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RE: LeoThread 2025-05-01 19:47

in LeoFinance5 months ago

"I think that human intelligence, especially in the lower manifestations of it, will be aided tremendously by computers, but there are aspects of human capacities that we don't define as intelligence, which have to do with intuition, will, intention, imagination and creativity," he said.

Although logic is a term the computer industry uses when referring to central processing units, or microprocessors, Faggin says human consciousness entails more than logical thought processes and the ability to rationalize. The human brain, he contends, gives a person keen awareness of oneself and one's surroundings. It is motivated by powerful subconscious and emotional processes that work beneath or alongside logical thinking.

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"Consciousness is the ability that human beings have to experience, to think, to know that they know, or to know that they don't know," said Faggin. "A machine cannot do that."

Faggin, born and educated in Italy, spent a career turning complex ideas and blueprints for real-world computing. In November 2010, he joined Hoff and Mazur in receiving the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Barack Obama.

"I grew up in Vicenza, which is near Venice in Italy," said Faggin. "When I was a child, I was interested in machines."

His first love was airplanes. He remembers wanting to become an aeronautical engineer so he could design and build large model planes.

"As I grew up, I became more interested in science and decided to study physics, which then gave me an understanding of the basic workings of the universe," he said.

Early in his career while working at SGS Fairchild in Italy in 1968, he recalls inventing and developing silicon gate technology, which would become the basis for building tiny transitors that could rapidly switch on and off.

A few years later, start-up company Intel came knocking. Les Vadez, one of the founding members of Intel, which at the time was a fledgling memory chip company, invited Faggin to help with a secret project. Faggin accepted and immediately began drafting the blueprint for what would become the Intel 4004. The chip was specifically built for an advanced calculator by Japan's Busicom, but Faggin knew it was destined for much more than just calculators.

"My major contribution was to figure out a way to integrate all the complexity of a central processing unit [CPU] into a single chip, which had never been done before," said Faggin. "It required a new methodology."

After helping the 4004 evolve into a multi-purpose, programmable processor for devices beyond the Busicom calculator, Faggin went to work on the 8080 processor, which was an 8-bit CPU used in early minicomputers several years prior to the first IBM PC.

"I did the architecture and directed its development, and the 8080 was the first high-performance microprocessor in the market," he said. "It really opened wide the application field for microprocessors."