Organoid intelligence beyond AI

Scientists announced a new organoid(= organ like) intelligence field. Although computers powered by human brain cells may sound like science fiction, a team of Johns Hopkins University believe such machines and has been developing them.

Researchers call them bio computers that are a part of the emerging field of “organoid intelligence(OI)”, which could have a significant impact in the future. They have a strategy for getting there.

Organ-like tissues created in the labs are called organoid. oid means like. These three-dimensional models, which are often created from skin stem cells, have been used in labs for almost 20 years.

By using these models as dummies for kidneys, lungs, and other organs, researchers have been able to conduct experiments without endangering humans or animals.

The pen-dot-sized cell cultures that make up brain organoids don’t truly resemble miniature replicas of the human brain, but they do include neurons that can do brain-like tasks and link in a myriad of ways.

In 2012, Dr. Thomas Hartung started developing brain organoids by modifying samples of human skin at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Whiting School of Engineering in Baltimore.

2023 Dr. Hartung team’s blueprint for OI

He and his colleagues hope to harness the power of brain organoids to create biological technology that consumes less energy than supercomputers. These biocomputers would make use of networks of brain organoids to perhaps transform drug testing for conditions like Alzheimer’s, give information about the human brain, and alter computing int the future.

The research revealing Hartung and his team’s blueprint for OI was released in the journal Frontiers in Science on 7th March 2023. According to lead research author, computing and artificial intelligence have been driving the technological revolution but have hit a ceiling.

In order to push above our existing technical limitations, biocomputing is a massive endeavour of computational power compression and efficiency improvement.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/science/articles/10.3389/fsci.2023.1017235

Above image is magnified. Neurons are shaded in pink and cell nuclei in blue and other supporting cells in red and green.

AI vs human brain

Whereas human mental processes serve as a model for artificial intelligence, the technology cannot completely imitate the human brain. Due to this gap, people can employ a text-based or image-based CAPTCHA(Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Machines and Humans Apart) as an online security precaution to demonstrate that they are not robots.

British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing created the Turing test, also known as the imitation game, in 1950 to elevate whether machines exhibit intelligent behaviour that is comparable to that of a person.

But how effective is a machine compared to the human brain? A supercomputer can process enormous volumes of data far more quickly than a person.

For instance, AlphaGo(the AI that defeated the tip Go player in the world in Korea in 2017) was taught using data from 160,000 games, according to Hartung. To experience all of these games, a person would need to play for five hours a day for more than 175 years.

The human brain, on the other hand, use energy more effectively, is better at learning and coming to complicated logical conclusions. The human brain is readily capable of tasks that a machine cannot perform, such as being able to distinguish one animal from another.

A $600 million supercomputer called Frontier(World best supercom) wrighs a heavy 3,629kg, with each cabinet weighing the same as two regular pickup trucks.

It is located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee US. The machine’s processing power surpassed that of a single human brain in June 2022, but Hartung claimed it required a million times more electricity. Modern computer are still no match for the human brain.

How a biocomputer operates

John B Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka, pioneers in the field of stem cells, were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2012 for their work on a method that made it possible to create cells from fully grown tissues, such as skin.

With the aid of ground-breaking research, researchers like Hartung were able to create brain organoids that mimicked live brains and test and detect medications that could be harmful to the health of brain.

Human medicine may be where organoid intelligence makes its most significant contributions. Scientists might create brain organoids from skin samples of people with neurological diseases, allowing them to study the effects of various medicines and other variables.

The team might research the cognitive effects of neurological diseases using OI. In order to address relative impairments, for instance, compare memory development in organoids produced from healthy individual and from Alzheimers’s patients.

OI might potentially be used to determine whether certain chemicals such pesticides, impair memory or learning. Moreover, brain organoids could provide a new perspective on how people think.

Co-investigator Lena Simirnova wants to compare brain organoids from generally developing donor to brain organoids from donors with autism. Without using animals or gaining access to patients, the tools the team is crating for biological computing will enable to comprehend alterations in neural networks that are unique to autism, allowing to comprehend the fundamental processes causing patients’ cognitive problems and deficits.

It’s still very early days for the development of organoid intelligence using brain organoids. It may take decades to create OI with the mental capacity of a mouse on par with a computer.

But there are already encouraging outcomes that show what is feasible. Video game Pong may be leaned by brain cells according to Dr. Brett Kagan who is a co-author and chief scientific officer of Cortical Laboratories in Melbourne, AU.

The team is already trying this using brain organoids. And would assert that carrying out this experiment again using organoids already satisfies the fundamental requirements of OI.

From this point on, realising OI’s full potential just requires developing the community, the tools, and the technology.

The morals of organoid brains

The creation of human brain organoids that can perform cognitive tasks poses several ethical questions, such as whether the organoids may experience awareness or suffering and if the people whose cells were used to create them have any legal claim to the organoids.

The development of OI in an ethical and socially responsible manner is a crucial component of our goal, according to Dr. Hartung. For this reason, we have worked together with ethicists to build a “embedded ethics” approach from the very beginning.

As the study progresses, team made up of scientists, ethicists, and members of the public will regularly evaluate any ethical problems.

OI blurs the distinction between human cognition and machine intelligence, and biology and technology are developing at a rate that may exceed the necessary moral and ethical debates.

Before technology plunges into the moral abyss, this growing discipline must adopt a forceful approach to tackling the ethical and moral challenges that come with this sort of technological breakthrough.

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Source: Johns Hopkins University, frontiers