Chris Eliasmith: We Have Not Yet Learned What The Brain Has To Teach Us!

Prof. Chris Eliasmith is currently the director of the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience at University of Waterloo and the team-leader behind SPAUN – the brain simulation project that recently made news around the world. So, when I discovered that Eliasmith’s lab is just over an hour worth of driving from my place, I decided that I would take this opportunity to go talk to him in person. During my Singularity 1 on 1 interview with Chris we discuss a variety of topics such as: the story behind his desire to create a whole brain simulation; SPAUN (the Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network) and the hardware requirements to run it; whether SPAUN has thoughts and feelings and how would we know if it did; the ethical issues behind creating a brain-in-a-vat AI; the relationship between philosophy and engineering; his upcoming book How To Build A Brain; Eliasmith’s thoughts on Deep Blue, Watson, Blue Brain, SyNAPSE and Ray Kurzweil‘s How To Create A Mind; his take on the technological singularity… My favorite quote from Prof. Chris Eliasmith is: “We Have Not Yet Learned What The Brain Has To Teach Us!”