While IBM might have produced their first working chips, these chips have been around for a decade now. I remember in 2009 when this project started that IBM created quite the buzz by claiming they made a cat-brain computer chip feasible and had simulated a cat brain. Great to see these claims realized.

In 2006 we had the snail neuron chips and around 2000 Hugo de Garis was all the rage with his brain-building chips.

To me: The hunt for simulating human intelligence is more of a marketing game, than a real scientific pursuit. AI already exists, to make it seem human seems like a silly endeavor.

In 2009 the IBM project got very harsh critique from the http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/ bluebrain project leader Henry Markram. Extraordinary claims without proof can hurt the field of AI, at least the public perception of it.

I still think part of the 2009 critique still applies, though ego's likely also play a role:

You told me you would string this guy up by the toes the
last time Mohda made his stupid statement about
simulating the mouse's brain.

I thought that having gone through Blue Brain so
carefully, journalists would be able to recognize that
what IBM reported is a scam - no where near a cat-scale
brain simulation, but somehow they are totally deceived
by these incredible statements.

I am absolutely shocked at this announcement. Not because
it is any kind of technical feat, but because of the mass
deception of the public.

1. These are point neurons (missing 99.999% of the brain;
no branches; no detailed ion channels; the simplest
possible equation you can imagine to simulate a neuron,
totally trivial synapses; and using the STDP learning
rule I discovered in this way is also is a joke).

2. All these kinds of simulations are trivial and have
been around for decades - simply called artificial neural
network (ANN) simulations. We even stooped to doing these
kinds of simulations as bench mark tests 4 years ago with
10's of millions of such points before we bought the Blue
Gene/L. If we (or anyone else) wanted to we could easily
do this for a billion "points", but we would certainly
not call it a cat-scale simulation. It is really no big
deal to simulate a billion points interacting if you have
a big enough computer. The only step here is that they
have at their disposal a big computer. For a grown up
"researcher" to get excited because one can simulate
billions of points interacting is ludicrous.

3. It is not even an innovation in simulation technology.
You don't need any special "C2 simulator", this is just a
hoax and a PR stunt. Most neural network simulators for
parallel machines can can do this today. Nest, pNeuron,
SPIKE, CSIM, etc, etc. all of them can do this! We could
do the same simulation immediately, this very second by
just loading up some network of points on such a machine,
but it would just be a complete waste of time - and
again, I would consider it shameful and unethical to call
it a cat simulation.

4. This is light years away from a cat brain, not even
close to an ants brain in complexity. It is highly
unethical of Mohda to mislead the public in making people
believe they have actually simulated a cat's brain.
Absolutely shocking.

5. There is no qualified neuroscientist on the planet
that would agree that this is even close to a cat's
brain. I see he did not stop making such stupid
statements after they claimed they simulated a mouse's
brain.

6. You should also ask Mohda where he got the notion of
"reverse engineering" from, when he does not even know
what it means - look the the models - this has nothing to
do with reverse engineering. And mouse, rat, cat,
primate, human - ask him where he took that from? Simply
a PR stunt here to ride on Blue Brain.

That IBM and DARPA would support such deceptive
announcements is even more shocking.

That the Bell prize would be awarded for such nonsense is
beyond belief. I never realized that such trivial and
unethical behavior would actually be rewarded. I would
have expected an ethics committee to string this guy up
by the toes.

I suppose it is up to me to let the "cat out of the bag"
about this outright deception of the public.

Competition is great, but this is a disgrace and
extremely harmful to the field. Obviously Mohda would
like to claim he simulated the Human brain next - I
really hope someone does some scientific and ethical
checking up on this guy.