Artificial Brain '10 Years Away'

SpuriousLogic writes "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."

Comments

Re:don't believe it

[Irish_Samurai]

When you can define the rudimentary start of a Jungian Archetype, and map the process that creates it, we can talk.

Until then, shut the fuck up.

Seriously. I would hate to see a human brain that functioned without personality.

Re:Seems ethically dodgy...

[martyros]

It's a fact, however, that "science" is used in two ways. One is the "scientific method": propose a hypothesis, perform an experiment capable of disproving that hypothesis, repeat. The second way that "science" is used is to mean "learning about the physical world through experiments".

Your last paragraph shows that even you are confusing the two. Being able to use the scientific method to test something does not require that it obey physical laws. Furthermore, if you read the Bible at least, it never asks someone to believe in God without evidence or reason.

In fact, there's a great example of a classic Biblical character using the scientific method to determine whether God really told him to do something or whether there was some funky mold in the wine he drank. Judges 6:36-40 tells the story of Gideon asking God for two signs in succession. First time, he puts out a wool fleece overnight, and asks for the wool to be wet and the ground to be dry in the morning. It is. Next time, he puts out the wool fleece, and asks for the wool to be dry and the ground to be wet. The next morning it is. Since the conditions were the same, and the only thing different was what he prayed, he concluded that God was real. Now, the running of the experiment may not live up to modern scientific standards (not enough repetitions and control), but the logic of it is sound.

Back to the point at hand: suppose that an artificial brain without a "soul" did act similar to a human, but not exactly. How could we tell?