When I first started researching this, I could hardly believe that it was true. A company in Switzerland known as “Final Spark” has constructed a bizarre hybrid biocomputer that combines lab-grown miniature human brains with conventional electronic circuits. This approach saves an extraordinary amount of energy compared to normal computers, but there is a big problem. The lab-grown miniature human brains keep wearing out and dying, and so scientists have to keep growing new ones to replace them
Stem cells that are derived from human skin tissue are used to create the 16 spherical brain “organoids” that the system depends upon. I realize that this sounds like something straight out of a really bad science fiction movie, but it is actually happening.
Swiss tech startup FinalSpark is now selling access to biocomputers that combine up to four tiny lab-grown human brains with silicon chips. This new bioprocessing platform, called the Neuroplatform, uses small versions of human brains to do computer work instead of silicon chips. The company says it can fit 16 of these mini-brains onto the Neuroplatform and use a fraction of the energy required to power a traditional set up. The platform, currently adopted by nine institutions, integrates hardware, software and biology to construct a processing system that is energy-efficient and high-performing.
This “breakthrough” is being hailed as a way to save a gigantic amount of energy.
Rather than merely integrating biological concepts into computing, FinalSpark’s online platform ‘taps’ into spherical clusters of lab-grown human brain cells called organoids. A total of 16 organoids are housed within four arrays that connect to eight electrodes each and a microfluidics system that supplies water and nutrients for the cells.
The approach, known as wetware computing, in this case harnesses researchers’ abilities to culture organoids in the lab, a fairly new technology that allows scientists to study what are essentially mini replicas of individual organs.
Researchers do this by training the organoids through a reward system. The organoids are rewarded with dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure (and addiction). Meanwhile, as “punishment,” the organoids are exposed to chaotic stimuli, such as irregular electrical activity.
If the enslaved mini-brains do what they are supposed to do, they are rewarded with lots of pleasure.
If the enslaved mini-brains do not do what they are supposed to do, they are hit with lots of “irregular electrical activity”.
The creators of “the Neuroplatform” insist that this is perfectly okay because the mini-brains are not sentient beings.
Whether that is true or not, what they are doing is still very wrong.
Creating miniature human brains and using them to power a computer may be a way to save a lot of energy, but it also perfectly illustrates how far our society has fallen.
What do you think?:
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