First Bioprocessor Powered by Human Brain Organoids

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/worlds-first-bioprocessor-uses-16-human-brain-organoids-for-a-million-times-less-power-consumption-than-a-digital-chip

by Hadi7546 • 2 years ago

142 63 2 years ago

tomshardware.com

zonkerdonker2• 2 years ago

Anyone ineterested in more wetware projects should check out the series from The Thought Emporium on youtube: https://youtu.be/bEXefdbQDjw

They are attempting to train a (literal) neural network to play DOOM. And yes, it os as fascinating and horrifying as it sounds.

It's hard not to extrapolate 50 years down the line with this tech. Stuff gets complicated quick. How many human neurons do you have to use before you get an actual human consiousness?

simonh• 2 years ago

Do you have to use human neurons?

zonkerdonker2• 2 years ago

No, in the video they are using rat neurons (they're the cheapest)

ben_w6• 2 years ago

It's hard not to extrapolate 50 years down the line with this tech. Stuff gets complicated quick.

Indeed, though looking at the rate of change in various fields, I feel everything goes weird some time around 2032 or so: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2024/03/23-17.24.34.html

How many human neurons do you have to use before you get an actual human consiousness?

How many grains of sand makes a heap.

(I don't know the relative importance of organic neurons as hardware vs. whatever specific connectivity architecture they happen to have in us, so the same might apply to perceptrons).

jtriangle• 2 years ago

How many grains of sand makes a heap

A minimum of four, usually much more though.

(yes that is a tetrahedron joke)

synctext• 2 years ago

From Your Blog: > No Musk ⇒ No Mars

Sputnik 2.0 is near.

China AI and chip investments are off the charts. Note that China is scheduled to attempt a Mars sample return mission with Tianwen-3. They are scheduled before any other competing team. China has the industrial support of the non-democratic government. They are willing to bear the risk for their future. This might be more stable funding then commercial SpaceX or high-deficit-USA-NASA.

scrubs• 2 years ago

The best way I heard it was:

How many times N can one lie before being called a liar?

The question investigates a discrete phase or category or state change.

HPsquared• 2 years ago

Alex Jones will have a field day with that one.

helf• 2 years ago

This arguably has more functioning neurons than he does.

strogonoff2• 2 years ago

Asking how many neurons are needed before we “get” a consciousness is a bit like asking how many people are needed before we have a country.

The assumption that you obtain a human consciousness by using human neurons is itself flawed—physics does not say it works that way, and theory of mind philosophers are divided on the matter.

rocky1138• 2 years ago

How does physics say it works?

suoduandao3• 2 years ago

I love the comment on that video: "Imagine you wake up and you're just doomguy"

ljlolel4• 2 years ago

I wrote a sci-fi novella based on this.

Scientists develop bioprocessor organoids, then develop cDNA that lives in the germ line that develops this organoid with pre-programmed in weights of all human knowledge.

This solves the alignment problem because now every human has an efficient NN biologically embodied inside them (and for free to all progeny).

The AI is just a new multimodal neuron mini-brain with just a few billion weights holding all knowledge whispering conclusions into your ear.

This survives all civilization-ending catastrophes.

My friend added, then scientists discovered that this mini brain and axonal connection already exists in the gut and develops a way to reactivate it. Lol

beambot• 2 years ago

Published? Title?

ljlolel4• 2 years ago

The Gut Oracle

Chapter 1

Dr. Amara Singh stared at the bioprocessor organoid under her microscope, her heart racing with excitement. She turned to her partner, Dr. Kai Nakamura, with a wide grin. "We did it, Kai. This is going to change everything."

Kai returned her smile, his eyes sparkling with admiration. "You're brilliant, Amara. I can't believe we've come this far."

They had been working on this project for years, developing bioprocessor organoids that could be programmed with vast stores of knowledge using custom cDNA and integrated into the human germline. The implications were staggering – every person could be born with a highly efficient neural network pre-loaded with the sum total of human knowledge.

