Bold Predictions on Artificial Brains
You should watch with interest progress towards emulating the human brain in hardware; this is the (long) path to ensuring we can live a lot, lot longer than our biology allows for. The claims in this BBC article are bold, conditional on massive funding and a large research community, but probably not completely out of line: "A detailed, functional [simulated] artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed. Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain. He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses. ... It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years. ... Over the last 15 years, Professor Markram and his team have picked apart the structure of the neocortical column. ... The project now has a software model of 'tens of thousands' of neurons - each one of which is different - which has allowed them to digitally construct an artificial neocortical column."