Go game. (Credit: Nature / Google DeepMind)

So the media last week was absolutely full of the latest Sure Sign that the robocalypse is immanent: apparently, Google-backed DeepMind have now managed to create an AI so very sophisticated that it has beat human champions at the ancient Chinese board-game of Go. DeepMind’s AlphaGo has defeated the European champion, which marks another important development in the progress of AI research, trumping IBM DeepBlue’s victory over Gary Kasparov at chess back in 1997: Go is, apparently, a much more difficult game for humans – and, it was thought, for computers – to master, due to its complexity and the need for players to recognise complex patterns.

I expected, when setting off to write a note about this achievement, to find the usual sources in the popular press, with their characteristically subtle declarations, heralding that the End of the Human Race is Nigh!; however, thankfully, responses seem to be more sanguineand muted. The British tabloids have even avoided using that picture of Terminator that almost invariably accompanies their reports on new developments in AI and robotics.

So perhaps this is a sign that things are changing, and that the popular press are becoming more sensible, and more responsible, in their technology reporting. (Lets see how many weeks – or even days – we can go without this sort of thing before claiming victory, or even that we’ve turned a significant corner.)

But there is a lot interesting about DeepMind’s success, from a cultural perspective, even if it hasn’t stirred the usual panic about the robopocalypse. It made me recall a conversation I had atan EURobotics event in Bristol in November. We humans, it seems, like to think that we’re special. And maybe the possibility that robots or AI are a threat to that special status is another reason why we are so afraid of them. Maybe we fear another blow to our narcissism, like when that crazy astronomer Copernicus spoiled things by showing that the earth wasn’t the centre of the Universe, or that Victorian poo-pooer Darwin demonstrated that we merely evolved on this earth and weren’t not placed here at the behest of some Divine Creator. Maybe we don’t really fear that robots and AI will destroy all of humanity – well, maybe we fear that, too – but maybe part of what we fear is that robots and AI will destroy another one of those special places we reserve for ourselves as unique beings amidst creation.

And yet our scientists aren’t going to let us sit wrapped in the warmth of our unique being. They keep pushing ahead and developing more and more sophisticated AI that threatens our… specialness. So how do we, as a culture, respond to such a persistent challenge? Like any good politician, it seems we have decided to confront the inevitability of our failure by constantly changing the rules.

Choose your sporting metaphor: we ‘move the goalposts‘, we ‘raise the bar’.

Once upon a time, it was enough for we humans to think of ourselves as the rational animal, the sole species on earth endowed with the capacity for reason. As evidence for reason as the basis for a unique status for humanity crumbled – thanks both to proof that other animals were capable of sophisticated thought and the lack of proof that humans were, in fact, rational – we tried to shift those goalposts. We then transformed ourselves into the symbolic animal, the sole species on earth endowed with the capacity to manipulate signs and represent.

Then we learned that whales, dolphins and all sorts of animals were communicating with each other all the time, even if we weren’t listening. And that’s before we taught chimps how to use sign language (for which Charleton Heston will never thank us).

And then computers arrived to make things even worse. After some early experiments with hulking machines that struggled to add 2 + 2, computers soon progressed to leave us in their wake. Computers can clearly think more accurately, and faster, than any human being. And they can solve complex mathematical equations, demonstrating that they are pretty adept with symbols.

Ah, BUT…

Humans could find some solace in the comforting thought that computers were good and some things, yes, but they weren’t so smart. Not really. A computer would never beat a human being at chess, for example. Until in May 1997, when chess champion Gary Kasparov lost to IBM’s Deep Blue.  But that was always going to happen. A computer could never, we consoled ourselves, win at a game that required linguistic dexterity. Until 2011, when IBM’s Watson beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter at Jeopardy!, the hit US game show. And now, Google’s DeepMind as conquered all, winning the hardest game we can imagine….

So what is interesting about DeepMind’s victory is how human beings have responded – again – to the challenges of our self-conception posed by robots and AI. Because if we were under any illusion that we were special, alone among gods’ creations as a thinking animal, or a symbolising animal, or a playing animal, that status as been usurped by our own progeny, again and again, in that all-too familiar Greek-Frankenstein-Freudian way.

