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Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.

Everybody agrees that the brain is a remarkable machine. It's capable of generating an enormous number of phenomena, some of them very obvious and some of them less obvious. But I think that in the end there are going to be some very basic explanations for many things: emotions, awareness, consciousness, attention, perception, recognition.

In terms of the brain, you can in a crude way think of the human brain as a computer.

What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time.

You can't imagine how much detail we know about brains. There were 28,000 people who went to the neuroscience conference this year, and every one of them is doing research in brains. A lot of data. But there's no theory. There's a little, wimpy box on top there.

Our understanding of the human brain can be dramatically accelerated if we collect and share research data on an exponentially wider scale.

Not only have computers changed the way we think, they've also discovered what makes humans think - or think we're thinking. At least enough to predict and even influence it.

The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.

Eventually there are going to be chips in brains. Imagine if you could just buy knowledge and download it into your head instead of having to learn it. Like in 'The Matrix.' Imagine all the years saved!