Cognitive Computing Project Aims to Reverse-Engineer the Mind

“The plan is to engineer the mind by reverse-engineering the brain,”
says Dharmendra Modha, manager of the cognitive computing project at
IBM Almaden Research Center.

In what could be one of the most ambitious computing projects ever, neuroscientists, computer engineers and psychologists are coming together in a bid to create an entirely new computing architecture that can simulate the brain’s abilities for perception, interaction and cognition. All that, while being small enough to fit into a lunch box and consuming extremely small amounts of power.

By Priya Ganapati (Wired: Gadget Lab)

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Are we on the brink of creating a computer with a human brain?

There are only a handful of scientific revolutions that would really change the world. An immortality pill would be one. A time machine would be another.

Faster-than-light travel, allowing the stars to be explored in a human lifetime, would be on the shortlist, too.

To my mind, however, the creation of an artificial mind would probably trump all of these – a development that would throw up an array of bewildering and complex moral and philosophical quandaries. Amazingly, it might also be within reach.

By Michael Hanlon (Mail Online)

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