SPAUN: The Worlds First Simulated Human Brain

[D.Olivaw]

So, some researchers at Waterloo University have put together a neural net with the same architecture as the human brain, where each element is a simulated neuron (both neurotransmitters and electrical impulses are modeled). As it is obviously not feasible to build a model with the same number of neurons as we have, the sim-brain is very sparse, with only 2.5 million neurons. Perhaps the researchers were inspired by the results of binge drinking on undergraduates. It only takes visual input, and that only in a small, low resolution format, but what it can do with that is pretty fascinating. It can do a fair number of basic IQ-test like tasks; telling you the next number in a sequence and so on (without having been explicitly programmed to do math problems).

Also interesting is the output; SPAUN is hooked up to a simulated arm with pencil and draws out its responses. Please do take a look at the video in the link, as the childlike way it writes is very impressive (once again, it is not explicitly programmed to write, it is just a mass of simulated neurons in the same organization as a human brain). In my opinion, this is one of the bigger advances in AI and understanding the human brain that I've seen in the last 10 years. What do you folks think?

http://io9.com/5965568/introducing-spau ... uman-brain