Henry Markham's team in Switzerland have been working since 2005 with IBM to build a supercomputer using digital simulation of the human brain. The Blue Brain project tries to create realistic models of the human brain by parts and both healthy and diseased brains. Scientists of this team have successfully applied simulation to a rat cortical column, to find out how the neuronal network is connected.
The main idea is to discover the basic principles and functions of the human brain, to develop certain strategies that will lead them to build the complete brain.
Henry Markham has stated in several talks that the brain makes its own version of the universe, and then it projects it. This processes are the ones that they are trying to simulate to introduce even more powerful computers based on these processes and neuronal networks. It will also incorporate more data that neuro-scientists and biology will use to have a wider understanding of the brain. In this sense, it could also mean that neuroscience and medicine could find a cure or better treatments to mental conditions and diseases such as Alzheimer and autism.
Now, if you think about the ethics, is this project really trying to find a cure and make better treatments? Isn't it just a project to create super powerful computers and get rid of workers? what is going to happen when the whole brain is completed? are people going to be replaced by computers?
I'd like you to watch
Henry Markham's talk on TED and reflect on how is this going to affect our future.
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