Ralph – the military already has hundred of thousands of 100% accurate brain simulations at their disposal – they are called war fighters.

Not to worry, the porn industry always beats the military in implementing any new technology. So, regulators at the SEC and bureaucrats everywhere will be too occupied with brain stimulation for some brain simulation to get money and weapons. Besides, we already have a practical map of the brain: http://www.myspacegraphicsandanimations.com/images/MaleBrain_6-22-06.gif
and if anything, you should worry about a run up in the prices of hookers and blow.

What I am worrying about in my message is not going to happen tomorrow or next year. It is probably decades away. But the pilotless drones are very disturbing right now,.Recently I read about an experimental deployment of drones that actually fly themselves for most of the journey, without even requiring a human operator. The military might go far in that direction before we collectively have any clue about how to regulate such frightening devices.

this means that scientists will be able to test thesis and drugs on a functioning brain model instead of doing animal testing and trials.

Of course eventually this project will be used as a resource for the AI people to understand how real intelligence is done in nature, which will enable us to build truly intelligent machines that work on those principles.

We are just at the very beginning of this journey and we’ll just have to wait and see what’s
going to come from all this.

But nevertheless i’m very excited and wish Henry Markram and his team all the best and most importantly all the brainpower they need!

Greetings
Michael

Even the label “team Frankenstein” – maybe a good joke in a small and relatively unnoticed scientific team – could become a terrible blunder in the face of huge fund raising depending from inescapable political involvement. And so about an hypothetical artificial consciousness emerging at the end of the quest and the associated possible ethical concerns about the potential abuse performed against a new “sophont”.

My rambling was just a sort of “caveat emptor” to debunk irrelevant claims about the possible achievements of such a project, even after 10 years of dedicated work and $1.3 billion spending, no more no less.

Read my .99cent ebook. It’s 2048 and It Happened at Nextfest.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RD9EEY/

Besides, without true proprioceptive abilities, this “brain” will be totally alien to what is human condition (in its onto-genetic development).

Most probably, the end product of this simulation will be a brain suffering from a severe form of autism .

Ironically, Markram and his wife are utmost interested by autism as they have a child suffering from this condition, so, in a way Markram is ready.

This also raises the fear of cruelty to, for or by the brain machine. Can a human be cruel to a machine? Can a brain simulation feel some sort of urge to be cruel to humans or other living things?

My other worry — again almost a certainty — is that the world’s military powers will find reasons and methods aimed at somehow using such a simulation as part of a weapon of war. Every new technology is so employed. That inevitable course leads right back to providing the brain with some kind of body, weapons and even control of money (as, say, a secret agent).

Of course it does not matter whether I or anyone else fears such an undertaking. Our present life-and-death connection with technological objects means that this, or a similar project, will eventually succeed in building some kind of brain, which will then be employed in some good ways as well as in many harmful harmful ways. If things continue as they are — in terms of our rate of energy-using growth — such developments become inevitable.

The Swiss Blue Brain project is actually the Human Brain Project. They just changed the name for this funding occasion. “Blue Brain” was sort of a “internal name”.

Hope to see news from this, given the effort of EPFL in the last 20 years I hope they get the funds.