Like the brain, IBM’s prototype chips can dynamically rewire to sense, understand and act on information fed via sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, or through other sources such as weather and water-supply monitors. The chips will help discover patterns based on probabilities and associations, all while rivaling the brain’s compact size and low power usage, Modha said.
The first chips only have about 250 neurons, which is dwarfed by the Aplysia Californica, which has around 18-20k neurons. Remarkably, the article notes that these 250 neurons managed to learn how to play a game of pong and navigate a maze.