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Paul Allen’s quest to build an artificial brain is one of the hardest software-engineering endeavors ever attempted

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

Sourced through Scoop.it from: linkis.com

Thought process: Building an artificial brain

Paul Allen’s $500 million quest to dissect the mind and code a new one from scratch

He persuaded University of Washington AI researcher Oren Etzioni to lead the brain-building team and Caltech neuroscientist Christof Koch to lead the brain-deconstruction team. For them and the small army of other PhD scientists working for Allen, the quest to understand the brain and human intelligence has parallels in the early 1900s when men first began to ponder how to build a machine that could fly.

There were those who believed the best way would be to simulate birds, while there were others, like the Wright brothers, who were building machines that looked very different from species that could fly in nature. And it wasn’t clear back then which approach would get humanity into the skies first.

Whether they create something reflected in nature or invent something entirely novel, the mission is the same: conquering the final frontier of the human body — the brain — to enable people to live longer, better lives and answer fundamental questions about humans’ place in the universe.

SOURCE

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/09/30/brain/

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