Scientists to simulate human brain inside a supercomputer(666?)

CNN ^ | 10/13/2012 | CNN

[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.

[DannyTN]

"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."

[faucetman]

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

[unixfox]

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

[wolfpat]

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

[Traveler59]

Don't know whether to name it Colossus or Joshua

[null and void]

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

No, it will merely perfect them.

Be afraid, be very, very afraid...

[Clay Moore]

42

[soupbone1]

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

[Utmost Certainty]

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.

[twoputt]

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.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

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

[glorgau]

Skynet reference...

[ObozoMustGo2012]

When will Skynet become self-aware???

[I want the USA back]

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.

[lonevoice]

[Sacajaweau]

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

[Hot Tabasco]

Don't know whether to name it Colossus or Joshua

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

[Twinkie]

As I remember, that ended badly.

[conservativefreak]

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.