Page 46 - INTRA MUROS November 2020

HUMOUR

The shrinkage of the artificial brain

By James Clarke

Human brains have the square of Eskom’s debt. There was a a ‘decade or so’ science would be able to
fit this artificial brain into a matchbox.
distinct humming sound, yet, despite
shrunk about the wattage building up between the We should, by now, have been able to
10 percent over the ears, not a glimmer of light came from replace our brains with little Far Eastern
the bulb. Maybe it was because I had a
jobs assembled by child labour for R5,99
past 30 000 years. 100 watt light bulb in my ear and one’s including VAT. This would leave our
neurons can generate only 25 watts.
– New Scientist. I am now seeking three people who craniums with at least 1200cc of vacant
space.
would be happy to wire their ears up to Note: I didn’t say ‘wasted’ space – I said
mine and then think really hard so that
arl Sagan said human intelligence we can generate the requisite amount of vacant. Vacant because we could then
depended on the amount of wattage. (Do you know how difficult it is have hinges fitted to our skull tops and
Cswitching elements in each person’s to get three people to agree to this?) use the space to carry our sandwiches
or car keys. And what a boon it will be to
brain.
Just as real brain size is shrinking, so are nudists who, at last, will have somewhere
Our brains are a mass of electrical artificial brain sizes. In the 1960s scientists comfortable to carry their loose change.
microcircuits just like a computer, but worked out that a computer similar in Well science, where are they?
each is capable of a vastly greater range capacity to the human brain would need
of responses than a computer’s. What to be stored in a 100-storey building. It YEAH, WHAT?
intrigues me is that the neurons in the could do anything a human could do -
brain (tiny cells that conduct nerve even compose music and write an essay. Tony, aged four, was listening to a Bible
impulses) generate about 25 watts of (Even so, I doubt it could tie its own shoe story. His dad read: “The man named Lot
power. laces or tell me where I left my car keys.) was warned to take his wife and flee out of
the city but his wife looked back and was
I tried to demonstrate this to my By 1985 it was thought that an artificial turned to salt”.
assembled family by screwing an electric brain could be stored in only 12 storeys. In
light bulb into my ear and darkening the the late 1990s it was down to two storeys With a worried expression on his face, Tony
room. I then forced the brain to work out and I predicted in my column that within asked: “What happened to the flea?”

44 INTRA MUROS NOVEMBER 2020