Animal rationabile had to give way to animal symbolicum, who in turn gave way to animal ludens… what’s left now for poor, biologically-limited humanity?

A glimpse of our answer to this latest provocation can be seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation:Lieutenant Commander Data is a self-aware android with cognitive abilities far beyond that of any human being. And yet, despite these tremendous capabilities, Data is always regarded – by himself and all the humans around him – as tragically, inevitably, inferior, as less than human. Despite the lessons in Shakespeare and sermons on human romantic ideals from his mentor, the ship’s captain Jean-Luc Picard, Data is doomed to be forever inferior to humans.

It seems that now AI can think and solve problems as well as humans, we’ve raised the bar again, changing the definition of ‘human’ to preserve our unique, privileged status.

We might now be animal permotionem – the emotional animal – except while that would be fine for distinguishing between us and robots, at least until we upload the elusive ‘consciousness.dat’ file (as in Neill Blomkamp’s recent film, Chappie)  this new moniker won’t help us remain distinct from the rest of the animals, because to be an emotional animal, to be a creature ruled by impulse and feeling, is.. to just be an animal, according to all of our previous definitions. (We’ve sort of painted ourselves into a corner with that one.)

We might find some refuge, then, following Gene Roddenberry’s  example, in the notion of humans as unique animal artis, the animals that create, or engage in artistic work.

(The clever among you will have realised some time ago that I’m no classical scholar and that my attempts to feign Latin fell apart some time ago. Artis  seems to imply something more akin to ‘skill’, which robots could arguably have already achieved; ars simply means ‘technique’ or ‘science’. Neither really captures what I’m trying to get at; suggestions are more than welcome below, please.)

The idea that human beings are defined by a particular creative impulse is not terribly new; attempts to redefine ‘the human’ along these lines have been evident since the latter half of the twentieth century. For example, if we flip back one hundred years ago, we might see Freud defining human beings (civilised human beings, of course, we should clarify) as uniquely able to follow rules. But by the late 1960s, Freud’s descendants, such as British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, are arguing almost the exact opposite – that what makes us human is creativity, the ability to fully participate in our being in an engaged, productive way. (I will doubtless continue this thought in a later post, as psychoanalysis is a theoretical model very close to my heart.)

What’s a poor AI to do? It was once enough for an artificial intelligence to be sufficiently impressive, maybe even deemed ‘human’, if it could prove capable of reason, or symbolic representations, or win at chess, or Jeopardy!, or Go. Now, we expect nothing less than Laurence Olivier, Lord Byron and Jackson Pollack, all in one.

(How far away is AI under this measure? Is this any good? Or this? Maybe this?)

This reminds me of Chris Columbus’s 1999 film Bicentennial Man(based, of course, on a story by Isaac Asimov). Robin Williams’s Andrew Martin begins his… ‘life’, for lack of a better word… as a simple robot, who over the decades becomes more and more like a human – he becomes sentient, he demonstrates artistic skill, he learns to feel genuine emotion, etc.. At each stage, it seems, he hopes that he will be recognised as being at least on par with humans. No, he’s told at first, you’re not sentient. Then, when he’s sentient, he’s told he cannot feel. Then he’s told he cannot love. No achievement, it seems, is enough.
Even once he has achieved just about everything, and become like a human in every respect- or perhaps even ”superhuman’ – he is told that it is too much, that he has to be less than he is. In an almost a complete reversal of the Aristotelian notion of the thinking, superior animal, Andrew is told that he has to make mistakes. He is too perfect. He cannot be homo sapien – he needs to be homo errat – the man that screws up. To err is human, or perhaps in this case, to err defines the human. (Though artificial intelligence will not long be on to this as well, as suggested in another of Asimov’s stories.) It is not until Andrew is on his deathbed and is drawing his very last breaths that the Speaker of the World Congress declares, finally, that the world will recognise Andrew as a human. And perhaps this will be the final line; this is perhaps the one definition of human that will endure and see out every single challenge posed by robots and artificial intelligence, no matter the level of technological progress, and regardless of how far artificial life leaves human beings behind: we will be homo mortuum. The rational animal that can die. If Singularity enthusiasts and doomsayers alike are to be believed, this inevitable self-conception is not long off. Though perhaps humans’ greatest strength – the ability to adapt, and the talent to re-invent ourselves – might mean that there’s some life in the old species yet. Regardless, it will serve us very well to create a conception of both ourselves and of artificial life forms that try to demarcate the boundaries, and decide when these boundaries might be crossed, and what the implications will be for crossing that line.

