Computer vs. Human Brain

 

Is your brain an organic computer? Your brain does a lot of things a computer does, like math, logic, analyzing input, creating output, and storing and retrieving information. Even at the cellular level, there are some striking similarities between brains and computers.

Our brain has billions of neurons that convey and analyze electrical information. This information is binary, meaning a neuron either fires a burst of electricity or it does not fire at all.

Likewise, computers transmit information electrically. And at the most basic level, computers work using bits of information that are also binary, where each bit of information is either a “1” or a “0,” nothing in between.

But brains do a lot of things that computers cannot. Our brains feel emotions, worry about the future, enjoy music and a good joke, taste the flavor of an apple, are self-aware, and fall in and out of love. Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=MC2 was not the result of a computer algorithm but, rather, of a brain making a great intellectual leap. If a brain is merely an organic computer, how can it do these things?

Part of the answer may be that whereas neurons process information like a computer, they are not the only type of brain cells processing information. Neurons only make up a small portion of your brain cells—about 15 percent.

Enter the All-Important Glia Cells

The vast majority of brain cells are called “glia” cells. For over 100 hundred years, most brain scientists saw glia as being relatively unimportant. Their function was believed to be mostly cleaning up “molecular trash” created by neurons.

However, research is now showing that glia do much more than housecleaning. They are involved in learning and memory, and they help repair damaged brain areas. Glia can also communicate with neurons and with each other through “gap junctions” across large areas of the brain.

To illustrate how important glia are, almost every disease of the brain is partly or solely the result of glia malfunction. Scientists are now discovering that glia may also play a pivotal role in drug abuse, where changing glia activity may reduce drug abuse and addiction.

Human Brain
Memory	Data Manipulating (Intelligence)	Expert System
Sensory Memory	Calculating	Discovering
STM.	Classifying	Imagining
LTM.	Collating	Thinking
	Sorting	Generalization and other
	Summarizing

**STM.(Short-term memory, a.k.a. primary or active memory)

**LTM.(Long-term memory)

Computer
Memory	Data Manipulating	Information Presenting
Very Large Storage	Calculating	1.Reporting	2.Communicating
Very Fast Retrieval	Classifying	Voice
	Collating	Number
	Sorting (very complex)	Alphabets
	Summarizing	Graphically

Human Brain Capacity vs. Computer 

The human brain’s memory capacity in the average adult can store trillions of bytes of information. In a Stanford Study, it was reported that the cerebral cortex alone has 125 trillion synapses. In another study, it was reported that 1 synapse can store 4.7 bits of information. Neurons are the cells which processes and transmits messages within the brain, and synapses are the bridges between neurons which carry the transmitted messages.  Running the numbers : 125 trillion synapses : 4.7 bits/synapse, and about 1 trillion bytes equaling 1 TB (Terabyte).

"This storage capacity is an amount over 74 Terabytes (just in the cerebral cortex alone)"

According to Computerworld, Yahoo – the Internet giant – has created a specially-built 2.0 petabyte “data warehouse”. Yahoo uses the immense information storage capacity of this data warehouse to analyze the behavior of its half-a-billion monthly visitors.  “It is not only the world’s single-largest database, but also the busiest”, the magazine reported.

By comparison, the IRS’s own massive data warehouse, which keeps track of 300-plus million Americans and many more million businesses, has the capacity of 150 terabytes of memory. Yet Yahoo’s 2.0 petabyte computational center, which can process 24 billion “events” a day, is a full 20 percent smaller than the capacity of a single human brain.

Features	AI	HI
Emergence	AI is an advancement made by human insights; its early improvement is credited to Norbert Weiner who theorized on criticism mechanisms.	On the other hand, human creatures are made with the intrinsic capacity to think, reason, review, etc.
Pace/Rate of AI and human	As compared to people, computers can handle more data at a speedier rate. For occurrence, in the event that the human intellect can solve a math problem in 5 minutes, AI can solve 10 problems in a minute.	In terms of speed human cannot beat the speed of AI, or, machines.
Decision Making	AI is profoundly objective in choice making because it analyzes based on absolutely accumulated data.	Human’s choices may be affected by subjective components which are not based on figures alone.
Perfection	AI frequently produces precise comes about because it capacities based on a set of modified rules.	For human insights, there’s more often than not a room for “human error” as certain subtle elements may be missed at one point or the other.
Energy Consumption	Modern computer generally uses 2 watts energy.	On the other hand, human brains uses about 25 watts
Modification of AI and Human	AI takes much more time to adjust to unused changes.	Human insights can be adaptable in reaction to the changes to its environment. This makes individuals able to memorize and ace different skills.
Versatility	AI can as it were perform less assignments at the same time as a framework can as it were learn duties one at a time.	The human judgment skills underpins multitasking as prove by differing and concurrent roles.
Social Networking	AI has not aced the capacity to choose up on related social and enthusiastic cues.	On the other hand, as social creatures, people are much way better at social interaction since they can prepare theoretical data, have self-awareness, and are delicate to others’ feelings.