Digital Signal Processing Reference
In-Depth Information
In this assessment of the future development of cerebral research, especially concerning
artificial intelligence, there are up to date, as always, two groups: the optimists and the
pessimists. Both generally introduce concerns and hopes into the discussion that can be
taken seriously.
The sceptical pessimists point at the highly complex brain with its tens of billions of
neurons and the tens of billions of synapses. This gigantic system could impossibly be
understood entirely (see for example Der Spiegel Nr.1, 2001 “the universe in the head”,
“the humility before the last mysteries”). This is also about the folowing fundamental
clarification: is the human brain with its tens of billions of cells capable to self-
awareness?
The smaller group of optimists points at the history of science being the proof for “simple
nostrums” of nature can generate highly complex systems. Even highly complex chaotic
systems could be generated by simple (non- linear) functions. The substantial common of
such systems had to be found out and modelled. Gigantic scientific fields with their
multiple applicability as electro magnetism and quantum mechanics would be able to
describe in their core by few formulas (Maxwell´s equations respectively Schrödinger-
equation).
It appears to be as if the change from the conventional computer with his “bottle neck” to
signal- respectively data systems basing on natural principles could again cause a
technical reorientation.
