Some academics, such as Roger Penrose of Oxford University, argue that brains do not work in a way comparable with a computer, so any kind of simulation that is built on digital architecture and uses traditional programming techniques is doomed to failure. Dr Penrose thinks that exotic quantum processes are involved in the generation of consciousness. The “Blue Brain” project will help to determine whether he is right or wrong.
Henry Markram, the boss of the Brain Mind Institute, and the leader of the EPFL’s side of the collaboration, stresses that Blue Brain’s formal goal is not to build an artificial intelligence system, such as a neural network. Nor is it to create a conscious machine. The goal is merely to build a simulacrum of a biological brain. If the outputs produced by the simulation in response to particular inputs are identical to those in animal experiments, then that goal will have been achieved. On the other hand, he also says, “I believe the intelligence that is going to emerge if we succeed in doing that is going to be far more than we can even imagine.”