I might go so far as to say that the issue isn't with the management structure so much as the complete lack of a management structure. It takes a well run and managed organization to spend a billion euros effectively.
Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It
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Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It
#12I was never satisfied with their explanation for why they had to start with the human brain rather than the brain of a MUCH simpler organism like C. elegans.
Exactly. So much of neuroscience is still in "unknown unknown" phase, and the idea of just doing this massive interdisciplinary project to simulate a full human brain, built on the pile of sand that is any sort of "theory" of full-brain simulation ... it's like dedicating $1 billion to some dude's unpublished idea of proving P = NP. Bullshit should have been called before this ever got off the drawing board. Sure see…
Sure seems like the EU has it's fair share of incompetent technocrats if you can throw $1 billion at some nonsense any handful of PhDs in the field could have told you was nonsense if you'd just picked up a phone.
Sounds like most VC firms nowadays.
Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It
#13This passage really distills it down to the essence of what happened: "Despite skepticism in the neuroscience community, Markram won over the people who really mattered: funders at the European Commission, who seem to have looked less closely at the proposal's scientific feasibility than at its potential economic and political payoff."
There is a great recent Omega Tau episode on the reasons why mega projects often fail: http://omegataupodcast.net/2015/09/181-why-megaprojects-fail...
Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It
#14Like any project, I'm sure there are many ways it can be improved. Still, I'd much rather see $1B spent imperfectly on something important - a thousand times over - rather than a trillion plus on the F-35, or so many of the ways governments spend money.
No results from a wahatever effort is still axwaste no matter how wonderful the payoff might have been. This goes to the heart of why efforts like this get funding in the first place. The funding committees get blinded by the bright light of the potential payoff, and the money gets wasted instead of going to fund and actualy deliver valuable projects that aren't as glitzy. But at least you would have ended up with a real actual benefit.
Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It
#15Like any project, I'm sure there are many ways it can be improved. Still, I'd much rather see $1B spent imperfectly on something important - a thousand times over - rather than a trillion plus on the F-35, or so many of the ways governments spend money.
No results from a wahatever effort is still axwaste no matter how wonderful the payoff might have been. This goes to the heart of why efforts like this get funding in the first place. The funding committees get blinded by the bright light of the potential payoff, and the money gets wasted instead of going to fund and actualy deliver valuable projects that aren't as glitzy. But at least you would have ended up with a…
> No results from a wahatever effort is still axwaste no matter how wonderful the payoff might have been.
That's easy to say with hindsight. No results from putting money into something doesn't mean you made the wrong choice. That might be the case here, but as a general statement it's really quite dangerously wrong.
Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It
#16Like any project, I'm sure there are many ways it can be improved. Still, I'd much rather see $1B spent imperfectly on something important - a thousand times over - rather than a trillion plus on the F-35, or so many of the ways governments spend money.
No results from a wahatever effort is still axwaste no matter how wonderful the payoff might have been. This goes to the heart of why efforts like this get funding in the first place. The funding committees get blinded by the bright light of the potential payoff, and the money gets wasted instead of going to fund and actualy deliver valuable projects that aren't as glitzy. But at least you would have ended up with a…
> No results from a wahatever effort is still axwaste no matter how wonderful the payoff might have been.
That's easy to say with hindsight. No results from putting money into something doesn't mean you made the wrong choice. That might be the case here, but as a general statement it's really quite dangerously wrong.
Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It
#17John Cleese, of all people, summarized our current knowledge of the nervous system best in this video: https://youtu.be/FQjgsQ5G8ug?t=20
We are clueless. A lot of what is published is just neurobabble, even in 'serious' journals. As others have pointed out, we still don't even know how to simulate a brain of a tiny worm with 302 neurons. Talking about simulating billions of neurons is beyond fantasy, and funding such a projects is.. well.. not surprising from politicians, but that is another matter.
Similarly, a lot of scientists are researching themes like 'consciousness' and 'executive functions' and still don't know how to make a robot walk like a normal person on two feet. We should be concentrating on trying to understand the simple stuff - the reflex arc, muscle control, grasping, and pointing a finger toward something.
Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It
#18I think this is the Spanish talkshow mentioned in the post which is quite a tl;dr for what went wrong with HBP
Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It
#19I was never satisfied with their explanation for why they had to start with the human brain rather than the brain of a MUCH simpler organism like C. elegans.
Because it's unlikely that C. elegans can't even learn. It doesn't have any brain structures equivalent to ones in humans. It's neurons work totally differently. They are so different from us that anything we learn probably wouldn't apply to human brains. A more intelligent animal, ideally a mammal, would be a much better choice.
Re: Why the Human Brain Project Went Wrong and How to Fix It
#20I was never satisfied with their explanation for why they had to start with the human brain rather than the brain of a MUCH simpler organism like C. elegans.
Exactly. OpenWorm [1] is trying to do exactly that, emulate C. elegans, with all of 302 neurons. It doesn't work yet, but they;'re plugging along. When that problem is totally solved, and the neural model is working right, it's time to move up in complexity. Probably to lizards or birds. About two decades ago, I heard Rod Brooks talking about building a human brain. He'd done some good artificial insects and was big…
It's not clear at all that Mouse->Human is simply a scaling problem.
It would appear that there is some emergent phenomenon (consciousness) somewhere on the scale between mouse and human. This phenomenon may be triggered by a surplus of "computational resource" with respect to "body to be controlled", which I personally think is unlikely. It may be triggered by a matching of computational resource to controllable complexity, i.e. the hands and fingers -> tool use, who knows?
There is so much we don't know about cognition. For example, are Whales/Dolphins self aware/conscious? They have the requisite brain mass, if it's simply a scaling problem.