In The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil mentioned a project at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Lab in Kyoto that was building a brain with a billion artificial neurons. He said that when it was completed, it would be set free to read the internet.
My initial exploration of this revealed that this project was headed by Hugo de Garis, who apparently retired some years ago now. What was the result of the project? It seems like it never reached the stage envisioned by Kurzweil and I would guess this is due to funding issues, but I’m seeking some kind of confirmation of whether or not this is correct.