21st Century  Philosophy & Neuroscience

Limitations of Computers

Topics from the book,
Existence and

Brain Computer Analogy

Brain as an Analogue Computer

Existence

In the Beginning

Inside and Outside

Neuroscience

Consciousness

The Viewer and the Viewed

Who Am I ?

Innate Tendencies

Empathy and Compassion

Uncertainty

The Meaning of Mind

Karma

Human Origins

Stephen Gislason MD, Author

Digital Computer Limitations

When you do not know exactly how digital computers work and how programmers utilize the hardware, it is easy to be fooled into believing that computers are intelligent or will be soon. When you know exactly how digital computing works, you are less likely to believe in intelligent computers. In fact, a programmer knows that he or she has to tell the computer exactly what to do in precise and annoying detail.

Digital computers are dumb machines, but they are marvelously effective tools for humans skilled in programming and using them. The intelligence in machines was put there by humans. The advantage of investing your intelligence in a chip design or computer programming is that your hard-earned procedural skills are retained and can be used by hundreds of millions of other humans for years to come. Groups of smart, dedicated people can perfect programs over time so that users have all the advantages of accumulated human experience. As everyone who programs and uses software knows, errors are common when programs are first constructed and are gradually eliminated as the programs are used and “bugs” are corrected.

The ability of a digital computer to calculate easily exceeds human ability. The impression is that a calculating computer is smart. Humans have difficulty doing calculations and only a small percentage of any student population will excel in mathematical ability. The ability to calculate quickly and accurately is overly impressive. The abstract reasoning that underlies advanced mathematics is more interesting and is independent of the ability to calculate. Most mathematicians are happy to do calculations on a digital machine and do not feel the least bit threatened that some computer will take over their job of abstract reasoning.

Digital computers have no sense of meaning, cannot perceive and are only able to make simple robotic decisions about the data they receive. Computers can store images accurately and will faithfully recall all stored data unless a malfunction intervenes. Output procedures are echoes of input procedures. The letter ”a “ input via a keyboard is encoded and stored as an 8 bit byte; when the time comes for the character to be output, the byte, is decoded and displayed as “a” on a monitor or printer. Computers are best appreciated as memory devices that store human intelligence as procedures and store information using binary code to represent alphanumeric characters. The functions of a computer are to receive input from an intelligent being, manipulate the data arithmetically and by sorting algorithms and to return that input as output through a presentation algorithm on request. The partnership of digital computers and smart humans is an unbeatable combination.

We can image a theoretical program based on an algorithm,  <Prepare Dinner>. A practical program would list perhaps 200 steps required to prepare a specific dinner in your own kitchen, according to your food preferences and tolerances. Real action in the real world involves complex sequences of steps and sophisticated monitoring and adjustment of actions. Making dinner and cleaning up after dinner are routine tasks that most humans can do and would consider trivial. To build and program a mobile robot to make dinner and clean up is, however, far from trivial.

When you begin to imagine building a robot that can function well in your kitchen at home, your appreciation for the most routine human activities is enhanced. Humans are so adaptable, that tasks are performed in a sequence of steps that can vary and change according to circumstances.  A normal human has no match when it comes to selecting, holding, sorting and moving a variety of different objects. The human brain can easily sort dishes, glasses and cups, locating the right destinations in drawers and cupboards from dozens of choices.

For now, no robot is adaptable enough to work in home kitchens that humans find easy to use. To use a robot you have to build a robot kitchen. If the robot is controlled by a digital computer, each movement has to be programmed as does the monitoring and modification of each movement. The hundred steps to prepare dinner require millions of lines of code if you are using a robot working in a robot kitchen (rigidly defined objects, sources and destinations) controlled by a digital computer.

No robot in existence has the equivalent of a human hand controlled by a computer. NASA contractors have built a robot arm with a hand that is operated by a human who uses elegantly engineered gloves that detect and copy all his or her hand movements. The engineers who design the robot arm are dedicated and exceedingly clever, smart enough to know that they cannot program a computer to take over from the human sensory and motor cortex.  You could argue that it is a matter of time before engineers can create a hand-controlling computer that can learn by modifying its own programming, but this just speculation. The real engineering tasks are formidable and no one knows how to complete such a task.