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Towards Artificial Consciousness

Posted by kdawson on from the define-awareness-and-give-two-examples dept.

jzoom555 writes "In an interview with Discover Magazine, Gerald Edelman, Nobel laureate and founder/director of The Neurosciences Institute, discusses the quality of consciousness and progress in building brain-based-devices. His lab recently published details on a brain model that is self-sustaining and 'has beta waves and gamma waves just like the regular cortex.'" Edelman's latest BBD contains a million simulated neurons and almost half a billion synapses, and is modeled on a cat's brain.

2 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Neat... by viyh · · Score: 5, Informative

    And they only need to increase that by 100,000 times to get to about the same number of neurons as a human brain, let alone the synaptic connections (which would be somewhere on the order of 2,000,000 times what they've done). Nonetheless, progress!

    --
    "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
  2. Re:Consciousness - right track / wrong track by daeglin · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Red" is what your parents told you it is. A name arbitrarily assigned to a specific visual sensation, which is defined by the physical makeup of your eye.

    Yes, but the fundemantal qeustion is: What is this "visual sensation"? In other words: What is qualia?

    Otherwise, I do agree with you, you parent post is mostly gibberish.