Scientists are using human brain cells to create biocomputers that offer “unprecedented advances in computing speed, computing power, data efficiency and storage capabilities” compared to the current zeitgeist in computing, or artificial intelligence (AI).
behind article (opens in a new tab) in the scientific journal Frontiers in Science (FiS), the researchers note that this form of biocomputers, known as organoid intelligence (OI), is a natural progression as artificial intelligence was inspired by our understanding of the human brain.
OI is powered by lab-grown cell cultures known as brain organoids, three-dimensional clusters of brain cells that share structures such as neurons and other cells that fuel our ability to remember and learn.
Organoid intelligence
That certainly sounds impressive, but like AI, OI has to break through the barrier of skepticism on its own. After all, isn’t that the reason why we outsource most of our daily tasks to computers precisely because they run faster than we do?
Paper co-author Thomas Hartung, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, believes that trying to get computers to think like humans is less effective than simply making the human the centerpiece of the computer.
“Silicon-based computers are certainly better at numbers,” Hartung explained. “For example, AlphaGo [an AI that beat the world’s #1 Go player in 2017] was trained on data from 160,000 games. A person would have to play five hours a day for over 175 years to experience that many games.
“[But] we are approaching the physical limits of silicon computing because we cannot fit more transistors into a small chip. The brain is wired completely differently. It has about 100 billion neurons connected by more than 1015 connection points. That’s a huge difference in power compared to our current technology.”
Hartung also claimed that brains are more energy efficient than computers powering AI models. “For example, the amount of energy used to train AlphaGo is more than needed to keep an active adult for a decade.”
OI is still in its infancy and has several shortcomings, including the fact that brain organoids currently contain about 50,000 cells, while for practical purposes this should be increased to “10 million”, according to Hartung.
And as with AI, there are ethical concerns, although the idea that clusters of actual human brain cells can develop consciousness is probably more pressing than the notion that a computer could.
Despite this, in December 2022, one of the co-authors of the FiS paper, Dr. Brett Kagan, wrote test (opens in a new tab) where the flat structure of brain cells learned to play Pong, and the scientific community has bigger plans for this technology.
For example, Hartung noted that “personalized brain organoids” can be grown from adult skin cells, allowing scientists to study the effects of neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s and test the effects of certain substances on learning and memory processing.
The challenge, he says, is to build a scientific community that wants to explore OI further.
AI having its day in the sun suggests that’s a realistic goal, but we most likely have a long time – years, maybe decades – before the technology is in any way useful or bearable in a corporate environment. That’s never stopped us from reporting on cool, distant future events like DNA storage however earlier.