The Blue Brain Project was a novel idea: if we can’t create Turing-primed artificial intelligence through conventional programming, let’s just simulate an entire human brain in exhaustive molecular detail, and see what we can learn from it. If the human brain worked (it did), the simulation would too, because the two would be effectively identical.

It was a long, slow project.

The team of coders and neuroscientists started small, building a model of a 2mm rat neocortical column. This task alone required a decade of work, but was ultimately a success.

The researchers could simulate an electrical impulse, watch the virtual neurons respond onscreen, and receive an output that matched that of lab rats in the physical world. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

It also revealed two things:

First, that the human brain is thousands of times more complex than the team initially projected and mapping it fully would be a monumental task.

Second, that they were going to need a hell of a lot more processing power.