“I think that within 30 years, probably much sooner, we’ll have completely reverse-engineered the human brain and be able to recreate competing systems that emulate it,” says Ray Kurzweil.
While AI’s progress has been slower than expected, neuro-science has gotten much more sophisticated in its understanding of how the brain works. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the 37 labs of MIT’s BCS Complex. Groups here are charting the neural pathways of most of the higher cognitive functions (and their disorders), including learning, memory, the organization of complex sequential behaviors, the formation and storage of habits, mental imagery, number management and control, goal definition and planning, the processing of concepts and beliefs, and the ability to understand what others are thinking. The potential impact of this research could be enormous. Discovering how the brain works — exactly how it works, the way we know how a motor works — would rewrite almost every text in the library. Just for starters, it would revolutionize criminal justice, education, marketing, parenting, and the treatment of mental dysfunctions of every kind. (Earl Miller is hoping the research done in his lab will aid in the development of therapies for learning disorders.)
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