Researchers are working on artificial intelligence (AI) built from human brain cells, as revealed by a Johns Hopkins University press release on Tuesday. The project touts “biocomputing” as the new big step for neural networks.
The team aiming to build this “organoid intelligence” is led by Thomas Hartung, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Whiting School of Engineering. The researcher argues that computing and artificial intelligence are reaching a ceiling and the hardware limitations can be overcome with “organoids” – lab-grown tissue resembling human organs.
Hartung claims that this would allow it to “compact computational power and increase its efficiency to push past our current technological limits.”
Specifically, the university’s press release highlights the team’s work on organoids based on the human brain. Hartung said that his team can use this lab-grown tissue to do things “you cannot ethically do with human brains.” The statement further claims that this research will not just benefit self-learning AI, but also advance the treatment of human cognition issues and impairments.
ChatGPT, the language-processing tool created by OpenAI, has been making headlines and garnering controversy. The neural network was shown to be “smart” enough to pass the US medical license exam in January, as reported by MedPage Today. Last month, a Russian student successfully presented an AI-written thesis and got his diploma, leading to a scandal around the processing tool. Oxford and Cambridge universities have both banned the use of ChatGPT when writing academic work over concerns of it plagiarizing human ideas, INews reported on Tuesday.
ChatGTP’s prominence has caused a boom in the generative AI industry, with multiple companies seeking to develop their own rivals. Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk called the bot “scary good” on Twitter in December and is looking into creating his own neural network competitor. According to multiple reports, Beijing is both seeking to develop its own AI analogue and simultaneously banning access to the US-based one, arguing that it can be used to “spread false information.”