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.