From digitizing life to digitizing mind… Blue Brain Project brings us closer to the technological Black Swan.
"The Blue Brain project is now at a crucial juncture. The first phase of
the project—"the feasibility phase"—is coming to a close. The skeptics,
for the most part, have been proven wrong. It took less than two years
for the Blue Brain supercomputer to accurately simulate a neocortical
column, which is a tiny slice of brain containing approximately 10,000
neurons, with about 30 million synaptic connections between them. "The column has been built and it runs," Markram says. "Now we just
have to scale it up." 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." [read more]
Have a peek at a mammalian brain simulated on a supercomputer.