Latest news with #CorticalLabs
Business Times
05-07-2025
- Science
- Business Times
Brain cells on silicon chips: The rise of ‘biological computers'
[SINGAPORE] The brain is full of unsolved mysteries. One startup thinks that it can crack these puzzles – and even open up new possibilities in computing – by fusing brain cells with silicon. In March, Australian startup Cortical Labs unveiled what it says is the first commercial 'biological computer'. Called the CL1, the device integrates lab-grown brain cells – derived from human stem cells – with hard silicon. The CL1 can be used for drug discovery, disease modelling and research into neuroscience and information systems, Cortical Labs' chief scientific officer, Dr Brett Kagan, told me over a Zoom call. The CL1 fuses lab-grown brain cells with hard silicon. PHOTO: CORTICAL LABS With its combination of brain cells and silicon, the CL1 is meant to be able to adapt and learn faster than purely silicon-based artificial intelligence (AI). Dr Kagan said: 'Cortical Labs was started with the question in mind: 'What if we use the most powerful information processor that we currently know of?' And that, ultimately, is brain cells. Whether it's flies, cats or us, we all can do amazing things – with very little power, very little data – using brain cells.' Indeed, I was surprised to learn that the brain uses just 20 watts of power, equivalent to what a light bulb would require. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up In contrast, training an AI model, such as the GPT-3 large language model, guzzles as much as 1,300 megawatt hours of electricity – enough to power about 130 homes in the US for a year. The CL1's launch follows a widely publicised paper published in the journal Neuron in 2022, which gave an account of the Cortical Labs team's efforts to train brain cells in a dish to play the arcade game Pong. 'That paper was a proof of concept to see if you could get brain cells in a dish… to process information and do something in a goal-orientated way – in this case, control a paddle to 'hit' a ball,' said Dr Kagan. 'While we weren't that surprised to see that cells could learn and respond… the speed at which they learnt and responded was surprising. We expected it would take much longer to see some meaningful learning, but in fact, it was within minutes.' Untangling a paradox Dr Kagan is excited, not just about the current applications of the CL1, but what breakthroughs it could lead to. In the near future, applications could include personalised medicine – through which scientists could grow a person's cells in a lab and test drugs on them while measuring the cells' response, enabling the treatment to be tailored to that individual. Dr Kagan believes the use of biological computers for personalised medicine could be just a few years away with proper investment, given that the technical barriers are not high. In the long term, a biological computer could be used in fields such as robotics, cybersecurity or even systems with 'generalised intelligence', or in the human-like ability to solve general problems, surpassing current AI systems. 'I think the most exciting applications may be ones that I'm not even going to be able to tell you today,' the chief scientific officer said. Of course, there are a host of ethical issues that come with such work. For instance, some would be concerned if a biological computer would be able to feel pain. 'No, the system can't feel pain – it doesn't have pain receptors (and) it's not set up to feel pain,' Dr Kagan said, adding that the company has been working with bioethicists on how such technology should move forward. He noted that scientists have grown brain cells in labs for decades, but previously had no means to test the information-processing ability of these cells. What devices like the CL1 do is introduce new possibilities. Dr Kagan references a famous quote by the American scientist Emerson Pugh: 'If the brain was so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.' Pointing to Cortical Labs' work, he added: 'What we're building here might be a way to overcome that paradox.' The rise of biological computers is just one of many weird and wonderful phenomena out there. This column routes signals away from the motherboard of regular news and into peripheral curiosities, whether in finance, economics, science, psychology, or even beyond.
