The Human Brain Project Kicks Off

Velcroman1 writes "What if you could build a computer that works just like the human brain? You could invent new forms of industrial machinery, create fully autonomous thinking cars, devise new kinds of home appliances. And a new project in Europe hopes to create a computer brain just that powerful in the next ten years — and it's incredibly well-funded. The Human Brain Project kicks off Oct. 7 at a conference in Switzerland. Over the next 10 years, about 80 science institutions and at least 20 government entities in Europe will figure out how to make that computer brain. The project will cost about 1.2 billion euros — or about $1.6B in U.S. dollars. The research hinges on creating a super-powerful computer that's 1,000 times faster than those in use today."

Skynet.

[Anonymous Coward]

$1.3 Billion and they forget to install a kill switch.

Quck

[Anonymous Coward]

Edit that original post before someone notices your euro to dollar conversion mistake and the dollar sign when mentioning euros.

Re:Conversion?

[Anonymous Coward]

"$10 billion euros", is a whole new currency, dollar-euro?

I think I know where this is going..

[RoverDaddy]

"We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.”

And the computer goes ...

[Coeurderoy]

Ouinnnnnn,
and the "parents" decide that the power bill is too high,

so who gets to kill the new sentient being ?
And who goes to jail ?

Re:Sentient?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL Rights? You must be from Europe.

LOL

[sootman]

Dr. Gayani DeSilva, a psychiatrist with a private practice in Orange, Calif., told FoxNews.com a human brain model could have "unimaginable" implications for medicine...

Maybe the new brain will be able to imagine the implications. :-)

Re:Skynet.

[rubycodez]

it won't need to move a servo. it will zero your bank account, cancel your credit, tag you as needing palliative obamacare, and mark your license plates for arrest

Re:A computer that works like the human brain?

[ShanghaiBill]

It'll take at least 3 decades before their artificial human brain is cost competitive with a human brain.

Except that the billion euros is the development cost, not the unit production cost. The development of the human brain took 4.5 billion years, and the resources of an entire planetary system, although there were some inefficiencies in the process.