As they celebrated their breakthrough, a knock on the lab door interrupted them. Elias Stone, the billionaire philanthropist who had funded their research, strode in with a broad smile. "I hear congratulations are in order," he said, shaking their hands. "This is going to change the world."

Chapter 2

The first "augmented" humans saw incredible results, making groundbreaking advances in every field. However, not everyone was thrilled with this new technology. Activist group "Human Nature" emerged, led by the charismatic Lila Rosen.

"These bioprocessors are a form of techno-colonialism," Lila declared at a press conference. "Privileged elites are forcing an untested technology on the masses, without considering the consequences."

Dr. Singh watched the news coverage with a frown. She turned to Kai, who was working at his computer. "What do you think about this opposition?"

Kai sighed. "I understand their concerns, but I believe the benefits outweigh the risks. We just need to make sure we're being responsible and transparent."

As the controversy grew, Dr. Nakamura made a startling discovery. He had uncovered ancient texts hinting that the key to even greater knowledge lay dormant in the human gut – the enteric nervous system. If they could reactivate this innate "gut oracle," bioprocessor implants would be unnecessary.

Chapter 3

Dr. Singh was fascinated by the idea of the gut oracle and began researching ways to awaken its potential. However, Elias Stone was furious when he learned of this new direction.

"I've invested billions into the bioprocessor technology," he snapped during a tense meeting. "I won't let this gut oracle nonsense derail our plans."

Despite Stone's opposition, Dr. Singh secretly continued her research with a small, trusted team, including her brilliant young protégé, Asha Patel. As they delved deeper into the mysteries of the gut-brain axis, they began to suspect that the gut oracle's abilities far surpassed even the bioprocessors.

Lila Rosen and Human Nature got wind of this new development and saw it as the perfect way to undermine the bioprocessor agenda. They leaked information to the press, spinning it as the natural, harmonious alternative to invasive technological augmentation.

Chapter 4

The revelations sparked a fierce public debate. People began to question whether the bioprocessors were the panacea they had been promised. Protests and unrest grew, with Elias Stone and Dr. Singh finding themselves on opposite sides of a widening ideological rift.

Amidst the chaos, Dr. Singh and Kai's relationship strained under the pressure. Kai grew increasingly uncomfortable with the direction their work had taken, and found himself confiding in Lila Rosen.

"I just want to make sure we're doing the right thing," Kai confessed to Lila over coffee. "I love Amara, but I'm worried she's losing sight of the bigger picture."

Lila placed a comforting hand on his arm. "You have a good heart, Kai. Trust your instincts."

Chapter 5

As tensions reached a boiling point, Dr. Singh and Asha Patel finally achieved the breakthrough they had been working towards. They successfully reactivated the gut oracle in a human test subject, unlocking capabilities beyond their wildest dreams.

But their triumph was short-lived. Elias Stone, desperate to protect his interests, had been monitoring their work. He seized control of their research by force, determined to suppress this threat to his bioprocessor empire.

In a climactic confrontation, Dr. Singh and Asha Patel fought to protect their discovery, aided by Lila Rosen and her followers. Kai, torn between his love for Amara and his growing doubts, made a crucial decision to stand with them against Stone.

"I'm sorry, Amara," Kai said, his voice thick with emotion. "I should have trusted you from the start. I'm here now, and I'm not going anywhere."

Together, they faced down Stone and his forces, fighting for the future of humanity.

Chapter 6

In the aftermath of the confrontation, the world learned of the gut oracle's potential, and a new era dawned. Dr. Singh and her allies vowed to ensure that the power of the gut oracle would benefit all humanity, not just a select few.

As they embarked on this new chapter, Dr. Singh and Kai rekindled their love, their bond stronger for the trials they had endured. They knew that the challenges ahead would test them, but with their love and shared vision, they were ready to face whatever the future might bring.

"We've come so far," Amara said, looking out over the city skyline. "But there's still so much work to be done."

Kai took her hand, smiling softly. "We'll do it together. You and me, Asha and Lila, and the whole world. A new age of wisdom and understanding awaits."

ben_w6• 2 years ago

This solves the alignment problem because now every human has an efficient NN biologically embodied inside them (and for free to all progeny).