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
You Can Now Rent a Flesh Computer Grown in a British Lab
The world's first commercial hybrid of silicon circuitry and human brain cells will soon be available for rent. Marketed for its vast potential in medical research, the biological machine, grown inside a British laboratory, builds on the Pong-playing prototype, DishBrain. Each CL1 computer is formed of 800,000 neurons grown across a silicon chip, and their life-support system. While it can't yet match the mind-blowing capabilities of today's most powerful computers, the system has one very significant advantage: it only consumes a fraction of the energy of comparable technologies. AI centers now consume countries' worth of energy, whereas a rack of CL1 machines only uses 1,000 watts and is naturally capable of adapting and learning in real time. "The neuron is self-programming, infinitely flexible, and the result of four billion years of evolution. What digital AI models spend tremendous resources trying to emulate, we begin with," Australian biotech startup Cortical Labs claims on its website. They teamed up with UK company to further develop DishBrain, an experimental platform designed to explore the "wetware" concept. Related: When neuroscientist Brett Kagan and colleagues pitted their creation against equivalent levels of machine learning algorithms, the cell culture systems outperformed them. Users can send code directly into the synthetically supported system of neurons, which is capable of responding to electrical signals almost instantly. These signals act as bits of information that can be read and acted on by the cells. But perhaps the greatest potential for this biological and synthetic hybrid is as an experimental tool for learning more about our own brains and their abilities, from neuroscience to creativity. "Epileptic cells can't learn to play games very well, but if you apply antiepileptics to the cell culture, they can suddenly learn better as well as a range of other previously inaccessible metrics," Kagan told Shannon Cuthrell at IEEE's Spectrum, pointing out the system's ethical drug testing capacity. The computing neurons are grown from skin and blood samples provided by adult human donors. While there are still many limitations – for one, the neurons only survive for six months at a time – the energy-saving potential of this technology alone suggests such systems are worth developing further. Especially given the dire state of our own life support system. The first CL1 units will reportedly ship soon for US$35,000 each, or remote access can apparently be rented for $300 per week. This Strange 'Bubble Wrap' Can Produce Drinking Water in The Desert Disturbing Signs of AI Threatening People Spark Concern Scientists Figured Out How to Extract Gold From Old Phones And Laptops
Forbes
04-06-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Hardware, Software, Meet Wetware: A Computer With 800,000 Human Neurons
The Cortical Labs CL1 biological computer with human brain cells. The world's first 'code-deployable' biological computer is now for sale. The Cortical Labs CL1 costs $35,000 and has 800,000 human brain cells living and growing in a nutrient solution on a silicon chip. Computer scientists can deploy computer code directly to these neurons, which have been integrated into a 'biOS' or Biological Intelligence Operating System with what the company says is a mixture of hard silicon and soft tissue. The goal, according to the companies' founder? Smarter AI that drops some of the A and adds more of the I. Maybe, eventually, smarter brains than the ones we currently walk around with. 'The only machine or the only thing that we know of that actually has true intelligence is the brain,' founder and CEO Hon Weng Chong told me when I interviewed him five years ago, while he was still using mice neurons. 'So we said, let's start with the basic building structure, the building blocks being neurons, and let's build our way up and maybe we'll get there along the way.' Our human brains have neurons connected together in hierarchies, and from that emerges intelligence and consciousness, he adds. This approach is similar to neuromorphic computing architectures, which attempt to mimic biological brains with silicon-based hardware, but of course different in that neuromorphic chips do not typically use actual living brain cells. Cortical Labs, based in Australia, says scientists can solve today's most difficult problems with their biological computers, which they say are self-programming and infinitely flexible. A key difference between biological computers and silicon-based chips, of course, is that biological computers last even less time. The neurons that ship with your CL1 will live for 'up to six months,' at which point you'll likely have to invest in a refresh or refurbishment which provides new neurons for continued compute. And yes, biological computers need food and water and nutrients, all of which are supplied onboard via a life-support system the keeps them at optimum temperature. Plus, it filters out waste byproducts of living human cells: the kind of work kidneys might do in a full living organism. A Cortical Labs chip under a high-powered electron microscope. You can see tight