"Swarm" Science: Why the Myth of Artificial Intelligence Threatens Scientific Discovery

In the last year, two major well-funded efforts have launched in Europe and in the U.S. aimed at understanding the human brain using powerful and novel computational methods: advanced supercomputing platforms, analyzing peta- and even exabyte datasets, using machine learning methods like convolutional neural networks (CNNs), or "Deep Learning."

At the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), for instance, the Human Brain Project is now underway, a ten-year effort funded by t...