Creating the future w/Kwabena Boahen and his team at Stanford University Join in @ https://www.minds.com/groups/profile/525170186303578112/activity A Machine That Can Think Stanford joins the quest for cognitive computing. This is your brain on nanotech. Stanford scientists have begun work on a project to help create nothing less than an artificial version of the human brain. The goals evoke all our notions of a sci-fi future—machines that actually can think—but the results will depend on the down-to-earth collaboration of a deep pool of researchers. Stanford brings a conspicuous breadth of expertise to the initiative, notes Brian Wandell, chair of psychology and one of three professors at the hub of the University’s involvement. He’s teaming with Kwabena Boahen, associate professor of bioengineering, and H.-S. Philip Wong, professor of electrical engineering, in an effort coordinated by IBM, funded by a Department of Defense agency and integrated with research from other universities, including Columbia and Cornell. The first nine months of work amount to “phase zero,” Wandell says, of a long-term challenge that will draw in an array of professional and student researchers. The ultimate assignment: figure out how to create “cognitive computing”—technology that emulates brain functions such as perception, sensation and emotion while using hardware and software of equivalent speed, efficiency, coherency and overall compactness. This is your brain on portable power. Part of the excitement in the work stems from the fact that it’s only incredibly ambitious, rather than inconceivable. The project—part of the SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) program from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)–presumes enough understanding of brain activity to try emulating it. “We think this is a time when we know enough about the principal computational steps that the brain uses to make judgments and decisions,” says Wandell. ...