5 Things That You Brain Does Better Than Computer

5 T hings that your Brain d oes b etter than a Computer

B rains are better
For as long as computers have been around, they've been doing things better
than humans. The earliest computing devices were designed to calculate
numbers faster than people, and today's computers can do everything from
calculating pi out to a few billion places to rendering the latest Hollywood
blockbuster ontoyour screen, complete with Dolby surround sound audio.
Computer-aided design has allowed us to build skyscrapers thousands of feet
high, submarines that can tickle the deepest ocean's deepest depths, and this.
Computers can calculate billions of operations per second and access huge
swaths of information stored in memory. A computer program can defeat a
grand master chess player, Jeopardychampions and top poker players. But all is
not lost. There are still a few activities that are too complex for a computer to
bash its binary way through. In those realms, humans sti ll reign. But don't get too comfortable; computers are getting faster
and smarter by the year. Here are five things that your brain does better than a computer. (Text: Shea Gunther)
P lay Go
Go is a board game thatwas first played in China more than 2,000 years ago. It
is played on a board marked with a 19x19 grid using black -and-white stones
that players use to capture territory. The size of the board (19x19 creates 361
intersections) and the rules of the game (players can place stones anywhere open
on the board on any move, so there's an almost unimaginable number of
scenarios to calculate). In fact,there are more than 10 times more scenarios in
Go than there are atoms in the observable universe. Computers are good at
handling big numbers, but that's just ridiculous. What's more likely is that humans will get better at designing computer
programs that more closely replicate the human brain and its thought processes. But when that happens and the machines
take over, I don't think we'll beall that concerned about losing a game of Go
to a computer.
S olve crossword puzzles
In the late '90s, New York Times crossword puzzle editor and famed puzzle
master Will Shortz declared that computers would never compete with
humans in solving crossword puzzles. Michael Littman, a computer scientist
at Duke University, picked up Shortz's gauntlet and lead a team in developing
Proverb, acomputer program designed to quickly solve crossword puzzles.
Littman's program was entered into the 1999 Annual American Crossword
Puzzle Tournament and rocketed into 147th place.
It hasn't gotten much better for computer program puzzle solvers since then.
Computers solve crossword puzzles by sifting through a database of known clues and answers and then doing a lot of
number crunching to findthe correct arrangement o f words. Computers do OK when the clues match something found in
their databanks but they stumble when faced with something out of the ordinary — Proverb finished near the bottom in a
puzzle that involved "Spoonerisms," clues that required the switching of initial consonant sounds. For example, "shoot the
moon" begets "moot the shoon." It was never programmed to knowhow to handle that type of clue a nd fell flat on its face
when asked to solve them.
P lay Starcraft
Starcraft is a hugely popular real-time strategy video game that pits three races of combatants against one another in a battle
for universal dominance. Each of the three races — human, Zerg (think alien/bugs from "Starship Troopers"), and
Protoss (psychic humanoids with badass space armor) —have their own unique abilities that offer a beautifully balanced
palette for wreaking martial chaos. Humans can play in single-player mode and fight to defeat the built-in computer AI or
Lcdo. Denis Francis Materna Gagliardo, Escuela Superior Poli técnica del Litoral, CELEX, 2012

5 T hings that your Brain d oes b etter than a Computer

take to the 'Net to challenge other human players....