Oh here's something that gave me a chuckle when I realized it while reading the above article:
article said:
My estimate of brain capacity is 100 billion neurons times an average 1,000 connections per neuron (with the calculations taking place primarily in the connections) times 200 calculations per second. Although these estimates are conservatively high, one can find higher and lower estimates. However, even much higher (or lower) estimates by orders of magnitude only shift the prediction by a relatively small number of years.
Some prominent dates from this analysis include the following:
* We achieve one Human Brain capability (2 * 10^16 cps) for $1,000 around the year 2023.
* We achieve one Human Brain capability (2 * 10^16 cps) for one cent around the year 2037.
* We achieve one Human Race capability (2 * 10^26 cps) for $1,000 around the year 2049.
* We achieve one Human Race capability (2 * 10^26 cps) for one cent around the year 2059.
So Ray's estimated "calculations per second" of a human brain is (2 * 10^16) which is 20 quadrillion calculations per second. A quadrillion cps in computer speak is 20
petaflops. He says a computer that costs $1000 will calculate at 20 petaflops in 2023, which is the human brain. Well my thought was, what about a supercomputer? Those are much faster than personal computers. When will the fastest supercomputer be as fast as a human brain?
Here is the list of the fastest supercomputers in the world as of November 2008 (this list is updated twice a year):
http://www.top500.org/list/2008/11/100
And this is the projected trend of supercomputer speed over a number of years from 1993 into the future:
http://www.top500.org/static/lists/2008/11/perfdevel/Projected_Performance_Development.png
The fastest supercomputer in the world was 1 petaflop in 2008. According to the trend shown in the picture, we will have a 10 petaflop supercomputer in 2012. That means every 4 years the fastest supercomputer is 10 times faster than 4 years ago. This also means 20 petaflops will also be reached in 2012, or 2013 at the latest. It doesn't really mean anything "bad" will happen of course, I just thought it was funny the date 2012 is when computers will catch up to and very quickly become faster than the human brain. And if the trend continues, in 2016 we'll have a supercomputer 10 times faster than the human brain, in 2020 it will be 100 times faster, and so on.