Ignoring Michael Bay meltdowns, wearable tech and bendable screens, one of the other great, but slightly less widely reported, electronics PR stories to come out of CES 2014 told us that chip technology is “closing the gap” with the brain.

I was impressed and intimidated in equal measure by Mooly Eden of Intel’s claims that it will take the company just another 12 years to make a CPU that features as many transistors as there are neurons in a human brain (approx. 100 million).

Apparently the fourth-generation Intel Core Processor already runs much more quickly than a human brain but by 2026 the future version will also be able to run as many processes too.

Mooly reportedly said: “We are narrowing the gap between what we can do with our devices and what we can do with our brain.”

What does this mean? Potentially the ability for machines to have perception like something out of a sci-fi film. So, if your name is John Connor it might be a good time to go into hiding. The Terminator is coming to get you!

photo credit: dierk schaefer