Organoid Intelligence:
Computers Made of Brain Cells
We tried to make computers think like brains. Now we are just using brains as computers. Meet the "DishBrain".
Pong from a Petri Dish
In a lab in Melbourne, Cortical Labs grew 800,000 human brain cells on top of a silicon chip.
They hooked it up to the game Pong.
Within 5 minutes, the cells started playing. Within 20 minutes, they were rallying. It learned faster than any traditional reinforcement learning AI model.
Silicon vs. Biology
Why grow a computer when we can build one? Because nature is efficient.
Supercomputer (Frontier)
- Energy Hungry: Consumes 21 Megawatts. Needs a dedicated power plant.
- Brute Force: Learns by processing trillions of examples.
Human Brain
- Ultra Efficient: Runs on 20 Watts. That is 1,000,000x less energy than a supercomputer.
- One-Shot Learning: Can learn a new task from a single example.
How Does It Learn?
The brain cells aren't "programmed" like C++ code. They follow the Free Energy Principle (Karl Friston).
Predict
The neuron cluster constantly tries to predict the next electrical signal it will receive from the world (the game environment).
Error
When it misses the ball in Pong, the system sends an unpredictable, chaotic electrical pulse. This "surprise" is physically uncomfortable for the cells.
Adapt
To avoid the chaos (minimize free energy), the cells rewire themselves to play the game better. They learn to play *to avoid the noise*.
Projected Timeline
2024 - 2030The Medical Revolution:
Digital Twins
The immediate value isn't just computing—it's medicine. Currently, 90% of drugs fail in clinical trials because mouse brains aren't human brains.
Organoid Intelligence allows us to:
Take a skin cell from a patient with Autism or Alzheimer's, turn it into a stem cell, grow a "mini-brain", and test drugs on their specific biology. No risk to the patient.
Can it Feel Pain?
This is the elephant in the room. If we build a computer out of human brain cells, and it gets "stressed" when it loses a game (which Cortical Labs observed), does it have rights?
"We are creating intelligence in a dish. We need to be very careful that we aren't creating suffering in a dish."
- Brett Kagan, CSO of Cortical Labs
The Future is Biological
Organoid Intelligence (OI) is the next leap after Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Read: DNA Data Storage