The Human Brain Project Receives Up To $1.34 Billion

New submitter TheRedWheelbarrow writes "The singularity looms as the Human Brain Project gets up to $1.34 billion in funding. 'The challenge in AI is to design algorithms that can produce intelligent behavior and to use them to build intelligent machines. It doesn't matter whether the algorithms are biologically realistic — what matters is that they work — the behavior they produce. In the HBP, we're doing something completely different...we will base the technology on what we actually know about the brain and its circuitry.'"

Comments

Why study the human brain then?

[concealment]

It seems unclear to me that human brains produce "intelligent behavior." It seems to depend on the brain. Only a few per hundred seem to work really well, but up to half of them can file TPS reports.

Re:Why study the human brain then?

[ColdWetDog]

Yeah.

In the HBP, we're doing something completely different...we will base the technology on what we actually know about the brain and its circuitry.'"

With this approach, they will probably start with nematode brains.

And realize they don't have to go any farther.

Re:Why study the human brain then?

[javilon]

Why study a human brain?

The more ways we attack a given problem, the more chances of success. We have different communities working on different approaches to AI: Statistic, symbolic and biologically inspired. All three have produced interesting results already, meaning they have solved some practical problems.

Also, most human brains can show "intelligent behavior" in certain ways that our latest algorithms can't, e.g. navigating an arbitrary kitchen and finding a beer in the fridge :-)

Re:Why study the human brain then?

[phantomfive]

Human brains may be weak, but the vision recognition algorithms are amazing.

Re:Why study the human brain then?

[fahrbot-bot]

It seems unclear to me that human brains produce "intelligent behavior." It seems to depend on the brain. Only a few per hundred seem to work really well, but up to half of them can file TPS reports.

The popularity of TV shows like "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" and "The Housewives of _______", not to mention the people actually *on* those shows, would seem to support your thesis.

Re:Why study the human brain then?

[shadowrat]

if sentience and intelligence is some emergent property of a physical system (our brain), it must be possible to create that system again from scratch. It is highly probable that a similar system could be artificially constructed out of other materials or simulated and yield the same results.

Spelling check?

[RoccamOccam]

For headlines, at least, I would check my spelling.

Another example...

[DaemonDan]

Of how life imitates sci-fi. I distinctly remember a research project in the computer game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri called the Human Brain Project. If I'm remembering right it turned normal citizens into super smart "Talents". It will be interesting to see the effect of the real world version.

Re:Finally doing what Microsoft should have done..

[Beetjebrak]

Not everything with a price has value.

Correction

[golden age villain]

I believe that what they receive is actually up to 0.5 B€ in matching funds, meaning that for every 1 € they get from other sources (private persons, foundations, national funding bodies, etc...), they will get another 1 € from the EU, up to 0.5 B€ for a total of about 1 B€. Also this is granted under the EU Framework Program 7 which ends soon. So really what they got so far is 54 M€ for 30 months and the rest will come after that under the new EU program/package (Horizon 2020) which is currently being negotiated. Given the financial health of EU countries right now, there is a chance that the overall envelope is cut down and it is not clear how much funds they will get from national bodies in the first place.

The EU is also funding under the same initiative another B€ project about graphene.

The Human Brain Project promises a lot (AI, curing neurodegenerative diseases, understanding the brain and consciousness, limiting animal experimentation, etc...) and it is the opinion of most neuroscientists in the US and in Europe that it won't deliver. If you google it, you will find many interviews from neuroscientists who are very critical of it. It is difficult to evaluate what really will come out of it.

Another failure in the making.

[TelavianX]

Massive large projects like this almost always end in utter failure. Even the IBM cat brain project failed to accomplish much. Intelligence is much more complicated than a mere randomly connected neural network. I just hope something good comes from this and it is not a total waste.

Re:Another failure in the making.

[TelavianX]

Good luck with growing simulated neurons and their connections. The brain is more complicated than the known universe. The problem with this approach and all decision problems such as this is the massive amount of levels of probabilities. Suppose a probabilistic choice was made near the beginning when a different one should have been made. How will they know that?

Already solved

[srussia]

But the following proviso is misguided: "It doesn't matter whether the algorithms are biologically realistic--what matters is that they work--the behavior they produce."

The basic algorithm to produce human behavior is essentially biological:
10: Wine
20: Women
30: Song
40: GOTO 10

Sex, drugs and rock & roll for you hipsters out there (and quit trespassing on my lawn to collect magic mushooms).

The problem

[phantomfive]

I absolutely am in favor of basic science research, but looking through their documents, I can't find the answer to this problem.

What is the success metric? They have a system, which is basically a super computer, and they will have it solving some equations. The equations represent some parts of neurons, but not all. How will they know that they've succeeded? The computer isn't going to simulate any real human brain, we don't know what that looks like. We barely know what C. Elegans' looks like. Are they going to use this computer to answer some question? What question?

What are they going to use to know if they've succeeded? Overly-optimistic promises are what killed a lot of AI research around the 1970s.

Re:Finally doing what Microsoft should have done..

[Beetjebrak]

I have to be neither a chicken or a chef to have an informed opinion on the quality of an omelette.

Rat hole

[Squidlips]

In technical terms, this is known as throwing money down a rat hole. And it is not the first time this has been done.... I love how engineers tell us they are going to mimic brain, but don't ask them how the brain works 'cause no one knows.

This just in: Human brain replicated perfectly!

[spleendamage]

Everything was going well, the human-like computer completing math and English challenges like a champ, but then something inside changed and suddenly it decided to spend all of it's free time watching reality television, voting for the next American Idol and ordering products featured on infomercials. The death knell came when the machine already feeling a bit self-conscious after eating Big Macs and Snickers bars, noticing that it's penis length was inadequate, and wondering why no one had responded to the Match.com or eHarmony profiles posted decided that the better life could be had by simply pouring light beer and spiced rum directly onto it's CPU.

Re:webpage intro refers to "Design Secrets"

[fritsd]

The humanbrainproject url clearly states it seeks to discover the brains "design secrets" ????
Are these scientists or intelligent design types???
And no religion and science are not compatable.

Surely they are both, and their religion and science are compatible as well.
<fictional_example>
It can be argued that the zealous dr. Frankenstein was both a scientist, and an intelligent designer
</fictional_example>