IBM gets $16 million to bolster its brain-on-a-chip technology

• Large scale digital simulations of circuits and systems will be used to prove component and whole system functionality and to inform overall system development in advance of neuromorphic hardware implementation.

• Environments will be evolving, virtual platforms for the training, evaluation and benchmarking of intelligent machines in various aspects of perception, cognition, and response.

While SyNAPSE basically seeks to replicate human brain function, DARPA has another project that seeks to develop an artificial intelligence system that can read, learn and develop knowledge about all manner of digital material in a quick, cost effective way. BBN Technology recently got $29.7 million to develop a prototype machine reading system that transforms prose into knowledge that can be interpreted by an artificial intelligence application.

The prototype is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Machine Reading Program (MRP) that wants to develop systems that can capture knowledge from naturally occurring text and transform it into the formal representations used by AI reasoning systems.

The idea is that such an intelligent learning system could gather and analyze information from the Web such as international technological advances or plans and rhetoric of political organizations and unleash a wide variety of new military and civilian AI applications from intelligent bots to personal tutors according to DARPA.