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Supercomputer that simulates entire human brain will switch on in 2024
(www.westernsydney.edu.au)
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this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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I have huge ethical concerns, but even more so I wanna know how they think they can start up a brain minus the development process.
To actually simulate a brain you'd have to put its connections and weights in there and AFAIK that data simply doesn't exist. Not even the connections.
What this is is a computer capable of simulating neuronal nets of the size of the brain... and AFAIU only the synaptic network. There's a hell a lot more going on in actual wetware, think neurotransmitters, plasticity, gene expression changing on the fly etc. To actually simulate a brain you'd either have to have a scan that's rather inconceivable to get in the necessary detail, or you need to grow it virtually from virtual DNA, simulate the development of the whole body and an environment for it to develop properly as our genome expects environmental stimulus, a mould to grow in.
That's pretty much what I got from the article, that they managed to build a computer that theoretically has the horsepower to compare to a human brain, but specifically what they want to use it for was more vague in the article than the headline implies.
Your last paragraph is spot on imo if they are going to straight-up simulate intelligence. People underestimate how much "training" we go through ourselves. Millions of years of evolution training our instincts encoded in dna + training through a body with dozens of senses (input data) collecting data 24/7, that can manipulate itself and interact with the environment (output data) and observe the results (more input data) for at least a few years starting from embryo.
Which means this headline is extreme clickbait.