This post originally appeared in Dreaming Robots.

Robotic Lobster by Prof. Josef Ayers at Northeastern University. Photography Jan Witting

Here are some examples of small biomimetic robots, inspired by sea creatures and insects, developed by scientists around the world

The RoboClam

RoboClam MIT

Inspired by the Atlantic razor clam, this small energy efficient robot, developed by Amos Winter at MIT can dig holes into the sand like a razor clam. This was possible since the researchers have understood the principle behind this clam’s ability  — localized fluidization — and were able to give a robotic digging clam similar abilities.  The RoboClam may be useful to monitor a biological situation under water or to bury anchors and terminate underwater mines. “And the study of the robot gives deeper insight into the important mechanics behind burrowing through localized fluidization” says Amos Winter. https://youtu.be/bztw9PUiRss

Row-bot

Row-bot with its mouth open. Hemma Philamore, Univ. Bristol/BRL

Inspired by the water beetle, at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, a group of scientists have been developing a robot called Row-bot that can swim in remote locations by harvesting energy directly from the water using a microbial fuel cell as an artificial stomach.

“When it is hungry the Row-bot opens its soft robotic mouth and rows forward to fill its microbial fuel cell (MFC) stomach with nutrient-rich dirty water. It then closes its mouth and slowly digests the nutrients”. The Row-bot may be useful for environmental clean-up of contaminants in natural and man-made disasters.

3D-printed soft robotic tentacles

3D-printed robotic tentacle. Cornell University

Using an elastomer and a 3D printing technique, engineers at Cornell University have developed a method to re-create soft actuators. Using their new technique, a digital mask projection stereolithgraphy system, they have produced pairs of actuators that mimic the function of octopus tentacles.

As reported in a paper published in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, the researchers believe that “this nascent printing process for soft actuators is a promising route to sophisticated, biomimetic systems” https://youtu.be/BZ5W7LyyKL0

The RoboBee

RoboBee. Wyss Institute

This very small flying robot, inspired by the biology of a bee, was initially developed by researchers from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University in 2004. The RoboBee, designed at Robert J Wood’s lab, is a micro-robot, smaller than a fingernail, that flies and hovers like an insect, flapping its transparent wings 120 times per second. The research effort around the RoboBee project is believed to “foster novel methods for designing and building an electronic surrogate nervous system able to deftly sense and adapt to changing environments; and advance work on the construction of small-scale flying mechanical devices”. Scientist anticipate that these devices may have an impact in advancing fields ranging from entomology and developmental biology to amorphous computing and electrical engineering. http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpage/428/

The Tabbot

Tabbot. by Ingo Rechenberg

The robot Tabbot has the looks of a cartwheeling desert-dwelling spider and it is named after tabacha, which means spider in the local Berber language in northern Africa. According to its developer, engineer Ingo Rechenberg “…such a means of locomotion would be an advantage in a device meant to navigate the rough surface condition on Mars“. Rechenberg, who teaches biomimetics at the Technical University of Berlin, believes that this kind of tumbling robots can be used in agriculture as well as on the ocean floor. https://youtu.be/OHo32JrkDRk For more biomimetic robots see our previous blogs and  Biomimetic robots at Robot SafariEU in London and Biomimetics: Where’s it at?

