contrary Views on the Main Question".