The larger a brain, the more time it takes to coordinate circuit trips around the brain.
There are problems like this that arise with large synchronous systems which lack reliable clocks—but one of the good things about machine intelligences of significant size will be that reliable clocks will be available—and they probably won’t require global synchrony to operate in the first place.
I do remember reading that the brain does appear to have some highly regular pulse-like synchronizations in the PFC circuit. Every 33hz and 3hz if I remember correctly.
But that is really besides the point entirely.
The larger a system, the longer it takes information to move across the system. A planet wide intelligence would not be able to think as fast as a small laptop-sized intelligence, this is just a fact of the speed of light.
And its actually much much worse than that when you factor in bandwidth considerations.
You think it couldn’t sort things as fast? Search through a specified data set as quickly? Factor numbers as as fast? If you think any of those things, I think you need to explain further. If you agree that such tasks need not take a hit, which tasks are we talking about?
Actually, many of the examples you list would have huge problems scaling to a planet wide intelligence, but that’s a side issue.
The space in algorithm land in which practical universal intelligence lies requires high connectivity. It is not unique in this—many algorithms require this. Ultimately it can probably be derived back from the 3D structure of the universe itself.
Going from on-chip CPU access to off-chip Memory access to disk access to remote internet access is a series of massive exponential drops in bandwidth and related increases in latency which severely limit scalability of all big interesting distributed algorithms.
There are problems like this that arise with large synchronous systems which lack reliable clocks—but one of the good things about machine intelligences of significant size will be that reliable clocks will be available—and they probably won’t require global synchrony to operate in the first place.
I do remember reading that the brain does appear to have some highly regular pulse-like synchronizations in the PFC circuit. Every 33hz and 3hz if I remember correctly.
But that is really besides the point entirely.
The larger a system, the longer it takes information to move across the system. A planet wide intelligence would not be able to think as fast as a small laptop-sized intelligence, this is just a fact of the speed of light.
And its actually much much worse than that when you factor in bandwidth considerations.
I don’t really know what you mean.
You think it couldn’t sort things as fast? Search through a specified data set as quickly? Factor numbers as as fast? If you think any of those things, I think you need to explain further. If you agree that such tasks need not take a hit, which tasks are we talking about?
Actually, many of the examples you list would have huge problems scaling to a planet wide intelligence, but that’s a side issue.
The space in algorithm land in which practical universal intelligence lies requires high connectivity. It is not unique in this—many algorithms require this. Ultimately it can probably be derived back from the 3D structure of the universe itself.
Going from on-chip CPU access to off-chip Memory access to disk access to remote internet access is a series of massive exponential drops in bandwidth and related increases in latency which severely limit scalability of all big interesting distributed algorithms.