Cerebral Inception

Our brains have evolved to the point where we can build artificial brains that might help us understand our brains. Let that sink in.

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You’d think that overseeing an entire issue of The Scientist focused on artificial intelligence would cause my mind to wander far into the future—robotic researchers formulating digital hypotheses, whizzing about in sleek, metallic labs. But immersing myself in stories about the novel insights and deep analyses enabled by smart instruments and machine learning did not transport me into a vision of science in the 23rd century.

Instead, I found myself thinking of the distant past, of a time when the first micro-vibrations of life were roiling the raw muck of early Earth. Rather than the grand sweep of what artificial intelligence may bring about—faster and more economical data processing, new insights, novel discoveries, and revolutionized workflows and transportation systems—I thought of the original form of intelligence on our planet. Intelligence on the molecular scale.

The Miller-Urey experiment of the 1950s began to shed mechanistic light on ...

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Meet the Author

  • Bob Grant

    From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer.

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May 2019 The Scientist Issue
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