Guys, AI is hard. Screw it, let's just culture real brains in jars.

There's a brain in that tin can.

FTA: The robots in Jeff Krichmar’s lab don’t look like much. CARL-1, his latest model, is a squat, white trash can contraption with a couple of shopping cart wheels bolted to its side, a video camera wired to the lid, and a couple of bunny ears taped on for good measure. But open up that lid and you’ll find something remarkable — the beginnings of a truly biological nervous system. CARL-1 has thousands of neurons and millions of synapses that, he says, “are just about the edge of the amount of size and complexity found in real brains.” Not surprisingly, robots built this way — using the same operating principles as our nervous system — are called neurobots.
Krichmar emphasizes that these artificial nervous systems are based upon neurobiological principles rather than computer models of how intelligence works. The first of those principles, as he describes it, is: “The brain is embodied in the body and the body is embedded in the environment — so we build brains and then we put these brains in bodies and then we let these bodies loose in an environment to see what happens,” This has become something of a foundational principle — and the great and complex challenge — of neurobotics.

By show of hands, who's comfortable with this? Anyone? Anyone?

As if Star Wars fans weren't insufferable enough already...

And speaking of eyes....

FTA: Take a close look at that picture. There's no camera trickery going on, and no special effects; that man really does have an LED implanted in his right eye socket. And that's only the beginning.

Personally I think what this says about transhumanism is much more compelling than what it says about tis stated purpose, 'The purpose for this? To "provide a unique perspective on the way video surveillance is becoming more popular in western societies," Spence told New Scientist.' I think there are clearer (/better) ways of doing that.

Precursors to Cyborgs

Earlier this year a man missing both legs nearly qualified for the Olympics... the regular Olympics. People need to understand that we can engineer things that work *better* than our original limbs. It's quite here yet, but its coming.



And its coming sooner than you might think. Just wait til this is coupled with BMI/BCI. Its not inconceivable that within a decade people will want to replace their natural limbs with artificial ones.

Human Brain Simulations by 2018

Nine years seems optimistic to me, but Dharmendra Modha's one of those guys you have to take seriously. He's leading the DARPA funded SyNPASE team and the IMB Almaden Research Center. He's also the guy who a few years ago created a simulation of a rat's brain. It's also important to note that though a simulation would be incredible, its not necessarily AGI. Its fairly unclear to me what the outputs of the simulation would be, if any. I think this is purely for modelling purposes. None-the-less it would be an amazing feat that would seem to line up with Kurzwiel's predictions for AI breaking in the 2020's.

FTA: Although the brain is still not well understood, Modha said, "there is enough quantitative data for us to be able to begin putting together the pieces." He predicted that by 2018 computers will be able to simulate the workings of the human brain, a breakthrough that will provide researchers with unprecedented insight into how the complex organ operates.

And the same article also provides a little shout out to BMI/BCI: In addition to boosting computer performance, enhanced understanding of the brain will enable people to communicate directly with machines, whether they are robots or mechanized prosthetic limbs. Primates have already proved that such brain-machine interfaces are possible, Miguel Nicolelis, co-director of Duke University Medical Center's Center for Neuroengineering, said during the conference. The researcher and his colleagues last year successfully implanted electrodes in the brain of a monkey in North Carolina that enabled him to control a robot on a treadmill in Kyoto, Japan.

Nicolelis and his team have developed a microchip they expect will allow human brains to communicate with robots using only brain signals and enables the bots to return messages directly to the brain, without the use of sight or touch. Nicolelis said that he hopes the technology will be sophisticated enough to implant into a human brain by 2012 and enable a completely quadriplegic patient to walk again.

Bionic Eye

Well, technically, its not bionic exactly, but none-the-less making the blind see is pretty impressive. Hey, didn't we do something special for the last guy that could do that?

Still this is tech's far from perfect, FTA: The system works with the aid of eyeglasses, which hold a camera mounted on one of the lenses that captures images and sends the information to a video processor, also located on the glasses, according to the description of the technology on Second Sight's Web site. After the video processor converts the images to an electronic signal, a transmitter on the glasses sends that information wirelessly to a receiver attached to the surface of the eye. From there, the information is sent through a tiny cable to an electrode array implanted in the retina, stimulating it to emit electrical pulses. These pulses trigger signals in the retina that travel through the optic nerve to the brain, which perceives patterns of light and dark spots that correspond to the electrodes stimulated.

It's easy to imagine a day when it won't just be spots of light and dark. As we get better at restoring site, this tech will have other applications as well in AR and VR for example. Very exciting stuff.