c. 2024

Brain Replication

Compared to the computers we all use today, the human brain is absolutely stunning in its power and efficiency. Since a silicon computer and a human brain are based on such different technologies (silicon transistors in one case, biological neurons and synapses in the other), it is difficult to do a perfect apples-to-apples comparison. But roughly speaking, scientists think the human brain might do the equivalent of 10 petaops (peta = one quadrillion) of computation per second and have a petabyte or more of storage capacity.

Yet the human brain only consumes about 20 watts and fits inside your head. Compare that to a typical laptop of today. The laptop uses roughly the same amount of power, but it has one-millionth the processing power and one-millionth the memory. And your laptop, at least today, cannot learn a new human language, look out at the world and recognize things, program itself, or do many of the other things human beings do quite trivially. Nor will your laptop say to itself, “I think, therefore I am.”

So engineers look at the human brain and ask, “Is there a way to replicate this computing architecture?” Replicating the human brain would be beneficial in many different ways. And if the replication is close enough, in theory scientists and engineers will also replicate consciousness, human learning capabilities, and all the rest.

So how might they do it? One way is a complete software simulation running in a supercomputer. The human brain contains something like 86 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses—a number that is daunting to simulate with current technology, but imaginable, and getting easier to imagine every year. Maybe we need a supercomputer that can perform a quintillion operations per second to do it?

Assembling enough hardware is one part of the equation. Understanding how to connect all the simulated neurons together is another. And then we need to get everything to actually work. Humans have yet to simulate even the simple neural networks found in insects.

Europe has the Human Brain Project. The US has the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies project. The hope is that scientists and engineers can crack this nut in a decade or so.

SEE ALSO Robot (1921), ENIAC—The First Digital Computer (1946), Chess Computer (1950), ARPANET (1969), Microprocessor (1971), Watson (2011).

Brain replication is just one example of engineers looking to push the limits of traditional mortality.