Review of the Oxford Roadmap on Whole Brain Emulation

In 2008, the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University published a manuscript titled “Whole Brain Emulation: A roadmap”, as the edited output of their first workshop on the science and technology of whole brain emulation that took place in 2007. The manuscript describes many of the scientific and technical challenges to data acquisition, modeling and real-time emulation of a whole human brain, and it attempted to estimate a development timeline.

A lot has changed between 2008 and 2019. Many new insights, a better understanding of the challenges, and some new technological avenues necessitate an updated and corrected roadmap. In preparation for such an update that is planned in collaboration with the Future of Humanity Institute, the Carboncopies Foundation is launching a critical review. Our June 1 online workshop is the kick-off event for that review process, where we will reconvene a subset of the original participants of the 2007 workshop, and include pioneers who have emerged at the forefront of the field.