Machines Vs. The Human Brain (p122 CLass Discusion #3)

Minsky has devoted his life to artificial intelligence and has come to many bold conclusions by doing so. In his point of view, machines have a better connection to consciousness. This is proven through their ability to recall the smallest details and retrieve information that a human brain would have easily lost. This is not saying that the machine is at all smarter than the human but it is indeed saying it has a few attributes that are beneficial and as humans we lack. Another key point that stood out to me, and I am sure Minksy has been proud to note, is the machines ability to learn. Humans learn through repetition as do machines and after finding out that a machine could perfect facial recognition in only 20 minutes there are machines in hundreds of businesses which are probably creating fewer jobs for people everywhere.


I cannot fully say that I agree with Minsky, but I do see where he is coming from. The human brain is not capable of holding nearly as many facts as a machine, let alone be able to retrieve the information. Machines are quick and can pick up information before we are even done reading the same task. Taking symbols and relating them to knowledge and then using that knowledge to fix a problem or finish a job is absolutely baffling. I guess I can say that I do believe that machines are easily going to outsmart humans in the future but for now there is work to be done.

There is a deeper side to this argument that includes emotions and also the act of planning. Planning was vaguely mention in the reading and stated that it does not have the ability to think about the end result to really do the job effectively. Humans have a major advantage with being able to plan but I am also unsure if I can ever picture a machine being able to emotionally make a decision or understand a thought process without it being a job that it has been told to do. We will always surpass the machines in logic and future ideas, which have nothing to do with the brain capacity and our inability to recall hundreds of thousands of irrelevant facts.