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 endeavor 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 centimeters. In the next 3.5 million years our ancestors’ brain volume increased to about 1350 cubic centimeters. Modern humans (average brain volume of about 1200 cubic centimeters) 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 behaviors 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 abrupt evolution of human intelligence.

Human intelligence evolved when “upright position and bipedalism were significantly advantageous. The main drive of improving manual actions and tool making could be to obtain more food. Our ancestor got more meat due to more successful hunting, resulting in more caloric intake, more protein and essential…