Artificial Intelligence
Future

Major and continuing advances in computer processing speeds and memory sizes have facilitated the development of AI programs. Although most AI programs attempting to simulate higher mental functions incorporate the bottleneck of limited short-term memory, which restricts humans to carrying out one or a few mental tasks at a time, many investigators have begun to explore how the intelligence of computer programs can be enhanced by incorporating parallel processing--i.e., the simultaneous execution of several separate operations by means of computer memories that allow many processes to be carried out at once.

The question of which portions of the human brain (and their corresponding thought processes) operate serially and which operate in parallel has been a topic of intense debate by researchers in both the cognitive sciences and AI, but no clear verdict had been reached by the mid-1990s.

AI research has thus focused on understanding the mechanisms involved in human mental tasks and on designing software that performs similarly, starting with relatively simple ones and continually progressing to levels of greater complexity.

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