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Scientists to simulate human brain inside a supercomputer(666?)
CNN ^ | 10/13/2012 | CNN

Posted on 10/13/2012 1:19:43 PM PDT by Dallas59

(CNN) -- There's no escaping the fact that the Human Brain Project, with its billion-dollar plan to recreate the human mind inside a supercomputer, sounds like a science fiction nightmare.

But those involved hope their ambitious goal of simulating the tangle of neurons and synapses that power our thought processes could offer solutions to tackling conditions such as depression, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's.

The Human Brain venture is the next step in a long-running program that has already succeeded in using computers to create a virtual replica of part of a rat's neocortex -- a section of the brain believed to control higher functions such as conscious thought, movement and reasoning.

Scientists at its forerunner, the Switzerland-based Blue Brain Project, have been working since 2005 to feed a computer with vast quantities of data and algorithms produced from studying tiny slivers of rodent gray matter.

(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: brain; computers
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1 posted on 10/13/2012 1:19:52 PM PDT by Dallas59
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To: Dallas59
"It is a step that will need both a huge increase in funding and access to computers so advanced that they have yet to be built." "If their current bid for €1 billion ($1.3 billion) of European Commission funding over the next 10 years is successful, Markram predicts that his computer neuroscientists are a decade away from producing a synthetic mind that could, in theory, talk and interact in the same way humans do."
2 posted on 10/13/2012 1:23:54 PM PDT by DannyTN
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To: Dallas59

This was already done a long time ago. HAL 9000.


3 posted on 10/13/2012 1:24:07 PM PDT by faucetman ( Just the facts, ma'am, Just the facts)
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To: Dallas59

But will it help cure socialism, Marxism, and liberalism?


4 posted on 10/13/2012 1:24:49 PM PDT by unixfox (Abolish Slavery, Repeal The 16th Amendment!)
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To: Dallas59

http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Harsh-Mistress-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0312863551


5 posted on 10/13/2012 1:26:46 PM PDT by wolfpat (Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. -- Cicero)
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To: Dallas59
Don't know whether to name it Colossus or Joshua
6 posted on 10/13/2012 1:27:30 PM PDT by Traveler59 ( Truth is a journey, not a destination.)
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To: unixfox
But will it help cure socialism, Marxism, and liberalism?

No, it will merely perfect them.

Be afraid, be very, very afraid...

7 posted on 10/13/2012 1:28:45 PM PDT by null and void (Day 1362 of our ObamaVacation from reality - Obama, a queer and present danger)
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To: Dallas59
Photobucket

42

8 posted on 10/13/2012 1:41:28 PM PDT by Clay Moore (The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of a fool to the left. Ecclesiastes 10:2)
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To: Dallas59

Perhaps now we can get some decent AI in computer games.


9 posted on 10/13/2012 1:45:06 PM PDT by soupbone1
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To: Dallas59

Guffaw. I recently made a related argument in one of my philosophy courses for why AI is likely a pipe dream.

For this in particular, despite a great deal of knowledge that’s been accumulated under of the umbrella of cognitive neuroscience research, we still don’t know much about how a brain actually works (much less mind itself—the two are not necessarily equivalent phenomena).

Sounds like a nice waste of money at this point to attempt building functional models of brains inside of computers. Even if we possessed sufficient knowledge about how brains work, it may be the case that brains work in a way that could never be simulated in model via computers no matter how powerful, given the mathematical bounds of computability. At least not without introducing certain simplifying assumptions, simplifications which themselves may destroy the practical value of such a simulation.


10 posted on 10/13/2012 1:45:09 PM PDT by Utmost Certainty (Our Enemy, the State)
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To: Dallas59

As long as they don’t simulate a liberal’s brain, then they should be OK. Otherwise, the computer will eventually will be looking to join a union or demand free stuff.


11 posted on 10/13/2012 1:47:53 PM PDT by twoputt
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To: Dallas59

Unless it has a quantum mechanical component to it, it will just be a big computer.


12 posted on 10/13/2012 1:50:27 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Government is the religion of the psychopath.)
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To: Dallas59

Skynet reference...


13 posted on 10/13/2012 1:55:35 PM PDT by glorgau
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To: Dallas59

When will Skynet become self-aware???


14 posted on 10/13/2012 1:56:22 PM PDT by ObozoMustGo2012
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To: Dallas59

Won’t happen. They don’t know how the mind operates, so they won’t be able to simulate it.
What they will do, is mimic one aspect of the mind’s functioning, and then say they have succeeded.


15 posted on 10/13/2012 2:03:20 PM PDT by I want the USA back (Liberalism is a malfunction of the brain.)
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To: Pride in the USA
BenLinus, eyes
16 posted on 10/13/2012 2:05:03 PM PDT by lonevoice (Today I broke my personal record for most consecutive days lived)
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To: I want the USA back
They can fiddle with the physics and mechanics of the mind all they want...similar to a satellite immitating.

But it will never be alive and will never have a soul.....the essence of man

17 posted on 10/13/2012 2:09:43 PM PDT by Sacajaweau (r)
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To: Traveler59
Don't know whether to name it Colossus or Joshua

considering they're starting with rat brains, it's a no-brainer (sorry).......BEN

18 posted on 10/13/2012 2:13:20 PM PDT by Hot Tabasco (Jab him with a harpoon.....)
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To: faucetman

As I remember, that ended badly.


19 posted on 10/13/2012 2:16:53 PM PDT by Twinkie (Live and let live.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Unless it has a quantum mechanical component to it, it will just be a big computer.
Classical computers can simulate quantum mechanics, just not that efficiently.
Here's a link to a discussion on whether quantum mechanics is central to simulating the brain.
20 posted on 10/13/2012 2:18:42 PM PDT by conservativefreak
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