A brain-like computer for cognitive software applications: the Ersatz Brain project

We want to design a suitable computer for the efficient execution of the software now being developed that will display human-like cognitive abilities. Examples of these potential software applications include natural language understanding, text processing, conceptually based internet search, natural human-computer interfaces, cognitively based data mining, sensor fusion, and image understanding. Requirements of the proposed software are primary in shaping our hardware design. The hardware architecture design is based on a few ideas taken from the anatomy of mammalian neo-cortex. In common with other such attempts it is a massively parallel, two-dimensional array of CPUs and their associated memory. However, the design used in this project (1) uses an approximation to cortical computation called the network of networks which holds that the basic computing unit in the cortex is not a single neuron but small groups of them working together in attractor networks; and (2) assumes connect...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: IEEEICCI
• Authors: J. A. Anderson
• Keywords: Human-like Cognitive Abilities, IEEEICCI 2005, Informatics, Natural Human-computer Interfaces, Natural Language Understanding