The Daily Mail features a very in-depth feature story about the work of Henry Markram and the Blue Brain Project, an effort to “reverse-engineer the mammalian brain, in order to understand brain function and dysfunction through detailed simulations.” Markram and team, who have already been able to simulate the workings of “about 10,000 neurons,” firmly believe that they will be able to develop a copy of a rat’s brain within the decade:
‘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.’
There is, inevitably, scepticism. But even Markram’s critics mostly accept that he is on to something and, most importantly, that he has the money.
Tens of millions of euros are flooding into his laboratory at the Brain Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne – paymasters include the Swiss government, the EU and private backers, including the computer giant IBM. Artificial minds are, it seems, big business.
The human brain is the most complex object in the universe. But Markram insists that the latest supercomputers will soon have its measure.
Although Markram has plenty of resources, he estimates he’ll need a custom-built “billion dollar machine” to simulate a human brain.
[...] This video is only a taste of director Noah Hutton’s “10-year-in-the-making” film, although I’m not sure if that means the finished documentary will be released a decade from now, a time Markram has predicted that he and his team will ultimately be successful in their mission. [...]