The Future of AI is OI
Scientists announced plans to create organoid intelligence within our lifetime
Hiya!
I remember thinking about how fast technology was advancing when I was in high school. The progression from large boomboxes, to walkmans, then discmen, and iPods, now streaming. I grew up with sci-fi movies depicting the day artificial intelligence (AI) takes over the world. We imagined robots or perhaps systems like Siri or Alexa to become alive.
These days, AI feels less like a threat as we’ve grown more used to technology infiltrating our lives. But I recently came across headlines that make even the most advanced AI seem outdated. Experts are no longer satisfied with artificial microchips — now they want to use lab-grown brain cells to replace them.
Organoid Intelligence
Over the last few decades, we’ve waited for AI to reach the point of “singularity,” or the ability to pass the Turning test — which tests a machine’s ability to mimic a human or show signs of human-like consciousness perfectly. But despite impressive advancements, even the best AI falters compared to the human brain.
AI can calculate complex equations faster than us, but our brains are more energy-efficient and are far better at learning, storing, and retrieving memories. In this sense, some researchers think AI has hit a ceiling. So, instead of continuing down that path, researchers at Johns Hopkins University want to find a way to integrate AI with a brain to create a “biocomputer.” If the idea isn’t wild enough, they also expect to develop it within our lifetime.
The team published their plans for creating “organoid intelligence” in the journal Frontiers in Science in February of 2023. Thomas Hartung, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Whiting School of Engineering, who is spearheading the project, explained in an article by Johns Hopkins:
“Computing and artificial intelligence have been driving the technology revolution, but they are reaching a ceiling. Biocomputing is an enormous effort of compacting computational power and increasing its efficiency to push past our current technological limits.”
The researcher’s goal is to use human tissue samples to grow small collections of brain cells (called organoids), then use those clusters of organoids to replace today’s standard silicon computer chips. The organoids are only about the size of a pen dot but are still more 3-dimensional in shape and larger than typical cultures. As a result, the neurons within them can create profoundly more connections.
How Would Organoid Intelligence Work?
The concept isn’t entirely new, though. Scientists have already created lab-grown tissues of organs, including lungs and kidneys, to study experiments without using humans or animals for testing for almost two decades. According to the Johns Hopkins article, Hartung himself, started creating functional organoids using brain cells back in 2012. He reprogrammed human skin cell samples to turn into an embryonic stem cell-like state.
Those organoid clusters had about 50,000 cells, roughly the size of a fruit fly’s nervous system. However, Hartung estimates that organoids will need about 10 million cells to run a computer and have memory capabilities anywhere like the human brain.
The idea is that if a computer could run using this “biological hardware,” theoretically, it could begin to reduce the high energy consumption levels required by today’s supercomputers. Given global warming, these high-energy computers are becoming increasingly unsustainable.
Right now, the organoids are small, but Hartung hopes to scale them up and train them with AI. If it goes according to plan, then Hartung “foresees a future where biocomputers support superior computing speed, processing power, data efficiency, and storage capabilities.”
Harung’s plans require input from several scientific disciplines, some of which are still getting off the ground. For instance, some researchers are busy growing the larger, 100 million cell organoid, but they won’t matter much if experts can’t communicate with them — or have the cells communicate back.
Scientists are inching closer, though. In a press release from February 28, 2023, researchers announced that they created a “kind of an EEG cap for organoids.” It’s a “flexible shell that is densely covered with tiny electrodes that can both pick up signals from the organoid, and transmit signals to it.”
In the Future
Computing power is only one reason scientists want to create biocomputers. Ideally, they would also be used to help people by better analyzing neurological conditions. In a news release about their ambitions, Hartung explains,
“For example, we could compare memory formation in organoids derived from healthy people and from Alzheimer’s patients, and try to repair relative deficits. We could also use OI to test whether certain substances, such as pesticides, cause memory or learning problems.”
Johns Hopkins assistant professor of environmental health and engineering and co-leader of the investigation, Lena Smirnova, suggests using OI to revolutionize drug testing research for neurodegeneration and neurodevelopmental disorders. In the Johns Hopkins article, Smirnova says,
“We want to compare brain organoids from typically developed donors versus brain organoids from donors with autism. The tools we are developing toward biological computing are the same tools that will allow us to understand changes in neuronal networks specific for autism, without having to use animals or to access patients, so we can understand the underlying mechanisms of why patients have these cognition issues and impairments.
This entire field of science is still in its infancy, yet it’s remarkable how quickly progress is happening. Just a few months ago, I wrote on Medium about scientists who taught brain cells to play Pong — and those cells weren’t fully powered 3D organoids, they were flat brain cell cultures. So perhaps the researchers are right; OI may not be some distant futuristic technology, but it will be here before we know it.
Perspective Shift
When I first learned about OI, I envisioned the typical AI apocalypse scenario, except with fleshy tech gadgets instead of plastic ones. But I’ll admit that the possibilities of OI regarding neurological research excite me. I’ve long said that it’s high time we learn more about our inner mental experiences, which we’ve neglected due to a lack of technology and fixation on the external world. Now, it seems, we can.
Still, most new technologies or significant innovations have further ethical implications to discuss, and OI has plenty to consider. For instance, is it really okay to use people’s cells to create computers? Especially considering all of the privacy concerns current technology creates.
But also, so far, AI hasn’t breached conscious awareness, but could that change when the technology is made from human cells? This might initially seem absurd until you consider that some expert’s purpose consciousness exists in every cell, atom, and particle in the universe. Still, the mere fact that we’ve reached a point, as a species, to discuss such possibilities in terms of possible scientific exploration rather than the next plot of a sci-fi novel is mind-boggling.
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