Celebrating the Human Brain: Brain versus Machine (2024)

In an age where every other day there’s a reason to celebrate new AI & supercomputer accomplishments, I wanted to celebrate what is making all of this possible: the Human Brain.

See the infographic below for a quick summary of Human Brain vs Supercomputer comparison.

Supercomputers like Frontier or Leonardo are today’s pinnacle of the Human Brain genius and creativity. Consider the immense processing power that they make available to us - the possibilities with the right software (think AI) are endless.

Yet there is something even more remarkable than supercomputers, and that’s the Human Brain itself. An example? While today’s most powerful supercomputer, Frontier, matches the Human Brain computing power, it consumes million times more energy!

It is an apples to oranges comparison, as they process information differently. Nonetheless, the Human Brain processing power has been estimated at 1 exaflops, about the same as Frontier. Energy-wise, the Human Brain consumes 20 watt-hours to ‘produce’ an exaflop, Frontier needs 20 million watt-hours!

One of the most marvelous properties of the Human Brain is its plasticity: its ability to rewire and reconfigure itself as a consequence of experiences, sensory stimulations or even damage! In the Human Brain there is no distinction between hardware and software (the hardware is the software, and the software is the hardware). Through plasticity the software alters the hardware, leading to changes in the software itself, in a never-ending learning (innovation) process!

Human Brain storage is finite yet unlimited at the same time. A supercomputer storage capacity is considerably bigger, but finite and limited.

Size-wise, an average Human Brain is 1.3 liters in volume, while supercomputers are in the tenths of million liters.

Finally, the top 100 most powerful supercomputers have a combined processing power of about 8 Exaflops, equivalent to about eight Human Brains. There’s another 8 billion Brains in the world!

This infographic, despite comparing apples to oranges, gives an idea of how marvelous is the Human Brain when put next to one of its most extraordinary accomplishments.

#supercomputer #AI #artificialintelligence #frontier