A cybernetic brain created by Google that is made up of 16,000 computers was let loose on the internet and it honed in on... cats, Belfast Telegraph said.

Like many people looking for light amusement on the internet, the cyber brain searched for felines completely of its own volition, something scientists say is a major breakthrough.

In the past the machine would have been given certain reference points - such as labeling features - to help it with its search. This time it got no help at all.

In an experiment at Google's top secret X Laboratory in Mountain View, California, the cyber brain was shown 10 million random images from YouTube and taught itself how to recognize a cat.

The scientists working on the project have been very impressed with the results: "We never told it during the training, 'this is a cat'.

It basically invented the concept of a cat," said Dr Jeff Dean to the Daily Mail.

The researchers believe they have created a computer that mimics what goes on in the cerebral cortex of the human brain. This indicates that if a computer is powerful enough it can make sense of random data without any human intervention.