That’s every neuron, every circuit, and every synapse. And after more than a year of planning, the HBP officially kicked off on Monday at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. While the United States’ own ambitious BRAIN Initiative lies dormant, in the same politically-induced coma as countless other federally-funded research projects halted by the government shutdown, Europe’s attempt to build an artificial mind is off and running.

By now, if you’re anything like me, you might be preemptively glazing over, bracing yourself for the requisite sober-minded discussion of all the good this project could do, decrypting our thoughts by creating similar ones, and revolutionizing our understanding of the brain and all the neurological diseases that ravage it. Simulated drugs can be tested on virtual patients, and virtual suffering will lead to real treatments. That’s one perspective, and the more responsible one.

The other is to rejoice, for all of the android brains to come.