The Human Brain Project Kicks Off 251
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."
€10bn != $1.3bn (Score:3, Informative)
Also, this was copied verbatim from the Fox News website. Over-valuing of the $ might be normal there but lets keep it off tech sites.
Re:This time for SURE! (Score:2, Informative)
Seriously, how is this different from all the other AI research programs that have been done so far?
What's different? Computing power is approaching the estimated requirement needed to simulate the number of neurons in the human brain. Don't you think you should know that before totally shooting down the idea? You're probably right, but that doesn't mean no new insights will come out of the research.
it's all about the neuroscience (Score:2, Informative)
Since noone posting is actually visiting the Human Brain Project's website....
The goal of the Human Brain Project, in a nutshell (skullshell?) is to create new neuroscience informatics and modeling software, and new computers powerful enough to run them. This will, in theory, allow "in silico" experiments to test various hypotheses about brain organization, diseases, etc. The proposed "Brain Simulation Platform" supercomputer is just one component of the overall project.
So no...they are not trying to make artificial brains to drive an autonomous car, terminator robot, or flying toaster.
source: https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/documents/10180/17646/Vision+Document/8bb75845-8b1d-41e0-bcb9-d4de69eb6603
Re:A computer that works like the human brain? (Score:4, Informative)
... simulate the complete human brain on supercomputers to better understand how it functions. The end hopes of the HBP include being able to mimic the human brain and being able to better diagnose human brain diseases and mental problems.
The confusion seems to have come from the Fox News article, the author mentions that the computer to simulate the human brain must be much more powerful than we currently have. But it's not supposed to be powerful because it's based on the human brain, it's supposed to be powerful to SIMULATE the brain.
He says a computer brain will consume gigawatts of power, require new forms of memory, and force scientists to look at cutting edge storage techniques. But the immense technical hurdles will be worth the effort. The first phases will help us understand how the brain functions. In later phases, we’ll find out how we learn, how we see and hear, and why the brain sometimes doesn’t process information correctly.
TLDR: they're building a supercomputer to model the human brain, not building a computer modeled on the human brain to be super.
TFA tells a different story, as usual (Score:5, Informative)