But the results boil down to what we observe - signal spikes between neurons, which seem to be not that mysterious.
Last I checked the evidence was pretty slim for the later. But it's not zero. (Check out Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory). We've seen quantum coherence in microtubules, during photosynthesis, and superradiance in proteins. But no direct evidence of non-local effects in a living brain. Yet.
It's possible human thought leverages quantum processes. That doesn't mean it's likely.
DDG’s bot’s summary of the linked article and one other:
“The computational power of the human brain is often estimated in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS), with estimates ranging from 10^12 to 10^28 FLOPS, depending on the level of detail considered. In comparison, modern supercomputers can perform up to several hundred petaflops, but the brain is believed to operate at a similar or even higher efficiency due to its unique structure and processing capabilities.”
Neither the article nor the paper discuss consciousness, only biological computing capacity considering quantum states.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adt4623
Today's classical computing accomplishments are impressive, but nowhere near what a human can do. Perhaps someday soon a single AI could (in the words of Heinlein) "change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly" but that day is not yet here. If we struggle to build such a device, we might consider that our computers are too limited.
evrimoztamur•9mo ago
I posit an extrapolation that once we figure out how life has managed to come up with its incredible computational capabilities, our silicon AI is going to become not only a lot smarter, but also a lot cheaper too.
bluefirebrand•9mo ago
It is entirely possible that silicon is just strictly not capable of reaching the computational capacity of meat
It is almost certain that silicon cannot reach the complexity of a human brain in the same "fits inside a human skull" footprint that brains have to adhere to
matthewdgreen•9mo ago
bluefirebrand•9mo ago
We already have machines that do the jobs of many people, with only a single human operator. Think of a simple excavator. Using it, a single human can move more dirt per hour than dozens of people with shovels possibly could. Arguably the human pilot is operating as a stand-in for the machines "brain"
matthewdgreen•9mo ago
AndrewKemendo•9mo ago
So if there’s going to be another system with equivalent complexity it’s going to either be another carbon based thing or a silicon based thing
IAmBroom•9mo ago
It eventually comes down to organic chemistry versus non-organic chemistry. Organic chemistry has far greater dimensions of freedom (ways to combine/exchange energy) to exploit unique nonbinary computational systems. For a macro instance, eyes process "lines" and "spots" by combining neural patterns before the signals even reach the brain, and from this can identify vertical obstacles (like trees in a forest) and threats (like pairs of predator eyes) more quickly at lower energy.
But likewise, neurons are not limited to exchanging electrons via a single modality (voltage exceeding threshold). Neurotransmitter chemicals can alter local or systemwide thresholds for certain cells; this amounts to massive preprocessing that silicon can only roughly imitate with massive design efforts (which were effectively done by evolution in the organisms).