Fun fact: according to the predictions of IBM founder Gordon Moore, the maximum processing power of computers is following an exponential growth rate, doubling every 18 months.

In other words, the best computers of June 2017 will be no less than twice as fast as today's most efficient machines. Frightening, isn't it? Given the astonishing power our computers are already exploiting, what future are we to face if that processing power keeps doubling every other year?

Fortunately, none of these increases should be seen as a predictor of the emergence of an artificial intelligence able to take over mankind. The human mind is an incredibly intricate. It is the synthesis of an utterly unpredictable cluster of billions of neurons that operate in the microscopic realm, producing random behavior in amounts no conceivable machine could be able to reproduce.

Computers might be able to execute algorithms a gazillion times more quickly than a human could, but at the end of the day it is the human who wrote that program. As an illustration, here is a problem that most humans would qualify as trivial: consider the following pictures.

If you think like the vast majority of the subjects who took the experiment whose origins ranged from the US to Japan to the illiterate tribes of New Guinea (who agreed to pose for these pictures in exchange of soap and a couple cigarettes), you should have correctly guessed that the pictures correspond respectively, from left to right, to happiness, sadness, anger and disgust.

That's great, but how did you arrive at that result? Your unconscious mind put together several experiences from the past and approximations of the sensorial input in order to determine what these strange people intended to convey. That is precisely what computers are absolutely unable to do, and shouldn't achieve anytime soon. Approximation isn't a term in the realm of technology and computer science. Behind that breathtaking processing power, a computer is just a bunch of lights that are either on or off. And these lights need very precise instructions to behave. Then, it appears that what appears to us as the simplest of task, recognizing others' facial expressions, presents a herculean challenge when it comes to its computer implementation.

This example is only one of infinitely many related operations that all amount to the abilities of human intelligence, yet are far beyond the reach of artificial intelligence. Every car might one day be able to park itself, but we should be dead and buried by the time a robot laughs at your jokes, distinguishes right from wrong or falls in love with you.

The equanimity of human and artificial intelligence thus seems to belong to the realm of science fiction, at least for now. The only "reasonable" way to conceive an artificial intelligence that could not only mimic, but actually appropriate human behavior would be to reconstitute, neuron by neuron, a fully artificial human brain. This revolutionary engine would simulate every one of the billions of communications neurons make with each other at any given moment, combining at a competitive rate the infinitely many stimuli coming from the external environment to build an ever wider network of neuronal connections.

The world's largest processing machine is actually partially dedicated to the pursuit of this incredible endeavor. IBM's supercomputer blue gene was stretched to its limits when it managed to simulate 100% of a rat's brain in 2007. The brain of a rat contains 200 million neurons. As a comparison, a human brain contains approximately 100 billion neurons, and with this 50000% increase in size comes proportionally more neuronal connections to take into account. As the project grows bigger and bigger in scale, ideally reaching the size of cities as suggested by Michio Kaku in his milestone book "Physics of the Future", we might eventually be able to simulate the human brain in its entirety by the end of the century.

Fast forward a few centuries. Assume artificial intelligence has finally attained the performance of human intelligence. Robots roam free in the world of men, gifted by the latter's relentless efforts of reason and emotions. As this newly generated "race" replicates itself through phenomenal processes led by the leading processing machines on earth, robots rapidly surpass humans in every way. Now, let us forgo existential considerations and take a huge leap forward, millions of years later.

Earth's atmosphere has reached untenable levels for the carbonated molecules constituting our skin tissues. Life as we know it is nothing more than a chimerical tale. Yet, the one unique feature that even today distinguishes us from the rest of the living realm persists. Through artificially generated metallic organisms, we managed to transmit the very essence of human life to posterity: conscious intelligence.