[CommanderSock]

Quote:

By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News, Oxford



Professor Markram said he would send a hologram to talk at TED in 10 years


A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed.

Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already built elements of a rat brain.

He told the TED global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses.

Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said.

"It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years," he said.

"And if we do succeed, we will send a hologram to TED to talk."

'Shared fabric'

The Blue Brain project was launched in 2005 and aims to reverse engineer the mammalian brain from laboratory data.

In particular, his team has focused on the neocortical column - repetitive units of the mammalian brain known as the neocortex.


The team are trying to reverse engineer the brain
"It's a new brain," he explained. "The mammals needed it because they had to cope with parenthood, social interactions complex cognitive functions.

"It was so successful an evolution from mouse to man it expanded about a thousand fold in terms of the numbers of units to produce this almost frightening organ."

And that evolution continues, he said. "It is evolving at an enormous speed."

Over the last 15 years, Professor Markram and his team have picked apart the structure of the neocortical column.

"It's a bit like going and cataloguing a bit of the rainforest - how may trees does it have, what shape are the trees, how many of each type of tree do we have, what is the position of the trees," he said.

"But it is a bit more than cataloguing because you have to describe and discover all the rules of communication, the rules of connectivity."

The project now has a software model of "tens of thousands" of neurons - each one of which is different - which has allowed them to digitally construct an artificial neocortical column.

Although each neuron is different, the team has found the patterns of circuitry in different brains have common patterns.

"Even though your brain may be smaller, bigger, may have different morphologies of neurons - we do actually share the same fabric," he said.

"And we think this is species specific, which could explain why we can't communicate across species."


To make the model come alive, the team feeds the models and a few algorithms into a supercomputer.

"You need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron," he said. "So you need ten thousand laptops."


The research could give insights into brain disease
Instead, he uses an IBM Blue Gene machine with 10,000 processors.

Simulations have started to give the researchers clues about how the brain works.

For example, they can show the brain a picture - say, of a flower - and follow the electrical activity in the machine.

"You excite the system and it actually creates its own representation," he said.

Ultimately, the aim would be to extract that representation and project it so that researchers could see directly how a brain perceives the world.

But as well as advancing neuroscience and philosophy, the Blue Brain project has other practical applications.

For example, by pooling all the world's neuroscience data on animals - to create a "Noah's Ark", researchers may be able to build animal models.

"We cannot keep on doing animal experiments forever," said Professor Markram.

It may also give researchers new insights into diseases of the brain.

"There are two billion people on the planet affected by mental disorder," he told the audience.

The project may give insights into new treatments, he said.

The TED Global conference runs from 21 to 24 July in Oxford, UK.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8164060.stm

[2Cdo]

Sounds amazing but I have a question about his number of people affected by mental disorder. Given the planet has about 6 billion people then is he really claiming that 1 in 3 people have some sort of mental disorder? Or is he including friends and family in the total of people affected?

[Brenda]

Well, if being religious is considered a mental disorder (psychosis, right, Poquas? ) then he might be right

(no, this was not an attack at religious people )

[Praxius]

And so the Saga begins.

If they create this brain exactly as a brain should be.... doesn't that allow for an artificial consciousness to be developed?

This will go much more beyond simple mapping of the brain for various mental illnesses, if it works....

Then again, back in the 50's it was believed we'd be living on other planets by the 90's..... so I'm not going to hold my breath.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

2Cdo wrote:

Sounds amazing but I have a question about his number of people affected by mental disorder. Given the planet has about 6 billion people then is he really claiming that 1 in 3 people have some sort of mental disorder? Or is he including friends and family in the total of people affected?

I'm thinking he might have just lumped emotional disorders in with mental disorders.
If that's the case, then I'd say it's pretty accurate. Just because someone isn't acting fucking starkers doesn't mean they don't have a problem of some sort. Especially when you see how rampant depression is becoming.
Altho again, there are a lot of people that have been diagnosed with stuff like bi-polar or depression just because they were going through an episode.
Everyone has those types of episodes once in a while. But episodic behaviour is hardly grounds for an official diagnosis.

