“Five news from the brain”, documentary at the forefront of research on artificial intelligence

Is the communication between neurons, consciousness, feelings and the unpredictability of human behavior digitally reproducible, and what can it be used for? On the occasion of Brain Week from March 14 to 20, Five stories from the brain released in theaters on Wednesday 16. Five researchers present their field of research.

A father in France and his son in Oxford confront their research on the creation of digital neurons from their observations of the brain. In Seattle, Christof Koch explores the mysteries of consciousness as his beloved dog dies. Between Munich and Venice, Niels Birbaumer communicates through brain-machine interfaces with patients in a coma. In Geneva, David Rudrauf, when he is about to become a father, programs algorithms that create affinities between robots. Five approaches to research on artificial intelligence exposed with virtuosity.

Both sharp and accessible, Jean-Stéphane Bron’s documentary is also very visual and rhythmic. Five stories from the brain develops the most advanced tracks on the knowledge of the brain – its components, its geography and faculties -, applied to numerical experiments. A major field of research in contemporary science, artificial intelligence (AI) fascinates as much as it worries. If discovery and scientific performance are a source of evolution, their consequences, in particular ethical ones, are also at the center of researchers’ concerns.

Five stories from the brain puts progress and its social, societal, political, civic and cosmic implications into perspective. As the saying goes, a stick always has two ends. Reproducing how neurons communicate in software would make robots efficient, but would such a process give them independence? This is one of the questions posed by Alexandre Pouget and his son Hadrien, neurologist and computer designer. The applications are endless, especially in medicine. But how far?

Other dreams inhabit the researchers. The director Jean-Stéphane Bron has the ability to expose this research by articulating it in the daily lives of scientists. An approach that humanizes science. The justification of scientific introspection is also at the heart of the matter. The most poetic is perhaps that of David Rudrauf, future father, who imagines the robot replacing humans for long space exploration trips. In his eyes, there should remain in them the unexpected behavior specific to human beings, so that something of man remains in the depths of the ether, far from the Earth.

Five stories from the brain illuminates our lanterns with intelligence, non-artificial, it. Man’s most complex organ, it gives him the ability to reproduce his own skills, such as the Orobos, the snake that bites its tail, or the Moebius strip. Not a question of competition, but of performance. This research is still embryonic, but is progressing every day. Jean-Stéphane Bron takes stock of this in a luminous documentary.

Kind : Documentary
Director: Jean-Stephane Bron
Duration : 1h45
Country : Switzerland / France
Exit : March 16, 2022
Distributer : Ad Vitam