[Beriilosal]

Artificial intelligence is a massive topic.

Very broadly machine intelligence falls into a couple of very broad areas. This list is not exhaustive, just some examples.

General computation. Basically just performing functions we programme, but it can do very complicated functions quite fast.

Expert systems. This is a branch of computing. Basically you give the machine access to a database of knowledge (e.g. Symptom and diseases) then some sort of interface between user and database such that the machine appears to be intelligent. You type in a list of symptoms, it gives a diagnosis, it might even ask more questions etc. It really has no innate intelligence, and generally no or only limited learning.

Neural networks. A computing structure that mimics the way a neural net works. Such networks can be built with a self learning system similar to ones simple biological neural networks can have.

of these neural networks probably have the greatest potential to have any sort of intelligence similar to animals. However it represents only one small branch of machine intelligence. Neural networks are often good at pattern recognition type problems (reading hand writing, understanding speech), but not good at other computing problems.


So I comparing humans to machine intelligence you would have to say as it stands now, there is a vast difference. In one area of computing that difference may get smaller. But also computers do some things very well that require no artificial intelligence. Fast computation, fast data retrieval, etc will always be needed. So even if we do develop some very smart machines that can learn and have a learning structure similar to ours there will always be a vast array of other computational devices that don't need this.

Also there is the issue of culture etc. this obviously has a large impact on the way our brains form.