Excerpt from io9.com
Scientists have been trying to simulate the weather for decades, but the vast improvements in computing power in recent decades have produced only modest improvements in our ability to predict the weather. This is because the natural world is much, much more complex than even our most powerful computers. The same is true of our brains. The brain has approximately 100 billion neurons. If each neuron were some kind of simple mathematical construct (in the sense that transistors can be modeled as logic gates) we could imagine computers powerful enough to simulate the brain within a decade or two. But each neuron is itself a complex biological system. I see no reason to think we’ll ever be able to reduce it to a mathematically tractable model. I have no doubt we’ll learn a lot from running computer simulations of neurons in the coming decades. But I see no reason to think these simulations will ever be accurate (or computationally efficient) enough to serve as the building blocks for full-brain emulation.
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