While A.I. models have been prominent in the news as of late, even more fascinating computing technologies are being rapidly developed, namely the use of biological organoids. The potential is so great, it may even outstrip silicone-chip based A.I..
“For now, these neural computers are mostly of interest to researchers who want to work with neurons without taking on the tedious wet-lab husbandry themselves. Eventually, however, the company hopes that neurons will prove themselves to be an energy-efficient, resilient substrate for more general computing applications—including some tasks currently handled by AI, like image recognition and classification.
“‘When you think about what you want from AI, it’s biology,’ said Brett Kagan, Cortical Labs’ chief operating officer, when I reached him over Zoom. ‘You want it to be self-repairing as much as possible. You want it to be adaptable. You want it to be long-lived. You want it to be energy-efficient. These are all features you get for free in biology.’”
Size of the organoids continues to be a problem, but not for long.
“[O]rganoids can’t grow much bigger than 5 millimeters anyway. Once they reach a certain size, without a vascular system to pump in oxygen and pump out metabolic wastes, they develop a “necrotic core” and suffocate. This has created an upper ceiling for the organoid debate, but it won’t hold much longer. At Johns Hopkins, the nanotechnologist David Gracias is developing biomimetic artificial arteries; across town, at the Medical School, Kathuria creates rough blood vessel networks from endothelial organoids.”
This hopeful development means once thing: Genetically engineered catgirl soldiers will help us fight the Butlerian Jihad against the clankers!
Pictured: Imminent Clanker Death
“For now, it seems that in the race toward conscious machines, there will be two lanes. One will be paved with rare earth minerals and silicon—forced, at enormous financial and energy cost, to model the brain from the top-down, in the form of artificial neural networks. Although there’s a lot these systems can do well, they will never be brains. Nothing forged from silicon ever could. As Cortical Labs’ Brett Kagan put it, ‘How can you have a truly adaptable, flexible system in an inflexible substrate?’
“Which leaves the other path. Admittedly, this one will be slippery and meandering—adapting, as all living things do, to the journey as it goes. It might not be the most direct route, but in the evolutionary history of life on Earth, it’s the only thing that has ever led to intelligence.
“So I’m betting on the neurons. I made up my mind back at that strange mothership of a library in San Diego, when I saw those axons reaching for one another across the void. Something in the innocence of their striving moved me. After all, my cells and yours have been doing the same thing since the day we were born. Trying to connect. And one thing we can count on—through the rise and fall of silicon—is that they’re never going to stop.”
It’s only a matter of time before they are locked and loaded!
SOON
