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There was an interesting discussion on Quora about this recently[0] The most relevant quote being perhaps: "The magic of the brain is not the number of neuron

There was an interesting discussion on Quora about this recently[0] The most relevant quote being perhaps: "The magic of the brain is not the number of neurons, but how the circuits are wired and how they function dynamically. If you put 1 billion transistors together, you don't get a functioning CPU. And if you put 100 billion neurons together, you don't get an intelligent brain." 0. http://www.quora.com/How-big-is-the-largest-feedforward-neural-network-ever-trained-and-what-for http://www.quora.com/How-big-is-the-largest-feedforward-neur...

eric_bullington 14y ago
That's an interesting discussion, but this experiment suggests exactly the opposite (perhaps that's why you included the discussion). Who knows, if we put 1 billion cores together, and fed it a massive amount of data (akin to what a baby receives as he/she matures), perhaps we would get a brain we would consider "intelligent". The fact that this system was able to pick out high-level features like "face" and "cat" without any prior training -- and with only 1000 cores, not 1 billion -- is quite suggestive that they're on to something. EDIT: Mistyped number of cores. 1000, not 100.
- JohnHaugeland 14y ago
  "That's an interesting discussion, but this experiment suggests exactly the opposite (perhaps that's why you included the discussion)." It absolutely does not. This experiment supports that position strongly. What this experiment shows is that said meaningful structure can be progressively, automatically discovered. "and with only 1000 cores, not 1 billion" Comparing CPU cores to individual neurons is more than slightly disingenuous.