Will computers overtake humans in intellectual ability?

In 1997, world chess champion Garry Kasparov played a series of six games in a rematch against the supercomputer Deep Blue. The year before, Kasparov defeated Deep Blue, winning three games to one (with two draws) against the supercomputer. During the rematch, Kasparov won the first game but then began to struggle. When it was all over, Deep Blue claimed the victory with two wins against one with three draws.

Was Kasparov's loss a sign thatcomputers had become smarter than people? It's true that computers can perform calculations at a blistering pace. The Jaguar supercomputer has a top speed of 2.33 petaflops -- it can perform more than 2 quadrillion calculations every second [source:National Center for Computational Sciences]. By comparison, Hans Morvec of the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University estimated the human brain's processing speed at about 100 teraflops, or 100 trillion calculations per second [source: Delio]. Clearly, computers can already make calculations faster than humans. But are they smarter?

There's more to intelligence than processing speed. While a supercomputer like the Jaguar can analyze problems and reach a solution faster than humans, it can't adapt and learn the way humans can. Our brains are capable of analyzing new and unfamiliar situations in a way that computers can't. We can draw upon our past experiences and make inferences about the new situation. We can experiment with different approaches until we find the best way to move forward. Computers aren't capable of doing that -- you have to tell a computer what to do.

Humans are also very good at recognizing patterns. While we're making progress in machine pattern recognition, it's mostly on a superficial level. For example, some digital cameras can recognize specific faces and automatically tag photos of those people as you take pictures. But humans can recognize complex patterns and adapt to them -- computers still have trouble doing that.

Currently, computers fall short of possessing intelligence. But will that always be the case?