The 2045 Initiative has made some headlines, obtained the support of a number of world leaders, and added a few supporters to its cause. However, although the more social side of the initiative seems to be growing at a reasonable pace, real scientific and technological progress seems stalled.
According to Dmitri Itskov, our brain could be substituted completely by what we know as neuronal networks. These are basically a self-learning system where different interconnected computing units imitate the human brain by responding to a series of stimuli and learning from them.
The technology exists and is real. However, it is still far from achieving the power and capacities of a Homo sapiens brain. The 2045 Initiative had promised that by 2015, following an initial stage of research, the workings of the brain would have been completely deciphered and work would begin on the building of an artificial brain which would be ready by 2020. But the first of these promises has yet to be fulfilled.