Foley
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Max Foley
Professor Edwin Neagle
English 112-4249
8 December 2017
Humanoid Intelligent Design: The Emergence of Human-Level Artificial Intelligence
What makes us human? Is it our world-wide dominance of all other species on the
planet? Is it our superior intelligence? Maybe it is our capacity for creativity, intuition,
emotions, problem solving, or self-awareness. By many of these metrics, computer scientists
have been able to create artificial-intelligence entities that rival our very claims to inimitability.
AI is a commonly used acronym referring to an increasingly esoteric field of computer science
called artificial intelligence. This field of study has led to breakthroughs in the past few decades
in all categories of artificial intelligence, again begging the question “what sets us apart?” The
human brain is capable of receiving and analyzing immense amounts of data and uses that data to
form libraries of information like language or muscle memories, and even goes as far as forming
a predominately subconscious decision-making algorithm commonly known as intuition. These
systems are so complex that no human could honestly claim to fully grasp them, yet computer
scientists alongside phycologists, programmers, and computer parts manufacturers are
approaching the precipice of being able to create them. Taking into consideration the rate at
which computers and computer science are improving, the breakthrough technologies
surrounding AI that already exist, and the inherent advantages that computers have over humans,
Artificial Intelligence will undoubtedly match, if not surpass all of the metrics by which humans
set themselves apart within the very near future.
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According to Paul Reber, professor of psychology at Northwestern University, the human
brain is capable of storing about 2.5 petabytes of information. By comparison, this equates to
69,444 32GB iPods, but memory density (memory per unit volume, or transistors per chip) has
been increasing due to breakthroughs in technology and manufacturing since the 1970’s
following a trend known as Moore’s Law. The law states that the aforementioned memory
density of cutting edge hard drives doubles every two years, and has been just about spot on
between 1970 and 2015. According to a recent article by Technology Quarterly, “That fulfilment
was made possible largely because transistors have the unusual quality of getting better as they
get smaller; a small transistor can be turned on and off with less power and at greater speeds than
a larger one. This mean[s] that you could use more and faster transistors without needing more
power or generating more waste heat, and thus that chips could get bigger [in terms of storage] as
