One man's mission to create a living mind inside a machine.

[bulldog_in_baton_rouge]

What Markram's project amounts to is an audacious attempt to build a computerised copy of a brain - starting with a rat's brain, then progressing to a human brain - inside one of the world's most powerful computers. This, it is hoped, will bring into being a sentient mind that will be able to think, reason, express will, lay down memories and perhaps even experience love, anger, sadness, pain and joy.
'We will do it by 2018,' says the professor confidently. 'We need a lot of money, but I am getting it. There are few scientists in the world with the resources I have at my disposal.'


There is, inevitably, scepticism. But even Markram's critics mostly accept that he is on to something and, most importantly, that he has the money.
Tens of millions of euros are flooding into his laboratory at the Brain Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne - paymasters include the Swiss government, the EU and private backers, including the computer giant IBM. Artificial minds are, it seems, big business.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz0buvUuLQy

[mikedog]

Why in the world would we want a computer that thinks for itself? Show these people the Matrix trilogy or the Terminator series.

[Guisslapp]

Why in the world would we want a computer that thinks for itself? Show these people the Matrix trilogy or the Terminator series.

The research would be directly applicable to treating conditions of the human brain....and uploading your mind so you can live forever.

[dmcguirt23]

SKYNET IS GOING ONLINE. We've made a HUGE MISTAKE.

[hoppinmad]

Why in the world would we want a computer that thinks for itself? Show these people the Matrix trilogy or the Terminator series.

Acorn can register it to vote...... forever.

[Guisslapp]

This is very interesting, but I wonder how practical it is to try to evolve human-like intelligence (including state of consciousness) from rat intelligence. I guess if you had a model for a rat you could run many different "evolution" scenarios simultaneously, but it seems like you would need tons of computing power to get there with such a brute force method.

[hoppinmad]

This is very interesting, but I wonder how practical it is to try to evolve human-like intelligence (including state of consciousness) from rat intelligence. I guess if you had a model for a rat you could run many different "evolution" scenarios simultaneously, but it seems like you would need tons of computing power to get their with such a brute force method.

There's one in the WH.

[AustinDawg]

Not necessarily a bad thing...

[dawg80]

Not necessarily a bad thing...

It aint the brain that made that one worthwhile!

[JuBru]

I'll volunteer my mind. Just imagine what you could learn, experience, and teach. But I wouldnprefer them to actually unlock the brain before they try makng an artificial one. I'm all for shortcuts, though.

[Guisslapp]

I'll volunteer my mind. Just imagine what you could learn, experience, and teach. But I wouldnprefer them to actually unlock the brain before they try makng an artificial one. I'm all for shortcuts, though.

That is basically the point of all of this. It is just a top-down approach instead of a bottom-up approach. I believe the top-down approach will be the fastest way to "unlock the brain."

[bulldog_in_baton_rouge]

I'll volunteer my mind. Just imagine what you could learn, experience, and teach. But I wouldnprefer them to actually unlock the brain before they try makng an artificial one. I'm all for shortcuts, though.

Be careful what you wish for. Remember Winona Ryder's words of wisdom in Alien IV:Resurrection...apparently, if you tie your mind into a computer, "your insides feel like liquid" and "it's not real"...all I'm saying is be careful...

[LookingForResults]

What if my mind gets unlocked and they don't find much??!! (this is a rhetorical question only - no need to respond, thank you very much)!

[JuBru]

That is basically the point of all of this. It is just a top-down approach instead of a bottom-up approach. I believe the top-down approach will be the fastest way to "unlock the brain."

maybe, but going top-down, to me, means that the "max" is already achieved and you're just trying to fill in the gaps.

And I think the brain is infinitely more powerful than any computer has been or will be.

Guess you got to start somewhere.

[Guisslapp]

maybe, but going top-down, to me, means that the "max" is already achieved and you're just trying to fill in the gaps.

And I think the brain is infinitely more powerful than any computer has been or will be.

Guess you got to start somewhere.

http://www.alanturing.net/turing_arc...is%20AI09.html

Top-Down AI vs Bottom-Up AI

Turing's manifesto of 1948 distinguished two different approaches to AI, which may be termed "top down" and "bottom up". The work described so far in this article belongs to the top-down approach. In top-down AI, cognition is treated as a high-level phenomenon that is independent of the low-level details of the implementing mechanism--a brain in the case of a human being, and one or another design of electronic digital computer in the artificial case. Researchers in bottom-up AI, or connectionism, take an opposite approach and simulate networks of artificial neurons that are similar to the neurons in the human brain. They then investigate what aspects of cognition can be recreated in these artificial networks.
The difference between the two approaches may be illustrated by considering the task of building a system to discriminate between W, say, and other letters. A bottom-up approach could involve presenting letters one by one to a neural network that is configured somewhat like a retina, and reinforcing neurons that happen to respond more vigorously to the presence of W than to the presence of aany other letter. A top-down approach could involve writing a computer program that checks inputs of letters against a description of W that is couched in terms of the angles and relative lengths of intersecting line segments. Simply put, the currency of the bottom-up approach is neural activity and of the top-down approach descriptions of relevant features of the task.
The descriptions employed in the top-down approach are stored in the computer's memory as structures of symbols (e.g. lists). In the case of a chess or checkers program, for example, the descriptions involved are of board positions, moves, and so forth. The reliance of top-down AI on symbolically encoded descriptions has earned it the name "symbolic AI". In the 1970s Newell and Simon--vigorous advocates of symbolic AI--summed up the approach in what they called the Physical Symbol System Hypothesis, which says that the processing of structures of symbols by a digital computer is sufficient to produce artificial intelligence, and that, moreover, the processing of structures of symbols by the human brain is the basis of human intelligence. While it remains an open question whether the Physical Symbol System Hypothesis is true or false, recent successes in bottom-up AI have resulted in symbolic AI being to some extent eclipsed by the neural approach, and the Physical Symbol System Hypothesis has fallen out of fashion.