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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."
So now we can feed them to the future invasion of zombies? That way we can all co-exists.
Maybe we can build the *equivalent* of a human brain (number of neural connections in software, silicon or combination), but we don't even know how the thing functionally works as it is. How are we going to model it?
I'd be pretty concerned about the ethics of experimenting on an artficial brain complex enough to reasonably simulate a human one. "Human rights" aren't terribly well grounded, theoretically; but to the degree that they are, mental complexity seems to be a vital factor(given that we don't generally execute retarded people, it isn't the only one, but it is a big one). Being made of meat isn't obviously a salient factor, nor is being born to human parents.
An artificial brain of that complexity would be, in effect, a moral person. If you are willing to experiment on one, you might as well just use hobos and orphans and not have to wait a decade for fancy computers(though a simulation would have the huge advantage of read system state out of memory, no mucking around with FMRIs and stuff).
In 10 years we will have artificial brain, in 50 we will have fusion. In 20 we will have true AI and cyborg. And in 5 years the date estimate for the 3 above will probably not have changed by much (I say probably as we could do leap and bound forward, but at the moment I don't see that as probable).
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No one would use eleven years in a cliche.
Spinal Tap would.
I've been listening "in 10 years we'll have X awesome technology", but time come and go and nothing has changed, so, i'll be expecting this artificial brain so i could drive my flying car(you know, that 3D driving thingie) to arrive at the entrance of the spacial elevator so i could bang some lunar chicks.
Not everything predicted has come true, to be sure. But think about it: you are leaving a post on a computer located hundreds or thousands of miles away, along with hundreds of other people, and I, hundreds or thousands of miles away, am replying. Neither of us pays much at all for this service, which is nearly ubiquitous.
You can casually watch television shows on demand, on your phone. Which, BTW, is roughly analogous to the pocket communicators on the original series of "Star Trek", except that they couldn't watch shows or take video/pictures or blog or play solitaire on them.
There is sufficient storage in your computer to track every single man, woman, and child on earth, many times over. The price of photovoltaic solar cells has followed a consistent, exponential drop in price (half price every 5-ish years) and is now close to parity with coal.
Cars are many, many, many times safer than they used to be - most accidents now result in basically no significant injuries, even when the car is totalled, thanks to crumple zones. Flat panel TVs are commonplace, with resolutions that rival photographic paper. Flexbile, folding displays are available, if (still) expensive.
I'm not sure what kind of changes you would expect, but these are just a few of the awesome technologies that I've seen unfold in my 30-something years. I mean, what do you want?!?!
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