Performing complex tasks at lightning speed is the machine’s greatest strength; thinking and intelligence are still in our heads.

After decades of trying to create machines that can think, researchers now just want to take advantage of computers’ speed and make them less stupid.

Intellext’s Watson, which uses pattern recognition to find relevant documents, is one example of software that takes advantage of more powerful computers. Another is a program from NICE Systems that tracks the emotions of people talking on the phone, created by a firm that monitors call center conversations.

Instead of using computers to duplicate tasks humans do, Jeff Hawkins, who started Palm Computing and Handspring, suggests that intelligent machines will be used to do things that neither people nor computers do well today.

An intelligent machine connected to sensors across the globe feeding information about weather could become a weather brain, for instance. It would think about weather patterns the way a person understands objects and people, Hawkins said.

He is developing a computer at Redwood Neuroscience Institute that mimics the human brain. A working computer that demonstrates humanlike intelligence will be ready by the end of this decade, he predicts.