Artificial Brain

          Artificial brain is a term commonly used in the media to describe research that aims to develop software and hardware with cognitive abilities similar to the animal or human brain. Research investigating "artificial brains" plays three important roles in science:

1. An ongoing attempt by neuroscientists to understand how the human brain works, known as cognitive neuroscience.
2. A thought experiment in the philosophy of artificial intelligence, demonstrating that it is possible, in theory, to create a machine that has all the capabilities of a human being.
3. A serious long term project to create machines capable of general intelligent action or Artificial General Intelligence. This idea has been popularised by Ray Kurzweil as strong AI (taken to mean a machine as intelligent as a human being).

          An example of the first objective is the project reported by Aston University in Birmingham, England where researchers are using biological cells to create "neurospheres" (small clusters of neurons) in order to develop new treatments for diseases including Alzheimer's, Motor Neurone and Parkinson's Disease.

          The second objective is a reply to arguments such as John Searle's Chinese room argument, Hubert Dreyfus' critique of AI or Roger Penrose's argument in The Emperor's New Mind. These critics argued that there are aspects of human consciousness or expertise that can not be simulated by machines. One reply to their arguments is that the biological processes inside the brain can be simulated to any degree of accuracy. This reply was made as early as 1950, by Alan Turing in his classic paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence".

          The third objective is generally called artificial general intelligence by researchers. However Kurzweil prefers the more memorable term Strong AI. In his book The Singularity is Near he focuses onwhole brain emulation using conventional computing machines as an approach to implementing artificial brains, and claims (on grounds of computer power continuing an exponential growth trend) that this could be done by 2025. Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain project (which is attempting brain emulation), made a similar claim (2020) at the Oxford TED conference in 2009.