Is Artificial Intelligence Coming of Age?
The State of the Art
Most experts have settled on a description of Artificial Intelligence as being the scientific endeavour of building computers that mimic the capabilities of the human brain.
To put that into perspective, we know that Human Intelligence started to evolve 7–8 million years ago when our oldest ancestors had a brain volume of about 450 cubic centimetres. In the next 3.5 million years various species of the “Hominin” group evolved with our ancestors’ brain volume increased to about 1350 cubic centimetres. Modern humans (average brain volume of about 1200 cubic centimetres) evolved from the Homo Sapiens species during a period of dramatic climate change 300,000 years ago. Like other early humans that were living at this time, they gathered and hunted food, and evolved behaviours that helped them respond to the challenges of survival in unstable environments. Over the 7–8 million years the brain volume increase was complemented by a concerted addition of neuron density to important areas of the human brain. Some 200,000 years ago the brain also underwent genetic changes that influenced the development of the nervous system and provided the opportunity for human language as the basis of the abrupt evolution of human intelligence.