[Choban]

Great, soon no one will ever have to think for themselves.
Seriously folks, does anyone but me see a problem developing an artificial brain before we even lean to use our whole minds?

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Yeppers, never got around to making that point cuz a certain cute little female was rushing me off to the store

[BartSimpson]

Quote:

A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years

Well, there's some good news for Avro and IceOwl!

[Canadian_Mind]

I think as far as developing artificial conciousness, I don't think we will be able to prove a machine is concious until such time as we are able to plug part of it into ourselfs, and utilize part of it to develop our own conciousness (say replacing the visual cortex with an artificial one). If the person who has this does still see's with the artificial cortex as he did with the natural one, I'd say artificial conciousness is possible.

Personally I think it is, and that conciousness as we experiance it is infact an illusion.

[BartSimpson]

CM, we be talking Cylons here!

[Biblesmasher]

Canadian_Mind wrote:

I don't think we will be able to prove a machine is concious

Ive never understood why we need to 'prove' consciousness. Or why its treated as so mysterious by even people like Dawkins. Seems pretty evident that its simply the inevitable result of superior intelligence. If it wasn't it would seem like an awful coincidence that our self awareness seems to wax and wane at almost the same levels as our ability to say do math. When I'm first waking up I'm about as capable of existential musings as I am of doing Arithmetic. Consciousness is just your brain looking in on itself it seems. So make a computer bright enough and with all the 'right' parts and you'd have consciousness.

[Praxius]

Many small insects and creatures only made up of a few cells are considered to live simple-like programs lives, living only on "instinct"

But isn't instinct "Programming?"

And now we walk into some Matrix crazy she'ite.

[Canadian_Mind]

lol

I am a spiritual person. I don't believe in any specific god, or follow any rules as laid out in a book. I have come to the conclusion that within each and every one of us is a being that isn't in control, but merely observing the actions we take in the first person... Giving the illusion of decision making.

meanwhile, the actions we take and the decisions we make are really just complex neurological reactions that are based off of previous actions (experiance, learning), and instict (how the brain developed, what affected it's development, etc.). The decision making process is really just the human spirit "observing" every neural cell at work as the brain processes what response it should take to the incoming stimulus.

Note that by observation, I don't mean visual. The spirit just feels it happen.

My question is, can this happen in a machine? I don't see why not. But if so, how can we prove it? We can prove humans have conciousness because we are human, and we have a conciousness, so why wouldn't all the other humans have conciousness aswell?

[Lemmy]

Does this mean I don't have to remember shit like calculus rules any more? The gadget will do that for me?

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Canadian_Mind wrote:

lol

I am a spiritual person. I don't believe in any specific god, or follow any rules as laid out in a book. I have come to the conclusion that within each and every one of us is a being that isn't in control, but merely observing the actions we take in the first person... Giving the illusion of decision making.

meanwhile, the actions we take and the decisions we make are really just complex neurological reactions that are based off of previous actions (experiance, learning), and instict (how the brain developed, what affected it's development, etc.). The decision making process is really just the human spirit "observing" every neural cell at work as the brain processes what response it should take to the incoming stimulus.

Note that by observation, I don't mean visual. The spirit just feels it happen.

My question is, can this happen in a machine? I don't see why not. But if so, how can we prove it? We can prove humans have conciousness because we are human, and we have a conciousness, so why wouldn't all the other humans have conciousness aswell?

I may not agree with your personal conclusion but it does help bring up a point. Do we REALLY know what all makes up conciousness?
Just because we've defined conciousness does it mean we have the definition right? Is self awareness the only defining characteristic? If so, how do you get a machine to smell, or taste, or feel pain?
10 years away? I have serious doubts about that claim.