Friday, January 15, 2010

The real Frankenstein experiment


One man's mission to create a living mind inside a machine | Mail Online: "His words staggered the erudite audience gathered at a technology conference in Oxford last summer.

"Professor Henry Markram, a doctor-turned-computer engineer, announced that his team would create the world's first artificial conscious and intelligent mind by 2018.  And that is exactly what he is doing.

"On the shore of Lake Geneva, this brilliant, eccentric scientist is building an artificial mind. A Swiss - it could only be Swiss - precision- engineered mind, made of silicon, gold and copper."
What Markram's project amounts to is an audacious attempt to build a computerised copy of a brain - starting with a rat's brain, then progressing to a human brain - inside one of the world's most powerful computers.

"This, it is hoped, will bring into being a sentient mind that will be able to think, reason, express will, lay down memories and perhaps even experience love, anger, sadness, pain and joy.
'We will do it by 2018,' says the professor confidently. 'We need a lot of money, but I am getting it. There are few scientists in the world with the resources I have at my disposal.

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