i was getting really into the idea of the Blue Brain, but then you threw the real world pac man at me and i was truly impressed and excited. i'm ashamed to admit how fun that sounds. if they had that at the gym, i'd get a lot more exercise.

back to the blue brain .... I, Robot, which a pretty cheesy movie, really brought up a lot of the sort of ethical and theoretical questions around this (while barely addressing the technology), and i have to say that i'm really on the fence. i have no idea how i feel about it for many reasons, including that it sort of makes me feel .... empty to know that my brain and my self could be recreated digitally. i think more than any of the other aspects, that's what really keeps me from being 100% into the idea. somewhere in there it feels like the way humans define themselves will be seriously disturbed, and perhaps not in a good way.

Real-world Frogger showed initial promise, but the liability issues proved cost-prohibitive.

Yeah, and real-world Burger Time just makes you fat and lazy...

Weirdly enough, Battlestar Galactica does some interesting things with the theme of Artificial Intelligence.

I've been toying with ideas like the Blue Brain concept for a number of years, and I like the basic concept ("behavior" emerging from a system that is built to model low-level mechanical interactions). I think it's the only way that makes sense for life and intelligence to come into being, in my atheistic world view. A brain, however, is an exceptionally complicated set of equipment, and it requires a whole lot of knowledge we don't have yet to map it on such a level of detail.

A couple of years ago, I discussed with my father (a neurochemist with 40+ years of professional research experience) the idea of creating something a little simpler as a cellular model, with the idea that a computer model of cell behavior would be needed first. He suggested I try a nematode - a tiny multi-cellular organism whose complete life cycle is already understood in pretty thorough detail, and actually mapped on a cell by cell basis.

On more reflection, even that was kind of intimidating. There is so much more that goes on in an organism than just modelling the cells. For instance, you have to model the medium in which the nematode lives in order for it to get nutrients, and eliminate waste. If its "living in a vacuum", it would just "die".

Bringing it back to the brain, I personally believe that the whole body is an interconnected system, and the brain cannot be mapped in isolation. How can you have accurate brain behavior without simulating (incredibly complicated) input from the eyes, ears, and other nervous receptors that are placed throughout the body? A "Brain in a Box" can never behave like a human being, because it will never have the stimuli of a human being. It won't get hungry, or slam its fingers in the car door, or feel the loving relief of a full-body embrace.

Even if we could develop a complete set of inputs to simulate these events, they would occur at the whim of someone who pushes a button (or writes a program to feed them in), rather than occurring in response to real or perceived threats with genuine costs and consequences. Therefore, any "learning" in the artificial brain would be very contrived, and the lessons learned would quite likely be very disordered.

I think it's a fascinating idea for a project. I also think it is over-ambitious to our current level of understanding of the biology of the human brain. But mostly, I think any hype or speculation surrounding the results should be ignored, because the actual product of such an experiment will be much more about showing these limitations than it will be about creating an artificial soul.

It should be noted here that the researchers doing this have, to my knowledge, made no claims about creating an electric soul.