connections between ... More neurons and the silicon substrate, the company says. In some ways the CL1 is more like a space ship than a computer, because it's a self-contained life support system that requires few external inputs. A key difference: the need for external power. From the outside, though, you treat the CL1 as a typical computer. You can plug in USB devices, cameras, even actuators if you want your CL1 to control a physical system. (Which, frankly, human neurons are typically pretty good at.) And there's a touchscreen so you can see system status or view live data. Five years ago, Cortical Lab's then-CTO Andy Kitchen told me they were deploying systems with tens of thousands of neurons to hundreds of thousands of neurons, but that their roadmap included 'scaling that up to millions of neurons." Now Cortical Labs sees their biological computers growing to hundreds of millions of cells, and with different technologies, billion or trillion-cell levels. However, there's not a direct one-to-one equivalent with neuromorphic neurons in a silicon-based system, he added. Biological neurons are much more powerful, he says. Interestingly, communicating with physical human neurons in a biological computer is vastly different than writing computer code to an artificial computer. 'The premier way would be to describe your task somehow, probably through some sort of very high-level language, and then we would turn that into a stimulus sequence which would shape biological behavior to fit your specification,' Kitchen told me. Part of the difference is how to encode and communicate the problem, and part of the difference is that the CL1 neurons, like the ones in your brain right now, have some plasticity: they can essentially reprogram themselves for different tasks. Essentially, the neurons learn how to solve your problem, just like you learn how to do new things. You won't likely see CL1 systems in general use anytime soon: currently, the targeted customers are in medical fields like drug discovery and disease modeling, says IEEE Spectrum. There's the added value that scientists can perform experiments on a little synthetic brain as well. If all of this seems on the edge of creepy, or even right over, that's likely because it is. CL1 says they don't do any animal testing, although they did start with mouse neurons, and they say that the human brain cells in their biological computers are lab-grown. But clearly the first human neurons came from somewhere. Cortical Labs says customers have to get 'ethical approval' to general cell lines, and require buyers to have proper facilities to maintain the biological chips. What exactly that means, however, is unclear. Soon we may see physical system in the world, like humanoid robots, with partially organic components to their brains.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'Actual intelligence': Franken-PC debuts in Melbourne with a $35,000 price tag and claims of exceptional performance
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Cortical Labs has built the first deployable biological computer, priced at $35,000 The CL1 integrates living neurons with silicon for real-time computation The next step will be to build a biological neural network server stack Despite the unquestionably impressive advancements we've witnessed in recent years, AI is still lagging far behind human intelligence. While it can process vast amounts of data, recognize patterns, and generate responses at speed, it lacks true understanding and reasoning, and although it's getting better, the issue of hallucinations - when the AI makes stuff up - remains a problem. Two years ago, researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Australia, together with scientists at Cortical Labs in Melbourne, suggested that the answer to real, less artificial AI was organoids - computers built with human brain cells. Fast forward to today, and Cortical Labs has turned the theory into reality with the production of the world's first commercialized biological computer. The CL1, which will be manufactured to order but is available for purchase online (the option to buy time on the chips will also be offered), is a Synthetic Biological Intelligence (SBI). 'Real neurons are cultivated inside a nutrient-rich solution, supplying them with everything they need to be healthy. They grow across a silicon chip, which sends and receives electrical impulses into the neural structure," the company says. The world the neurons exist in is created by Cortical Labs' Biological Intelligence Operating System (biOS) and 'runs a simulated world and sends information directly to the neurons about their environment. As the neurons react, their impulses affect their simulated world. We bring these neurons to life, and integrate them into the biOS with a mixture of hard silicon and soft tissue. You get to connect directly to these neurons.' By deploying code directly to the real neurons, the company claims the CL1 can solve today's most difficult challenges, 'The neuron is self-programming, infinitely flexible, and the result of four billion years of evolution. What digital AI models spend tremendous resources trying to emulate, we begin with.' "Today is the culmination of a vision that has powered Cortical Labs for