“Computers will become intelligent within my "lifetime" (or 50 years which ever is longer)”

Computers will become intelligent when they have as many connections as the human brain.

This bet is the result of a “discussion” between myself and Daphne Koller, as adjudicated by Danny Hillis.

My argument is based on the simple calculation that we have no more then 10^13 neurons in the human brain with less then 50,000 connections each for a maximum number of 5 x 10^17 connections.

Computer chips have 3 x 10^9 connections (circa 2008), doubling every 2 years requires 27 doublings or 54 years to reach ~ 5 x 10^17 connections.

In terms of "training this network" it may simply be plugged into the Internet to learn - after some smart person works out the architectural and mechanistic details.

Notes: Estimates for the number of neuron in the brain range from 10 to over 100 billion. Estimates of connections are usually on the order of 2 to 10 thousand each.