As promised, following on from the last blog looking at some of the (rather comical) ideas by a pastor in the United States to convert intelligent robots to Christianity, it is perhaps necessary to look at other ways in which religion might impact on the future of artificial intelligence and robot design. However, rather than speculate as to the (very unlikely) possibility that sentient AI might suddenly find itself bereft of spiritual guidance and seek answers to the riddles of the Universe in our humble human mythologies (again, consider the fallible logic of QT1 in Asimov’s short-story ‘Reason’), it is perhaps more productive to examine how our own religious impulses and biases might affect our technological creations.

For it seems that, just like the Abrahamic God, we are creating robots in our own image (though, as we will see, this impulse is not limited to the Abrahamic religions).

It may seem like lazy cultural stereotyping or grotesque oversimplification to say, for example, that the Japanese are more comfortable building emotional relationships with their lifelike, humanoid robots, while engineers and consumers in the US and Europe are interested in only their robots’ functionality, and tend to spurn emotional  attachments.

But research conducted by scientists is demonstrating that such cultural differences do exist, and that the most important influence on the expectations and feelings that people have towards robots is religion.

Of course there are other cultural factors that one can point to in such different conceptualisations of what robots should be for and how they should be treated, but researchers from both East and West seem to be drawing the conclusion that it is the underlying outlook of different religions that is one of the greatest factors in these diverse feelings.

The thinking runs something like this: Japan, for example, is dominated by Shintoism and Buddhism. These religions are ‘animistic,’ that is, they belief that all things – including inanimate objects – contain the nature of kami, or ‘spirit’. Euro-American cultures, in contrast, dominated by Christianity, Judaism and Islam, believe that only human beings are endowed with a ‘soul‘, or spirit, and are therefore privileged amongst God’s creations.

Masahiro Mori – the Japanese roboticist that first developed the theory of the ‘uncanny valley’, and a practising Buddhist – explains in his book The Buddha in the Robot that, for Buddhists, robots and machines in general have the same Buddha-nature as any human being. The Judeo-Christian conceptualisation of creation, on the other hand, leads to a master-slave relationship between human beings and machines.

We can see how, from these radically different religious ideas, different cultural attitudes manifest themselves. Even in increasing secular societies, it seems, these religious roots run very deep. As a result, we find very different cultural expectations, for example, when it comes to the design and functions of domestic robots. When it comes to ‘look and feel’, researchers found that  Americans wanted robots to be ‘modern and stylish’, as appliances about the home, like washing machines, and had no particular expectations regarding the robots’ appearance, as long as it is capable of fulfilling a certain function. American participants in the study also wished for high levels of autonomy in their robots, expecting the machines to simply get on with whatever job to which they were assigned.

South Koreans, on the other hand, prefer domestic robots to be ‘warm, friendly and tender’, and were much more prepared to make emotional attachments to their robots; however, they also wanted their robots to be less independent – this, the researchers concluded, was because of the ideas in Korean culture (despite a significant percentage of Christians in the country) of the relatedness of things, derived from Buddhist beliefs.

Thus the researchers concluded that there are important differences between the American ‘utilitarian and independent’ expectations and those of the South Koreans, defied as ‘relational and interdependent’.

Robot Jesus by theFATkid

We may rightly ask, however, whether any of this matters, these silly old superstitions. Should thousand-year-old mythologies impact upon how we design the future? For better and for worse, absolutely yes, because these expectations will play a vital role in how are robots are received. Engineers, computer scientists and designers need to pay attention to such cultural differences if we are to successfully integrate our robots in various cultures and markets.

]]> https://csnblog.specs-lab.com/2015/06/18/robots-religion-part-ii-which-god-which-robot/feed/ 0 https://csnblog.specs-lab.com/2014/11/20/europes-largest-robot-fleet-observation-mission-is-underway/ https://csnblog.specs-lab.com/2014/11/20/europes-largest-robot-fleet-observation-mission-is-underway/#comments Thu, 20 Nov 2014 10:52:10 +0000 http://csnblog.specs-lab.com/?p=5481 Continue reading →]]>

C-Enduro vehicle sets off
Credit: National Oceanography Centre

Several decades ago, Earth observation satellites transformed how we keep track of changes on our planet. Now we are rapidly crossing a new technological threshold that will allow us to pick up even the most subtle variations in the environment.

