You're basing this claim on an odd factor of terminology applied to machines. Could you please explain how the distinction between "hardware" and "software" applies to humans?
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My phrasing was imprecise. Actually, I was referring to the machines and not to humans.
Here's what I mean...
The exciting (depending upon your opinion of artificial minds) predictions of strong AI proponents are built upon the observation that computing power grows by orders of magnitude at regular intervals.
What these boosters fail to understand is that while the hardware has certainly improved by leaps and bounds, the software which transforms the machines from doorstops to useful tools has not.
This is the Achilles heel of all efforts to create truly high performance computing - including strong AI. The software is not equal to the potential of the hardware. Since any thinking machine would have to start its operational life running code written by someone (or a group of someones) this limitation is a non-trivial obstacle to the strong AI goal, all philosophical issues aside.
Because the bells and whistles of commercially available code have grown louder, many assume that software written in 2003 is superior to that written in 1975, or that techniques have evolved at pace with the evolution of hardware.
This is not true.
Software sleights of hand are built upon the back of much improved hardware and are the result of the greater space of forgiveness for sloppiness the hardware's greater performance potential allows.
For a comprehensive treatment of this matter, I recommend Jaron Lanier's essay, *One Half of a Manifesto* which details the problem.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.12/lanier.html
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Regarding the *mission to Mars* analogy...
But you see, we have successfully navigated robtoic machinery to Mars and even sent a manned mission to our moon. So a manned mission to the red planet would be an expansion and refinement of proven techniques. If this were the case with computing, we would have achieved the level of say, a mouse, with machine cognitive performance and encouraged by this success would press on to develop a match for human cognition.
This, of course, is not the situation.
DRM
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