Power is not Intelligence.

A futurologist has predicted that mobile devices will rule our lives within a short time. We won't know what to call the new device that shall dominate our existence.

This is odd, because other than in films, I hardly see anyone using mobile phones. I get by happily without one.

The newsite reports:

'Hammond forecast that in 25 years' time, machine intelligence would equal human intelligence as computers followed Moore's Law, doubling in power every two years.

"We will have reached the point of 'very interesting indeed', the singularity. And this will occur between 2027 and 2035."

"The most terrifying aspect of when machine intelligence equals are own, is that two years later it will be twice as powerful and two years after that four times," said Hammond. "We will have to consider the arrival, for the first time, of super intelligent companions."' (emboldening mine).

Now, Hammond has made a classic mistake of confusing power with intelligence. But then, arguably the USA did that when choosing their President ... Just because a computer is more powerful, it may be no more intelligent. It may appear by tricks of database access to be so, but that is larger memory, not a more powerful intellect. Computers do not have intelligence in human terms at all. The digital machines do arithmetic fast, nothing more. If all one needed was more chips, it would be done already! No, Hammond is wrong.

Mobile devices may indeed become essential and ubiquitous, but as intelligent as Humans? No, not in 25 years. Probably not ever.

Intelligence is not just about power - ever. It is about harmonising and adapting and exploiting ones environment. The computer is literally boxed in and often has non-persistent memory. You know where the power switch is.