Imagine swarms of autonomous robots roaming the globe by land, sea and air, together producing the ultimate picture of what is going on on our planet. This great vision is already becoming a reality – or at least with respect to the sea.

Recently UK scientists have unleashed an entire fleet of autonomous marine robots to travel about 500 km across an area of southwestern UK. The fleet comprises 4 types of vehicles, including both underwater and surface ones. The great thing is that all the vehicles rely on renewable sources of energy, thanks to which they can spend months offshore without any human intervention.

Instruments on board the vehicles record key parameters of the ocean, ranging from the temperature of the water to the density of plankton populations. Equipped with GoPro cameras, the robots are also expected to take some spectacular shots of marine life.

The Exploring Ocean Fronts project is led by the National Oceanography Centre and is already referred to as the most ambitious of its kind in Europe. The project is now in phase two, in which several vehicles are attempting to track acoustically tagged fish. The goal is to get an insight into the daily habits of marine life, which, believe it or not, we know very little about. The obtained information will inform future decisions regarding ocean management, including those directed at achieving sustainable fisheries.

Potential benefits of such massive robot observation missions, of course, go way beyond that. For instance, a better understanding of how the ocean varies over time and space can immensely benefit climate and weather research.

Xenex’s germ-zapping robot
Credit: Xenex

With the official Ebola death toll approaching 5,000, scientists are increasingly concerned with exploiting all possible ways of fighting this deadly disease. While the biggest labs around the world are working on a vaccine that will hopefully exterminate Ebola once and for all, roboticists are developing more unconventional ways of preventing the spread of the disease.

Recently, a lot of media attention has been focused on Xenex, a San Antonio-based company, which has developed a robotic assistant that helps medical professionals remove traces of infectious diseases, such as ebola, left in hospital premises. Even better, the robot can fence infections out 24/7 with 99,9 % efficiency, thus preventing any potential delays in the operation of a hospital.

The robot does that by firing powerful ultraviolet pulses that wipe out all nasty viruses and bacterias sneaking in the corners of hospital rooms. And while the technology of scrambling viral DNA with ultraviolet light is not particularly new, the idea of a roboticized Ebola killer is certainly to everybody’s liking.

But here is the catch: it does not take a genius to realize that Xenex’s machine has no more right to be called a robot than any other piece of medical equipment. What Xenox has developed is not an autonomous Roomba-like Ebola hunter. Essentially, it is a wheeled cart with a programmable ultraviolet lamp, and, although there is no doubt about its effectiveness in killing Ebola and other germs, we should choose words properly.

Does this mean, however, that robotics has nothing to offer in the biggest recorded outbreak of the virus?  Fortunatelly, the answer is no. Even existing medical robots have a huge potential for fighting diseases like Ebola, but deciding how to effectively use them in harsh conditions, such as those in West Africa, is a complicated issue.

In an attempt to clarify how robots can contribute to the ongoing battle, the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at Texas A&M University is organizing a policy workshop on Safety Robotics for Ebola Workers. The workshop will help identify what robots can do in order to minimize human contact with the virus, detect the virus and provide expert consulting to those who contracted the virus. You can learn more about the upcoming workshop HERE.

Credit: Daewoo

Everybody has been in a situation when we wish we had stronger arms or, even better, an extra pair of them. Whether it is attaching something large overhead or manipulating something heavy, we all know we are bound to run into the limitations of our own anatomical design. In some professions, such as construction work, these difficulties can surface practically every day. To make physical drudgery less stressful and traumatic, researchers around the globe are now developing a new kind of robots that will be worn on the body just like your regular backpack.

Wearable robotics flourishes on the collaboration between the human and the machine and has a huge potential in all kinds of physically challenging work. This idea has already been put to test by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, one of the biggest shipbuilders in the world. Korean shipyards have long been known for their high degree of automatisation. Now it appears the Korean company has decided to go one step further.

The company has developed a wearable exoskeleton that allows workers to carry huge pieces of metal and other heavy components with no or little effort. The exoskeleton weighs around 30 kg, none of which, however, is felt by the wearer since the suit is designed to support itself and follow the wearer’s movements.

