Is a computer smarter than humans?

Answer 1

No, computers do not learn, so they aren't smarter. All information was input by humans somehow. Now, it can do things faster, but it is not smarter, no.

I disagree, there are many areas in which computers are "smarter" than a human being. A simple example - calculators are much better and faster at doing calculations than a human (part of the problem is that we used to define being able to do complex calculations quickly as being very smart, now we tend not to think if it that way. You see this everywhere - whenever a computer becomes smarter than we are at doing something, we tend not to think of this area being "smart" anymore.)

As to the comment about being able to "learn", there are certain areas computers can "learn" without being programmed by a human. As simple example: there are systems called neural networks that can learn to categorize things - show them a million pictures of what the letter "A" looks like, and they will learn to recognize an "A" when they see it.

While this is a simple example, systems like these can work much faster than people, and without ever getting tired, and eventually they become better in these areas (smarter) than a human. And this was only a simple example, and these learning systems, and other computer systems are being improved upon constantly, and are being used in more and more areas. Add to this the fact that computers are getting faster, smaller, and cheaper, (and smarter!) all the time, and you begin to see the potential for computers to replace more and more "human level" jobs. (I don't believe this is a bad thing - smarter computers mean more productivity, cheaper goods and services, making the world richer, while requiring less work by all of us. Eventually, picture only having to work a few hours per week, everything costing one tenth of what it costs now, having a robot (powered by a smart computer) that can do whatever you ask it to do, or ten robots for that matter (they're cheap!) -- this is our future 20-30 years from now - all because of "smarter" computers...)

Answer 2

no because humans power computers