How Long Before Superintelligence? (1997)
Let&#x27;s look at the most important section of the paper. He estimates the processing power of the brain:<p><i>The human brain contains about 10^11 neurons. Each neuron has about 5 • 10^3 synapses, and signals are transmitted along these synapses at an average frequency of about 10^2 Hz. Each signal contains, say, 5 bits. This equals 10^17 ops. The true value cannot be much higher than this, but it might be much lower.</i><p>In other words, there are 5 * 10^14 synapses in the brain, and each synapse transmits up to 100 signals per second, and we can probably encode each signal with 5 bits. That&#x27;s ~10^17 bits per second.<p>So, uh... does anybody else notice that that&#x27;s <i>not an estimate of processing power</i>?<p>That&#x27;s an estimate of the rate of information flow between neurons, across the whole brain.<p>The level of confused thinking here is off the charts. Does this guy not understand that in order to simulate the brain, you not only have to keep track of information flows between neurons, you also need to <i>simulate the neurons themselves</i>?<p>That&#x27;s not merely a flaw in his argument. It indicates that he has no idea what he&#x27;s talking about, at all.<p>Needless to say, this paper and its conclusions are complete nonsense.