Credit: Daewoo

The prototype can lift and precisely manipulate objects with a mass of up to 30 kg. The test has demonstrated that this technology can indeed help workers with their daily tasks, although those who had a chance to take part in the test run say they would like to be able to move faster and lift even heavier weights – a goal the research team is already working towards: the current research target is an exoskeleton that can lift up to 100 kg and be used on a daily basis at shipyard facilities.

Another example of how wearable robots can literally give a hand to future workers comes from the MIT’s d’Arbeloff Laboratory for Information Systems and Technology. The lab is working on a pair of lightweight robotic arms attached to a backpack that are envisioned to assist people with those tasks where our two arms are just not enough.

The project called SRL (Supernumerary Robot Limbs) is supported by Boeing and was recently used in a demo that involved installing ceiling panels in an airplane, a highly repetitive task that is difficult to perform on your own. By pushing the panels against the ceiling, the device can alleviate the worker from the necessity of simultaneously holding the panel, inserting the screws and using the screwdriver to attach it.

Watch the video below to see the prototype in action.

Information can be scary, and even more so when we find ourselves humbled by its immensity. In a press release issued earlier this week, the European Commission has once again demonstrated that it is not afraid of big data. Quite the opposite, Europe is more than ever ready to embrace it – a gesture, which is reflected in Europe’s strong bet on research projects like CEEDs, which uses big data to enhance human cognition and improve problem solving.

In a previous post, we already discussed CEEDs and the eXperience Induction Machine (XIM), the heart of the project, located in the SPECS lab at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. The press release singles out CEEDs as an example of successful and highly promising big data research initiative.

Although XIM has so far mainly been applied to visualising brain (BrainX3) and historical (Bergen-Belsen reconstruction) data and will certainly bring about a huge qualitative change in how scientists work with tremendous amounts of information, the integration of this technology into more down-to-earth application fields seems imminent.

The press release reports that early interest in the XIM technology is already coming from several museums in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the United States, where it could potentially help with gathering and reacting to feedback from visitors. This naturally applies to many other public spaces such as shops, libraries and concerts. The CEEDs team is also conducting negotiations with several public, charity and commercial organisations to further extend the scope of application of the platform.

The CEEDs project coordinator Jonathan Freeman, Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London pointed out that “anywhere where there’s a wealth of data that either requires a lot of time or an incredible effort, there is potential.” In science, whole disciplines, from satellite imagery inspection to oil prospecting and astronomy, could benefit immensely from this novel approach to processing information.

With projects like CEEDs, Europe is working its way towards a new data-driven economy, a long-time goal, which the European Commission is now actively promoting across national governments. The European approach towards big data is perhaps best expressed in the words of the vice-president of the European Commission Neelie Kroes: “Big data doesn’t have to be scary. Projects like this enable us to take control of data and deal with it so we can get to solving problems. Leaders need to embrace big data.”

You can also read this article to learn about some other exciting big data projects backed by the European Commission.

Credit: Real Humans

Although we may be decades away from building truly life-like humanoid robots, it is never too early to start questioning the legal and ethical implications of creating machines that are hard to tell apart from ourselves. In a brave leap of imagination, Real Humans, a popular Swedish TV show, written by Lars Lundstroem, deliberately blurs the line between humans and robots to explore what it means to be human.

The show, which could have been inspired by Hiroshi Ishiguro’s weirdest dream, is set in an alternative present-day Sweden, where extremely life-like androids with perfect looks called “hubots” are commercialised` to take care of all domestic and workplace drudgery.

With time, some hubots are programmed to acquire free will and become capable of entering into social and even intimate relations with humans. The story follows the emotional effects on two families in possession of hubots as well as the trials and tribulations of a group of hubots that decide to fight for their rights.

Real Humans has received a positive critical acclaim, even though it has been repeatedly characterised as creepy and disturbing, which in fact seems to be part of the writers’ intention. The premise of the show allows the creators to explore diverse philosophical questions as well as contemporary social issues.

