When someone claims that computers will be as powerful as a brain, what could this be referring to if not intelligence? What "power" has the brain got otherwise?
Raw processing power. In the computer analogy, intelligence is the combination of enough processing power with software that implements the intelligence. When people compare computers to brains, they usually seem to be ignoring the software side.
While going through the list of arguments for why to expect human level AI to happen or be impossible I was stuck by the same tremendously weak arguments that kept on coming up again and again. The weakest argument in favour of AI was the perenial:
Lest you think I'm exaggerating how weakly the argument was used, here are some random quotes:
At least Moravec gives a glance towards software, even though it is merely to say that software "keeps pace" with hardware. What is the common scale for hardware and software that he seems to be using? I'd like to put Starcraft II, Excel 2003 and Cygwin on a hardware scale - do these correspond to Penitums, Ataris, and Colossus? I'm not particularly ripping into Moravec, but if you realise that software is important, then you should attempt to model software progress!
But very rarely do any of these predictors try and show why having computers with say, the memory capacity or the FOPS of a human brain, will suddenly cause an AI to emerge.
The weakest argument against AI was the standard:
Some of the more sophisticated go "Gödel, hence no AI!". If the crux of your whole argument is that only humans can do X, then you need to show that only humans can do X - not assert it and spend the rest of your paper talking in great details about other things.