Some strange news, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is creating a so called "Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics" (SyNAPSE). That name is a convoluted mouthful, but it sure sounds impressive. SyNAPSE is basically a chip that's designed to mimic the functioning of the brain's cortex. Here's a quote from DARPA's website about it:"The key to achieving the vision of the SyNAPSE program will be an unprecedented multidisciplinary approach that coordinates aggressive technology development in the following technical areas: 1) Hardware; 2) Architecture; 3) Simulation; and 4) Environment. Hardware includes neuromorphic electronics with novel, high density, plastic, synaptic components; Architecture includes neuromorphic design from microcircuits to complete system; Simulation includes large-scale digital simulation of neuromorphic circuits and functional neuromorphic systems; and Environment includes virtual training, testing and benchmarking for neuromorphic systems."
Though I'm somewhat skeptical about it. Even if they can successfully model the brain with a chip it may not actually lead to anything intelligent. Overall, though, it seems that science is progressing towards brain-machine connections which is either exciting or horrifying depending on your own personal opinon. Its good to know that our government is working hard to make sure normal human brains will be obsolete in the future.
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