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Artificial Synapse Created For Synthetic Brain

Posted by timothy on from the let's-vote-these-amateur-clowns-out-of-office dept.

Zothecula writes "It's probably still going to be a while before autonomous, self-aware androids are wandering amongst us. That scenario has come a little closer to reality, however, with researchers from the University of Southern California having created a functioning synapse circuit using carbon nanotubes. An artificial version of the connections that allow electrical impulses to pass between neurons in our brains, the circuit could someday be one component of a synthetic brain."

1 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why do robot brains need synapses? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ust because biological brains have synapses, do computer brains need them as well?

    Serious question. I don't know where AI is or where it's taking us.

    The answer to the question is simply: "nobody knows". Is the role of the synapse simply to connect one cell to another, like a piece of wire in a circuit, or does it have some deeper functional role? Its behaviour is certainly far more complex than the OP suggests. My money is on the current paradigm (the brain as a computer) being about as completely and utterly wrong as the previous paradigm (the brain as a clock-work mechanical machine) was.