History Main / RobotsThinkFaster

* Subverted in ''Webcomic/QuestionableContent'': [[http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2285 Momo explains]] that her consciousness ties up so much of her processing power that she thinks no faster than the average human; the larger {{AI}}s do think faster but use subroutines to interact with humans.

* In ''Film/{{Her}}'', Samantha starts out able to read a book of baby names in 0.02 second. As she evolves, she starts holding thousands of conversations simultaneously, then eventually gets to a point where:

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's "Literature/LittleLostRobot": Dr Calvin and Dr Bogert [[AsYouKnow discuss]] that although it's possible to tell from the reaction speed whether a human is acting on instinct or as a result of conscious decision, that hesitation is too subtle for humans to detect from a robot because they can decide so quickly.

* Interesting example in Creator/AdamWarren's ''[[ComicBook/IronMan Iron Man: Hypervelocity]]'' miniseries. Our protagonist is an [[BrainUploading AI copy of Tony Stark's brain]] in an Iron Man suit. It spends half its time looking for the person who tried to kill Tony, and the other half trying to improve its own functionality. Since it's based on a human brain, it's limited to the human speed of thought—what it calls the "cognitive clockspeed barrier." (The same concept also showed up in Warren's ''ComicBook/{{Livewires}}'' miniseries.) It doesn't think any ''faster'' than a human, but it can ''multitask'' much better, so it sets up a "splinter consciousness" to develop a program that will allow it to think as fast as its hardware truly allows. [[spoiler:The group of AIs who caused the attack did so to force the Tony-AI to create just such a program.]]

It is said that a human brain is a very advanced computer. It not only handles every conscious thought we have, but also runs all the body's automatic functions. Your heartbeat, digestive systems, even the trillions of cells that make up your body are all commanded by your brain. But with computers becoming faster every year, does this mean that one day a computer might think faster than a human could?

It is said that a human brain is a very advanced computer. But with computers becoming faster every year, does this mean that one day a computer might think faster than a human could?

--->'''Data:''' In that particular moment, I was reconfiguring the warp field parameters, analyzing the collected works of Creator/CharlesDickens, calculating the maximum pressure I could safely apply to your lips, considering a new food supplement for Spot....

A subtrope is a tendency for writers to equate speed of thought with [[SlidingScaleOfRobotIntelligence intelligence]], which is the guiding belief behind TheSingularity. Related to RobotsAreJustBetter.

-->'''Kyle Reese:''' Defense network computers. New...powerful...hooked into everything, trusted to run it all. They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence. That it saw all people as a threat, not just the ones on the other side. It decided our fate in a microsecond: extermination.

** For context: .68 seconds of work for a 2 GHz CPU is over a million computer cycles, each with one or more instructions carried out. That's for a modern CPU - a system like Data's is probably vastly different and vastly superior, either in cycles/second or in number of instructions per cycle.

* In the first book of Creator/VernorVinge's ''Literature/ZonesOfThought'' trilogy, ''A Fire Upon the Deep''. As the nascent [[SealedEvilInACan Straumli Perversion]] wakes up, it experiences time passing slower and slower at exponential rates, eventually noting that a minute seems to last longer than all the time it has existed up to that point (which is at least several days).

* ''Radio/Earthsearch}}''.

* ''TabletopGame/TranshumanSpace'': All artificial intelligences have the Enhanced Time Sense advantage -- though they're not functionally ''much'' faster than humans, who can achieve similar speeds through genetic or nanotech enhancement.

* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', Cubert overclocks Bender's CPU, and Bender starts talking faster and becomes considerably smarter. Then he starts adding on additional processors and eventually reaches TheSingularity before being brought back down to normal.

* In the Literature/CaptainFuture novel ''Avengers of the Moon'', by Creator/AllenSteele, a a police officer demands entry to their spaceship, so [[TinCanRobot Grag]] accesses the local criminal code in the time it takes the officer to finish his sentence, to determine if he has the legal authority to do so.

* ''Literature/AvengersOfTheMoon'', by Creator/AllenSteele. When a police officer demands entry to their spaceship, [[TinCanRobot Grag]] accesses the local criminal code in the time it takes the officer to finish his sentence, to determine if he has the legal authority to do so.

* In "Little Lost Robot" (from Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/IRobot''), it's a plot point that, although it's possible to tell from the reaction speed whether a human is acting on instinct or as a result of conscious decision, the same is not necessarily true of robots because they can decide so quickly.
* ''Avengers of the Moon'', by Creator/AllenSteele. When a police officer demands entry to their spaceship, [[TinCanRobot Grag]] accesses the local criminal code in the time it takes the officer to finish his sentence, to determine if he has the legal authority to do so.

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* ''Avengers of the Moon'', by Creator/AllenSteele. When a police officer demands entry to their spaceship, [[TinCanRobot Grag]] accesses the local criminal code in the time it takes the officer to finish his sentence, to determine if he has the right to do so.

* ''Series/BlakesSeven''. In "Stardrive", the Seven witness three spaceships blow up for no apparent reason. They have to go through the footage frame-by-frame to find the cause, as their MasterComputer Orac refuses to help because from its point-of-view the cause (a small one-man spaceship doing a HyperspeedAmbush) is blatantly obvious, and so Orac thinks the humans are just being lazy.

[[TruthInTelevision They already do]], at least in some specialized situations. For instance, TabletopGame/{{Chess}} grandmaster Gary Kasparov once said that he can evaluate about two and a half board positions per second. Deep Blue, the first chess computer to beat a Chess World Champion, can evaluate 200 million positions per second. But in speculative fiction, robots tend to be able to think faster than humans in a wide variety of areas, something that is not (yet) possible in real life. What happens when robots can think so much faster than humans varies greatly: sometimes it's [[BenevolentAI good]], sometimes it's [[AIIsACrapshoot bad]], sometimes it's [[ApocalypseHow apocalyptic]].

* The machine intelligences in the Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures novel ''The Also People'' think much faster than their biological compatriots. Demonstrated in a scene where Roz meets one of them, told from its point of view; in the moment between it saying "You must be Roz" and her saying "That's right", it has time to hold three "longish" electronic conversations with other machines and also to write a thesis on human comparative anatomy, file it, re-read it, change the title, re-file it, re-read it again, decide the whole thing's nonsense and delete it.

* ''Series/BlakesSeven''. In "Stardrive", the rebels witness three spaceships blow up for no apparent reason. They have to go through the footage frame-by-frame to find the cause, as their MasterComputer Orac refuses to help because from its point-of-view the cause (a small one-man spaceship doing a HyperspeedAmbush) is blatantly obvious, and so Orac thinks the humans are just being lazy.