The Human Brain Project Wants to Simulate a Brain, Gets 1B$

The human brain is arguably the most intriguing and complex part of our bodies and the way it works has puzzled scientists for most of human history. Enter The Human Brain Project; a European commission charged with the task of recreating a human brain inside a super computer. They just received 1 billion dollars in funding to get started with this immense task. See the video below for some insight on the project and its motivations.

Every human emotion, every human feeling, every human thought, every human decision requires the brain. No other natural or engineered system can match its amazing energy efficiency, its ability to work reliably for decades on end, to respond creatively to new and unexpected situations, to acquire new information and skills and to understand the actions of other living beings and to communicate through language. - HBP

Interestingly enough, they are not the only ones working on understanding how we think. Google X recently hired Ray Kurzweil, the famous inventor and author of the "Singularity" to work on an artificial mind. As computing power advances, it is not inconceivable to be able to run (at least a fraction) of our cognitive function on a computer or to build computers that would be able to think more like us (or perhaps better). Would you enjoy living in a world where machines share the same level of intelligence as us? Leave a comment with your thoughts.