That's fine in fiction, but IRL? Well, if I gave everyone an organoid that did this but also it produced cocaine by accident, you can see how that's not sufficient.

It's also a reverse-lobotomy (lobo-plasty?), and it's not reasonable to wonder if the change of personality as a result of an extra blob of mind can be just as severe as the change from a removal of some part of your mind.

My friend added, then scientists discovered that this mini brain and axonal connection already exists in the gut and develops a way to reactivate it. Lol

I like this twist. Almost "the aliens were in us all along".

jprete2• 2 years ago

The intestinal tract's neural network could be an entirely separate consciousness with its own thoughts and personality spending ninety years of life thinking about food.

Terr_2• 2 years ago

I like this twist. Almost "the aliens were in us all along".

That reminds me of "Blood Music", a short story by Greg Bear that was later expanded into a novel. The basic premise is what happens when your cells get smarter and start making a tiny civilization.

Terr_2• 2 years ago

with pre-programmed in weights of all human knowledge

It's weird, but somehow this seems like the least-tractable challenge... Unless we find that "the weights" were reliably derived from observation of deep structures of adult brain in a way that transcends language and upbringing.

This solves the alignment problem

Until they start fighting to control or replace the default host consciousness, anyway. If it activated too early in child development, it could be a kind of consciousness brood-parasite.

Y'think people are concerned about "the tablet is raising my kid", just imagine "the organioids stopped my kid from becoming conscious and now it's puppeteer-ing their body."

ljlolel4• 2 years ago

it's this or Sam Altman and Elon Musk super-robots hack your brain

ben_w6• 2 years ago

It's weird, but somehow this seems like the least-tractable challenge... Unless we find that "the weights" were reliably derived from observation of deep structures of adult brain in a way that transcends language and upbringing.

Doesn't seem so to me; while I keep failing to hear any information about precise measurements of in-vivo synaptic weights, if you could do that then in principle one could pop a pre-trained LLM in and it would be at least close enough.

GPT-3.5 is 0.01% of the human brain's complexity so this wouldn't be a huge extra volume either, and that's enough for, what, speaking 30 languages fluently, and having a decent (degree-level but textbook-only) education in every subject?

roughly3• 2 years ago

Something that's interesting here is that brain organoids have been known to exhibit spontaneous synchronous firing pattern generation, which may just be a thing that happens when you collect neurons in large enough numbers. There's two questions here - one, the more prosaic, is technical: how does a bioprocessor handle that kind of spontaneous behavior? The second is more philosophical, which is that we don't actually have a good theory for what consciousness is or at what size or level of complexity it emerges. We know the more we look, the more we find what looks like self-aware behavior in animals and the more we find evidence of social behaviors and what looks an awful lot like "inner life." One can argue whether or not a computer can ever be truly conscious, but a ball of neurons, well, we know the answer to that one.

seydor2• 2 years ago

may just be a thing that happens when you collect neurons in large enough numbers.

Yes, cultures of neurons start having strong syncronized oscillations after a few days. It's an artifact of having a bunch of neurons on a dish. I don't think we should be ascribing anything more to it

roughly3• 2 years ago

At some point between that and human size, a cluster of neurons starts being conscious, and we don’t know where. All we know is this is the material substrate of consciousness making the motions of consciousness, albeit in a limited form. We’ve got no strong basis for arguing it isn’t conscious except our gut feeling about how large a population of neurons is required and no way to test whether we’re right.

xvilka• 2 years ago

Finally, can solve car FSD.

awinter-py• 2 years ago

at long last we have created the torment nexus

jprete2• 2 years ago

How thematic that they've asked it to play Doom.

king_magic• 2 years ago

This should be stopped, in my opinion. Feels extremely unethical.

yagyu2• 2 years ago

Relevant book rec: Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky. https://adriantchaikovsky.com/dogs-of-war-series.html

yagyu2• 2 years ago

I suppose the Murderbot Diaries is also on the theme https://marthawells.com/murderbot1.htm

dekhn3• 2 years ago

Side note: I'm just finishing up the Uncreation trilogy by the same author and it's pretty crazy. I don't know how this guy churns out so much text.

pelagicAustral• 2 years ago

I was fascinated by Organoids for a while a few years back. Mainly because there was a discussion with an entity, I had no idea about, that dealt with the ethics of such implementation. On top of that I was sick in my stomach after playing SOMA. I could not bare the idea of producing a brain, and have some sort entity live in the constraints of 'that' universe alone... I guess if I think long enough I still feel the same anxiety.

