AI brains in lab: Scientists create a computer with human brain tissue

A team of scientists has gone a step ahead and created a special kind of computer hardware that combines real human brain tissue with electronics to work like the human brain. 

It's still in the early stages

This new technology, called Brainoware, uses a tiny brain-like structure called a brain organoid, which is nothing but mini-brains grown from human stem cells.

These organoids are not real brains because they don't think, feel, or have consciousness. They're just groups of tissues that help researchers study how brains develop without needing to study real humans, explained the researchers inScience Alert.

Instead of using traditional electronic methods, the scientists communicate with this organoid using a lot of tiny electrodes and a type of artificial neural network called reservoir computing.

Regular computer parts are used for the input and output to make it work, but they had to train these parts to work with the organoid. The output part reads the information from the organoid and makes decisions or predictions based on the received input.

This allows the organoid to learn and remember things independently without explicit instructions. The team has tested it by teaching it to recognize speech and predict outcomes of certain equations, and it shows promise for improving artificial intelligence.

There are some important challenges with Brainoware. One challenge is making sure the organoids stay alive and healthy. These tiny brain-like structures are a crucial part of the system. Another challenge is the amount of power the equipment surrounding Brainoware consumes.

However, despite these difficulties, it's essential to consider ethical concerns. Apart from improving computer technology, it also offers insights into understanding the mysteries of the human brain. 

So, while there are obstacles to overcome, the ethical implications and the potential to gain a deeper understanding of the human brain make Brainoware significant beyond its immediate computing applications.

The study was published in Nature Electronics.

Study abstract:

Brain-inspired computing hardware aims to emulate the structure and working principles of the brain and could be used to address current limitations in artificial intelligence technologies. However, brain-inspired silicon chips are still limited in their ability to fully mimic brain function as most examples are built on digital electronic principles. Here we report an artificial intelligence hardware approach that uses adaptive reservoir computation of biological neural networks in a brain organoid. In this approach—which is termed Brainoware—computation is performed by sending and receiving information from the brain organoid using a high-density multielectrode array. By applying spatiotemporal electrical stimulation, nonlinear dynamics and fading memory properties are achieved, as well as unsupervised learning from training data by reshaping the organoid functional connectivity. We illustrate the practical potential of this technique by using it for speech recognition and nonlinear equation prediction in a reservoir computing framework.