Not sure if this has been covered on LW, but it seems highly relevant to WBE development. Link here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/147gqm/we_are_the_computational_neuroscientists_behind/

A few questioners mention the Singularity and make Skynet jokes.

The abstract from their paper in Science:

A central challenge for cognitive and systems neuroscience is to relate the incredibly complex behavior of animals to the equally complex activity of their brains. Recently described, large-scale neural models have not bridged this gap between neural activity and biological function. In this work, we present a 2.5-million-neuron model of the brain (called “Spaun”) that bridges this gap by exhibiting many different behaviors. The model is presented only with visual image sequences, and it draws all of its responses with a physically modeled arm. Although simplified, the model captures many aspects of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and psychological behavior, which we demonstrate via eight diverse tasks.

I'm curious to see LWers' perspectives on the project.