“NeuroAI,” a portmanteau of “neuroscience” and “AI” (artificial intelligence), is on the rise. Almost unheard of until about five years ago, it has now emerged as a “hot” area of research—and the subject of a growing number of workshops, conferences and academic programs, including a BRAIN-Initiative-sponsored workshop that starts tomorrow. The intertwining of these disciplines was almost inevitable. On the one hand, AI aims to replicate intelligent behavior, and the most direct path to this goal is reverse-engineering the brain. On the other hand, neural networks represent the closest model yet of distributed brain-like computation, one that is uniquely capable of solving complex problems.
Here, in the first in an ongoing series of essays on NeuroAI, I will explore the history of the co-evolution of AI and neuroscience, and how the ongoing symbiosis between these fields has created and continues to form a virtuous circle.
To read more, click here.