China Brain Project

In the past, I've mentioned about several computer brain simulations that researchers are attempting to create (see here and here). China also has their own project that seeks to artificially simulate a brain. It appears that a few US researchers are working on the project too. You can read a relatively recent report about their progress thus far here (file removed)

By the end of this 4 year project, we hope to be able to show the world an artificial brain, consisting of 10,000s of evolved neural net modules that control the 100s of behaviors of a NAO robot (and probably a more sophisticated robot) that makes a casual observer feel that the robot “has a brain behind it”. It also hoped that this artificial brain project will encourage other research teams to work in this new area, as well as help establish an artificial brain industry that will stimulate the growth of the home robot industry, probably the world’s largest by 2030.

It looks like they want to imbue it with self consciousness. This definitely seems like it would be a tricky ethical issue to grapple with.

Dean Zhou Changle, (dean of the School of Information Science and Technology) at Xiamen University, is responsible for the consciousness (self awareness) component of the project. At the time of writing (Oct 2008), this component is still under consideration. The dean is keen on this component, even referring to this project as the “Conscious Robot Project”.

The AGI-09 conference in Artificial General Intelligence is taking place right now. You can read more artificial intelligence papers here (removed).

An older paper about the china brain project can be found here (PDF).