[extropy-chat] DARPA Ends Brain Reverse Engineering Project

[Jef Allbright]

FYI,
- Jef


An article in the New Jersey
Star-Ledger<http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-11/1173937313282210.xml&coll=1>says
DARPA has "quietly killed" their project to reverse engineering the
human brain. The project, known as Biologically Inspired Cognitive
Architectures <http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/programs/bica/index.htm> (BICA),
had been compared to other very difficult projects such as the atomic bomb
or moon landing. DARPA has denied requests to explain why they dropped the
project and neuroscientists who were involved said, "All we know is it's
dead". The first phase was a $9.5 million project planning stage. The
cancelled phase 2 was to be a $50-100 million attempt to design
"psychologically-based and neurobiology-based cognitive architectures" based
on the human brain. There is speculation that DARPA concluded phase 2 was
simply to ambitious. For more detailed information see DARPA's BICA
Information Pamplhlet <http://www.darpa.mil/BAA/pdfs/baa05-18pip.pdf> (PDF
format) or the reports from Phase 1
participants<http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/programs/bica/phase1.htm>.
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