Didactics and Technology in Education

Many machines can obviously compute some things our brains cannot, and similarly brains can compute things that the machines we have today cannot. The question we are really trying to ask is: Can we build a computer that can compute everything a brain can? In other words, can we build a computer that can compute consciousness, or more generally, the ability to feel?

Via Szabolcs Kósa

Henry Markram, 50, is in charge of the Human Brain Project (HBP) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. By creating a computer simulation of an entire human brain, Markram’s team aims to discover 'profound insights into what makes us human, develop new treatments for brain diseases and build revolutionary new computing technologies.’
As the Cambridge Project for Existential Risk was fretting about the future, Markram was waiting to hear whether the HBP had won €1 billion in EU funding – a sum that would transform it over 10 years into one of the biggest scientific quests in the world.
The race for that funding has been run since 2009, with 23 proposals vying to become the first two EU Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) flagship projects. The flagships idea was set up to foster research into radical scientific concepts across the continent. On January 28, at a conference in Brussels, Markram’s project was announced as one of the winners

Via Szabolcs Kósa