Is the Brain a Useful Model for Artificial Intelligence?

In the summer of 2009, the Israeli neuroscientist Henry Markram strode onto the TED stage in Oxford, England, and made an immodest proposal: Within a decade, he said, he and his colleagues would build a complete simulation of the human brain inside a supercomputer. They'd already spent years mapping the cells in the neocortex, the supposed seat of thought and perception. "It's a bit like going and cataloging a piece of the rain forest," Markram explained. "How many trees does it have? What shapes are the trees?"