Web Intelligence meets Brain Informatics: Towards the future of artificial intelligence in the connected world

Understanding human intelligence, especially brain intelligence, is the cornerstone of reaching the ultimate AI. In this paper, we briefly review the historical interactions between AI and brain science, and look towards the future vision of AI in the connected world. In particular, we introduce two rapidly developing fields in Web Intelligence (WI, AI in the Connected World) and Brain Informatics (BI, the brain/mind-centric study and the application of brain-machine intelligence), and combine them to accelerate the arrival of a human–level AI society. Furthermore, combining these two fields by connecting AI and brain science with big data, creates a new vision from the systematic brain-machine intelligence research to new AI industry chain in the connected social-cyber-physical-thinking spaces.