It is nice to think that what we have in our head, and take for granted is a fantastic machine. Data centers across the country are using power like it is going out of style however when you put it into perspective that a computer with our brain power would use 10 megawatts of power we still have the data centers beat hands down.
"According to Kwabena Boahen, a computer scientist at Stanford University, a robot with a processor as smart as the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate. That’s the amount of energy produced by a small hydroelectric plant. But a small group of computer scientists may have hit on a new neural supercomputer that could someday emulate the human brain’s low energy requirements of just 20 watts–barely enough to run a dim light bulb."
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Then we should shut down some humans instead of the TV in stand by mode to reduce CO2 emissions
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If you consider how much energy is used to clothe, feed and house that smart brain, I think the power used to keep that smart brain is a lot more.
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jantango The average american household uses in the range of 1800 tpo 2400 kW per month. so no not even close to being about the same also you seem to have missed the point. The point is that they may have found a way to create a computer using a neural network and significantly reduce todays power requirements for computations.
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ok ok human brain is good for calculations if someone on this planet will be able to program neural structure
but it is rely bad in data storage maybe because human brain is sou much powerful it has tendency to change images, make sounds which does not exist
like did you ever heard your mom called you and you asked your mother did you call me and she answered no
what about dreams ok some people will say that it when one dreams in sleep he gos to another life or something but what about day dreaming if you do day dreaming your brain makes images by it self
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Is the 10 megawatt hours per day, per week, per year? Or is that an instantanious 10 megawatts! People consume lots of calories. Convert those carbs to watts and see where we stand.
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The brain my not use that much energy, but a whole lot more goes into keeping it alive: refining sugars, capturing oxygen, pumping it where it’s needed. Think if it this way, we ride walking robots so efficient that most of its energy goes to refining power for its super computer.
Organic life has had 4 billion years to get super efficient, we’ve had only a hand full of years to do the same thing.
Mikheil:
Dreams are your volatile RAM bleeding back into the system when put in hibernation
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Coilgun:
per hour is fairly standard
2500 kilocalories is 2900watts/day(120watt/h)
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“the human brain’s low energy requirements of just 20 watts–barely enough to run a dim light bulb.”
That is only true for those dim bulbs that exist their entire service life in ‘suspend’.
On the other hand, 20 watts is plenty if all you do is watch American Idol and work at McD’s.
(Haven’t we got a robot for that already?)
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For god’s sake you primitives- we always compare the human body- (or mind for that matter) to the technological level we have reached…your brain is not a computer, or even like a computer, or anything nearly like a computer. Descartes was explaining the functions of eyesight and smell as ‘hydraulics’ because that was the top tech of his day- you are at the same game…….
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@ Maigo, tater, and anyone else talking about ‘watts per hour’ or ‘kilowatts per year’: please get a clue as to what a watt actually is. A watt is *already* energy over time, it is 1 joule per second. There is no such thing as ’20 watts an hour’. It’s 20 watts, period. If you want to measure *absolute* energy you need to specify something like joules or Kwh (KiloWattHours).