Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!kddlab!trl!rdmei!ptimtc!olivea!apple!usc!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!mit-eddie!media-lab!minsky
From: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The bandwidth limitation (was: Re: How much info can the brain hold?)
Message-ID: <4208@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 1 Dec 90 03:23:04 GMT
References: <11941@hubcap.clemson.edu> <7492@hub.ucsb.edu> <3415@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> <7988@uwm.edu>
Reply-To: minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA
Lines: 20


There are some thoughtfully worked out estimates in Hans Moravec's book,
"Mind Children", Harvard Univ. Press, 1988.  I can't find my copy at
the moment.  I recall that he predicts that given his brain-power
estimates, against his predicted growth in computer memory, speed,
size, and costs, that a brain-equivalent computer will be of desktop
workstation size and cost in from 30 to 40 years.

Please don't argue about this until someone else (or me) copies out
Moravec's actual prediction data, because I don;t have the details at
hand.

Most of those 100 billion brain cells are very small ones, like
granule cells, which have only a handful of synapses, and probably
only a small proportion of them have the order of 10000 synapses.  But
many have 1000.

Adding up these numbers is an interesting but somewhat degenerate
activity.  Kandel and Schwartz point out that there are between 1000
and 10000 different TYPES of neurons in the mammalian brain.  Makes
one think, doesn't it.


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