Friday, November 20, 2009

The Future Is Now, Vol LXXVII: Cortical Simulation Advances


Using an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer, scientists in California simulated a cortex with approximately 6% of human complexity, "that exceed[s] the complexity of the cat cortex".
Not representing a full cat cortex, as has been described elsewhere--a subtle but important distinction. It's going to be one thing to do a large scale simulation with an appropriate number of neurons and connections, and quite another level of difficulty to do a specific type of brain. Still, this is moving ahead nicely.
Update: Markham says, "it's a scam". Just a big neural network, not a simulated brain.

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