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The Power Of Your Miraculous Mind
Our mental potential lies almost completely untapped.
Our minds are powerful. In September 2020 Joseph Carlsmith, writing for Openphilanthropy.org, made an estimate of the computing power it would take to match the abilities of the human brain. He humbly points out: “ I’m not a neuroscientist, and the science here is very far from settled.” His estimates are perhaps nothing more than a good guess.
But, Carlsmith did do his homework and mentions, “ I consulted with more than 30 experts, and considered four methods of generating estimates, focusing on floating point operations per second (FLOP/s) as a metric of computational power.”
In summary, Carlsmith says, “I think it more likely than not that 10¹⁵ FLOP/s is enough to perform tasks as well as the human brain…. And I think it unlikely (<10%) that more than 10²¹ FLOP/s is required.” Side note, 10²¹ represents a one with twenty-one zeros behind it, a big number.
The fasted known supercomputer in the world, Fugaku, is found at the Riken Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan. According to Extremetech.com the computer has over 7.5 million CPU cores and consumes a “shocking 28.3 MW of power.” The machine’s hardware and software cost roughly $1.2 billion US to develop. The computer “has made great contributions to the…
