A number of Artificial Intelligence projects are trying to build a conscious computer that will work just like the human brain. Indeed, Microsoft have announced that they will spend $1 billion on such a project. Many AI experts believe that the human brain simply encodes and processes multi-sensory information, and that these functions can therefore be simulated in a machine. However, so far, no project has come close to doing this. This is because while computers can process incredibly large amounts of data at a high speed, we don’t yet have the technology or ability to computerize consciousness i.e. self-awareness. Humans are aware of what they are thinking, and they can quite easily stop and then start thinking about something else entirely. But so far, there hasn’t been a computer that can do this. Think of a computer programme or application. They can not stop running of their own accord, rather they have to be programmed to do so. But it's this ability to make one’s own decisions that is crucial to consciousness. Another huge obstacle for those trying to engineer a conscious machine is that the human brain has no single structure that deals with consciousness. Different mental tasks take place simultaneously in different parts of the brain, so consciousness is not unified. In other words, our brain’s capacity far outweighs its size, whereas a computer’s capacity is ultimately finite.