Hank Greely [0] has got some fabulous papers on this:

Should Cerebral Organoids be Used for Research if they Have the Capacity for Consciousness? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34702403/

And some more on ethics:

The Ethics of Human Brain Organoid Transplantation in Animals https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10550858/

https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/ethical-legal-and...

[0] https://law.stanford.edu/henry-t-greely/

fnordpiglet• 2 years ago

I wonder if they tried other neurons - do human neurons individually or even as an organoid perform better than say a rat neuron based organoid? I might even believe other animal neurons are otherwise faster, etc, in some way even if they never organize into a more complex brain in the animal.

Joel_Mckay• 2 years ago

Seems on brand for scene 1 of any horrific science fiction film.

How they managed clearance to try this with mammalian cells is a mystery. =3

pavel_lishin• 2 years ago

Peter Watts "predicted" this, or something like this, in his Rifters trilogy.

Buttons840• 2 years ago

It seems unlikely a few neurons would be more capable than what we can program a CPU to do. Unless we don't fully understand what the neurons will do, in which case, maybe we'll learn better how neurons work. I suspect it's the latter.

RaftPeople• 2 years ago

It seems unlikely a few neurons would be more capable than what we can program a CPU to do.

Our brain cells are very good at many things we can't duplicate to the same level in software today (e.g. processing real time info for patterns and learning). Even a single neuron can identifying real time patterns (Purkinje cells at the cell level, and in other cells internally local synapse activity patterns are identified and calcium signals forwarded to other parts of the cell).

Unless we don't fully understand what the neurons will do

Scientists have a long way to go to understand how neurons function.

For example, it was only relatively recently that they accepted that tunneling nanotubes between neurons (and other cells) happen in living brains (as opposed to just in cultures). Now they are trying to understand what these tubes do functionally, why do they dynamically generate on short time scales, why do some of them have electrical gap junctions (typically used for forwarding electrical signals without spiking), and a million other questions.

lukasb• 2 years ago

Where did they get the human brain organoids from?

EnigmaFlare• 2 years ago

From a quick internet research - They got stem cells from some other part of somebody's body and somehow "reprogrammed" them into pluripotent (iPSC) stem cells which can then make other cell types. They made brain cells with them.

Also, the organoids are 0.5 mm diameter balls.

seydor2• 2 years ago

Uff i hate those press releases of nonexistent things. There are more decent ways to make money

ImHereToVote• 2 years ago

Finally the quest for systems to exploit labor, can cut out the middle man.

bondarchuk• 2 years ago

This is deemed not conscious because it's just a small piece.

LLMs, though quite large, are deemed not conscious because they're only made of silicon.

When we are running LLM-like software on large human brain organoids (which is clearly where this line of research is heading) maybe some people will finally have some ethical concerns?

artninja1988• 2 years ago

It probably would matter what type of computations it would be running, no? I think if a silicon computer ran the same exact computations as a conscious brain it would be conscious. If brain tissue ran some simple algorithm for playing doom or predicting the next word, it wouldn't be conscious

CatWChainsaw• 2 years ago

It's hilarious how many comments here are hand wringing over the ethics of this. Because AI is fine as long as it's silicon right? I prefer this to literal brain microchips controlled by Manchild Musk.

tivert• 2 years ago

Oh good. I was worried our future AGI tyrants, that are software engineer overlords are mindlessly racing to create, wouldn't be able to exploit us like in the Matrix. Now I can rest easy.

cesarvarela• 2 years ago

the idea behind the original Matrix movie script.

First Bioprocessor Powered by Human Brain Organoids

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