Saturday, March 08, 2008

Blue Brain

Not sure whether I should be excited or terrified at the prospect of this:

Blue Brain scientists are confident that, at some point in the next few years, they will be able to start simulating an entire brain. "If we build this brain right, it will do everything," Markram says. I ask him if that includes selfconsciousness: Is it really possible to put a ghost into a machine? "When I say everything, I mean everything," he says, and a mischievous smile spreads across his face.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'd be curious to know how he knows that self-consciousness will emerge from the constructed brain. I have no doubt that you can reconstruct a brain to do all sorts of behavior and functional tasks. But reproducing self-consciousness, while cool in principle, is something that I'm sure he knows, within himself, that he has no idea how it works. But that wouldn't make for a cool interview.

3:41 AM  
Blogger Jonah said...

I suspect you're right about that.

3:20 PM  

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