The brain in question is 302 neurons, which is probably fewer than most of us have lost whilst participating in this discussion! But they also need to simulate a nervous system, mobility, food needs, interaction etc to have a remotely persuasive argument that a 302 node neural network actually resembles a worm brain. It can't be as smart as even a really stupid worm until it can perform analogous tasks to the worm, which means having some sort of artificial body to wiggle.

(parallel arguments but for human/mouse level complexity of bodies and stimuli responded to would suggest that whole brain emulation is going to be an incredibly painful way to attempt to achieve AGI)

> But they also need to simulate a nervous system, mobility, food needs, interaction etc to have a remotely persuasive argument that a 302 node neural network actually resembles a worm brain. It can't be as smart as even a really stupid worm until it can perform analogous tasks to the worm, which means having some sort of artificial body to wiggle.

It has those things[1]. There’s a video of its simulated body wiggling around on the project’s github repository.

[1] except possibly food, I was skimming the page.

"To get a quick idea of what this looks like, check out the latest movie. In this movie you can see a simulated 3D C. elegans being activated in an environment. Its muscles are located around the outside of its body, and as they contract, they exert forces on the surrounding fluid, propelling the body forward via undulutory thrust. In this model, the neural system is not considered and patterns of muscle contraction are explicitly defined"

http://docs.openworm.org/en/0.9/projects/

> In this model, the neural system is not considered and patterns of muscle contraction are explicitly defined.

In other words, the simulated worm brain is not yet even capable of causing the wiggling seen in the video. So the question remains, what can the simulated neurons do, f anything?

Sure, I've even seen the wiggles; I was making the point that's why they needed it to yield anything that could be compared with the real thing (though I'm not sure it has food and reproduction simulated yet, and I'd imagine a large portion of the worm's limited capability for cognition is ultimately directed to pursuing those ends)

It needs to be able to survive and reproduce in an environment like a real worm does to prove that it's just as intelligent, and not just wiggle around.