almost six years," noted Dr. Hon Weng Chong, Founder and CEO of Cortical Labs. "However, our long-term mission has been to democratize this technology, making it accessible to researchers without specialized hardware and software. The CL1 is the realization of that mission. While today's announcement is incredibly exciting, it's the foundation for the next stage of innovation. The real impact and the real implications will come from every researcher, academic, or innovator that builds on top of it." A report from New Atlasclaims Cortical is constructing a 'first-of-its-kind biological neural network server stack, housing 30 individual units that each contain the cells on their electrode array, which is expected to go online in the coming months.' The site reports the company is aiming to have four stacks available for commercial use via a cloud system by the end of 2025. As for pricing, the CL1 will be surprisingly affordable. 'The units themselves are expected to have a price tag of around US$35,000, to start with (anything close to this kind of tech is currently priced at €80,000, or nearly US$85,000),' New Atlas adds. For context, Apple's 'best failure' the Lisa, which paved the way for the Macintosh and even Microsoft Windows, sold for $9,995.00 in January 1983 which, adjusting for inflation, works out to a comparable $32,500 today. Will the CL1 prove be as important to computing's future as the Lisa was? It's impossible to say, but for now its impact will largely depend on scalability, practical applications, and how well it integrates into existing AI and computing systems. Computers built by human brain cells could help make AI less artificial Brain-like computers could become reality sooner than you think 'An extension of a scientist's brain': Researchers explore AI to augment inspiration
Yahoo
09-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Weird New Computer Runs AI on Captive Human Brain Cells
Australian startup Cortical Labs has launched what it's calling the "world's first code deployable biological computer." The shoe box-sized device, dubbed CL1, is a notable departure from a conventional computer, and uses human brain cells to run fluid neural networks. In 2022, Cortical Labs made a big splash after teaching human brain cells in a petri dish how to play the video game "Pong." The CL1, however, is a fundamentally different approach, as New Atlas reports. It makes use of hundreds of thousands of tiny neurons, roughly the size of an ant brain each, which are cultivated inside a "nutrient rich solution" and spread out across a silicon chip, according to the company's website. Through a combination of "hard silicon and soft tissue," the company claims that owners can "deploy code directly to the real neurons" to "solve today's most difficult challenges." "A simple way to describe it would be like a body in a box, but it has filtration for waves, it has where the media is stored, it has pumps to keep everything circulating, gas mixing, and of course temperature control," Cortical Labs chief science officer Brett Kagan told New Atlas late last year. Whether it will actually prove useful remains to be seen, but Kagan is excited for scientists to get their hands on the tech. "There's so many different options," he told Australian broadcaster ABC News, suggesting it could be used for "disease modelling, or drug testing." "The large majority of drugs for neurological and psychiatric diseases that enter clinical trial testing fail, because there's so much more nuance when it comes to the brain — but you can actually see that nuance when you test with these tools," Kagan told New Atlas. "Our hope is that we're able to replace significant areas of animal testing with this." For now, the company is selling the device as a way to train "biological AI," meaning neural networks that rely on actual neurons. In other words, the neurons can be "taught" via the silicon chip. "The only thing that has 'generalized intelligence'... are biological brains," Kagan told ABC. "What humans, mice, cats and birds can do [that AI can't] is infer from very small amounts of data and then make complex decisions." But the CL1 isn't about to disrupt the entire AI field overnight. "We're not here to try and replace the things that the current AI methods do well," Kagan added. Nonetheless, the approach could have some key advantages. For instance, the neurons only use a few watts of power, compared to infamously power-hungry AI chips that require orders of magnitude more than that. Apart from selling the CL1, Cortical Labs is also looking to sell compute via the cloud, using its own assembled racks of the unusual computers. In short, while it sounds like an exciting new take on conventional computers, Cortical Labs still has a lot to prove, especially when it comes to teaching neurons not unlike an AI. "I know where it's coming from, because it is clear that these human neuronal networks learn remarkably fast," University of Queensland biologist and stem cell research specialist Ernst Wolvetang told ABC. "At this stage I would like to reserve my judgement, because, learning Pong is one thing, but making complex decisions is another," he added. More on Cortical Labs: Researchers Teach Human Brain Cells in a Dish to Play "Pong"