Although the creators of the show claim that there was no science to rely on in the making of Real Humans, it is remarkable how the show’s vision resonates with some of the statements made recently by the mentioned Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro during the presentation of his latest creations, two eerily human-looking robot newscasters Kodomoroid and Otonaroid. “Making androids is about exploring what it means to be human,” Ishiguro explained to reporters, “examining the question of what emotion is, what awareness is, what thinking is.”

Hiroshi Ishiguro’s latest androids Kodomoroid and Otenaroid during the demonstration last month

Just like the creators of Real Humans, robotics researchers, such as Ishiguro, warn of possible legal and ethical complications that may arise when humans and robots form stronger bonds, especially if the latter look and behave like us. Most of the present-day robots look deliberately artificial, but there is no reason why it has to remain so once the technology becomes available to make them look human.

Real Humans was released in 2012 and screened in at least 50 other countries with great success. Now the show is to be remade in English, with the premiere scheduled for 2015.

Credit: Human Brain Project

Last week, the eyes of the scientific community were fixed on the € 1.2 billion Human Brain Project (HBP) as more than 150 European neuroscientists raised concerns over the project’s management in an open letter to the European Commission.

One of the two Europe’s Flagship Initiatives, the HBP spans 112 research institutions across 24 countries and was launched last year with the grand vision of creating a long-needed ICT infrastructure for future brain research. Not without controversy, the project adopted a bottom-up approach to build a computer simulation of the brain based exclusively on the fundamental understanding of neurons and their interactions.

The public outcry is not surprising given that the project has been surrounded by heated discussions from the very beginning when a number of labs refused to be part of the project because of its narrow focus on ICT and an apparent lack of basic neuroscience. Now many researchers fear that the inevitable failure of the project will cause a wave of adverse reaction to neuroscience undermining the future of the field.

The letter was largely driven by the recent changes made in the project plans for the next stage, which limits the role of cognitive scientists who pursue the difficult task of understanding the brain on the level of thought and behaviour. Now the labs working in this direction are to be repositioned from the project’s core to what is known as partnering projects (PPs). The concern is that, while the resulting computer simulations may not be completely useless, without a more pronounced theoretical component they will fail to elucidate brain functions.

A detailed review of the second stage by the EU commission is scheduled for January 2015 and the letter’s authors hope to bring the attention of the reviewers to the flaws in both science and management of the project. The second stage is expected to receive € 100 million over the course of 2 to 3 years, with a 50/50 split between the CP and the PPs.

The official response, released by the HBP two days after the letter, shows signs of disposition and openness to dialogue. The response states that “the members of the HBP are saddened by the open letter” and invite the signatories to engage in direct discussion with the project leaders. Importantly, the response strongly suggests that cognitive neuroscience and other basic research will have an increasingly crucial role in the project as the required ICT platform comes into place.

Lots of researchers still firmly stand by the project arguing it’s a long-needed change in brain research. You may also be interested in reading this article defending the project by Richard Frackowiak, the co-executive director of the HBP.

What is clear is that the HBP has not managed to entirely unite neuroscientists, but when it comes to such grand projects this is not as surprising as it may seem. The management might need to become more consensual and we can only hope that HBP will continue its 10-year journey to unravel the universe inside our heads.

The 3^rd Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems will be held this year from 30 July to 1 August in Milan. As has become a tradition, the three-day event, organised by the Convergent Science Network, will be hosted at a fantastic venue consistent with the spirit of the conference: the Da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology, one of the largest technology museums in Europe.

The conference will be packed with fascinating talks on a variety of topics related to the development of technologies at the intersection of living and artificial systems, including six plenary lectures from some of the most distinguished experts in the field. The plenary lectures will be complemented by nearly 20 short talks on diverse topics such as soft robotics, active sensing, neuromechanics and others.

You can find out more about the plenary speakers HERE and check out the full conference programme HERE.

This year, the Living Machines conference will be preceded by a one-day satellite event, hosted by the Italian Institute of Technology and consisting of a series of research-oriented workshops. Learn more about the workshops HERE.

We are looking forward to seeing you this year!