The Optimum Computing Machine: Robots, AI, and the Human Blueprint

Human and Robot Computing Machines

Original publication dated: Aug 31, 2025

When we talk about AI and robotics today, we’re not just talking about lines of code or chips. We are, in essence, working toward a form factor: the robot as the embodiment of the optimum computing machine.The “optimum computing machine” was described decades ago in The Evolution of a Science. It wasn’t imagined as a silicon chip or a data center — but as a complete system, capable of perception, memory, imagination, self-determination, and portability.Read through its thirteen requirements, and you realize something: it’s not just a thought experiment. It is a design spec for the human brain and body. And when we build AI and robotics, this is the benchmark we are unconsciously following.The human is the original optimum computing machine. The robot is the form factor we use to try to replicate it.

Perfect Accuracy

“First, the machine should be able to compute with perfect accuracy on any problem in the Universe and produce answers which were always and invariably right.”

AI calculates with probabilities; humans strive for truth. Accuracy, in its highest sense, includes moral judgment. Robots may compute flawlessly, but correctness is not only math.

Speed Beyond Words

“Second, the computer would have to be swift, working much more quickly than the problem and process could be vocally articulated.”

Microelectronics give robots speed. But intuition in the human mind leaps faster than words. AI approximates; the human brain already operates at this standard.

Handling Infinite Variables

“Third, the computer would have to be able to handle large numbers of variables and large numbers of problems simultaneously.”

Robots juggle inputs from multiple sensors. The brain integrates billions of signals — emotional, sensory, cognitive — seamlessly. This is the capacity AI is designed to chase.

Retaining Conclusions and Their Paths

“Fourth, the computer would have to be able to evaluate its own data and there would have to remain available within it not only a record of its former conclusions, but the evaluations leading to those conclusions.”

Explainability in AI aims for this. Humans achieve it naturally, remembering both decisions and reasoning. Reflection is baked into the optimum machine.

Infinite Memory Bank

“Fifth, the computer would have to be served by a memory bank of nearly infinite capacity… and the data in the bank would have to be available… in the smallest fractions of a second.”

Robotics connects to cloud memory. The brain connects directly to lived memory, cross-linked with meaning. That “infinite” capacity remains unmatched.

Revising Conclusions

“Sixth, the computer would have to be able to rearrange former conclusions or alter them in the light of new experience.”

AI retrains. Humans reinterpret. Revision in robots is code; revision in humans is wisdom.

Self-Determination

“Seventh, the computer would not need an exterior prompter or director, but would be entirely self-determined about its own programming, guided only by the necessity-value of the solution which it itself would determine.”

Robotic autonomy is a frontier — drones, autonomous vehicles, AI agents. Yet human free will goes beyond necessity. Self-determination is the soul’s programming.

Self-Servicing and Anticipating Damage

“Eighth, the computer should be self-servicing and self-arming against present and future damage and would be able to estimate future damage.”

Robots can predict wear. Humans heal. The form factor of resilience is biological.

Perception Across All Channels

“Ninth, the computer should be served by perception… This would mean color-visio, tone-audio, odor, tactile and self perceptions — for without the last it could not properly service itself.”

Robotics integrates multi-modal sensors. The brain does the same — with the added layer of self-awareness. Without consciousness, sensors remain flat.

Time-Linked Memory

“Tenth, the memory bank should store perceptions as perceived, consecutive with time received with the smallest possible time divisions between perceptions… cross-coordinated.”

Robotics timestamps data. The brain stores life as continuity. Time in machines is linear; time in humans is lived.

Imagination Beyond Experience

“Eleventh, for the purposes of solutions, it would have to be able to create new situations and imagine new perceptions hitherto not perceived…”

Generative AI can simulate novelty. The human mind imagines beyond data. Robots remix. Humans create.

Recall Without Exhaustion

“Twelfth, its memory banks should not exhaust on inspection, but should furnish… perfect copies of everything and anything in the banks…”

Databases recall endlessly. Human recall is selective but meaningful. Memory in machines is flat; in humans, it is story.

Portability

“Thirteenth, the entire machine should be portable.”

Robots are portable systems. The human body is the original portable optimum computing machine: self-powered, self-contained, mobile, and aware.

Brain vs. Microelectronics: A Technical Comparison

The Ceiling of Machine Capacity

The robot is the physical instantiation of the optimum machine. The mind is the control architecture we aim to replicate in AI.But here is the engineering limit: the highest capacity of robotics and AI will be capped at the benchmark of human potential. Microelectronics can match or surpass the brain in raw speed, but without the operator — the soul — they remain incomplete.

Take Away

The optimum computing machine is already here. The robot form factor is our attempt to build it. AI is our attempt to mimic the mind within it.But the miracle of the human system — body, brain, soul — is the ceiling. Machines will mirror it, but never surpass it.That is the blueprint. That is the frontier.