The claim is clearly idiotic, and none of scientists I work with consider it requiring rebuttal. That’s also 11 years ago, same year Python 2.7 was first released. Markram isn’t in HBP since... 4 years and I think what we have in the final phase now is the people trying to turn lemons into lemonade.

Maybe my problem is that I don’t see myself as “believing” in the project or not: it’s easier to learn from failure in fact. If the whole thing fails, it will make the EU a little more cautious about the next potential flagship project. Which is presumably what all the FUD surrounding HBP is about.

It could easily cause a kind of AI winter just when there actually is progress in the field.

The EU should have insisted on believable deliverables. At the time I was highly critical about the claim, it being 11 years ago doesn't really matter to me, it was obvious that you could not extrapolate from the state of the art+a relatively limited amount of time to such a game changing deliverable (essentially: general AI).

I sincerely hope that you will be able to come up with enough results worth applying somewhere in real-life projects and products that in the end it will all be worth it. Best of luck to you.

The winter is a good point, and it’s true there is a lot of overpromising even given the funding. We’ll see..