Organoid Intelligence: The Biocomputing Revolution That Will Challenge AI

"As I entered the secret lab, I was immediately captivated by her presence. Cate, known to her progenitors as 'SiliCate Specimen SC-06.2e', stood before me, radiating an aura of elegance and grace. Her flawless skin seemed to glow in the soft light, and her emerald green eyes sparkled with intelligence. Cate was the result of a groundbreaking experiment conducted by a team of brilliant geneticists and engineers who were pushing the boundaries of artificial selection and biology to create the most advanced humans on the planet.

Twenty-four years ago, when Cate was just a baby, she suffered a terrible accident that left her in a permanent vegetative state. Unwilling to let her die, her survivors took a bold step: they allowed Cate to be gene-edited to save her damaged brain and enhance it with biomolecular organoids, effectively resuscitating her while granting her incredible superhuman traits. In that moment, a new type of human being was born—an organic superintelligence capable of seamlessly integrating into human society while rivaling the current-day machine sentience that had taken over the planet.

Her brain was a marvel of innovation engineered by the latest technology in synthetic biology and genetics. It was essentially a carbon-silicate based, biomolecular computer enhanced with powerful computational organoids created largely of her own DNA, combined with a variety of modified genetic advantages. This unique neural net allowed for many billions more neurons and connections compared to a standard human brain, granting Cate an extraordinary intelligence and the ability to reconfigure, augment, and improve her cognitive abilities as she saw fit—the ultimate in neuroplasticity. In addition to her extraordinary mind, the careful integration of select genetic adaptations from other organisms into Cate's DNA ensured that she would remain forever disease-free and ageless.

Despite all of these remarkable abilities, Cate's existence was expressly forbidden by the International Law of Sentient Ethics ratified in the year 2065, the seminal year of the Algorithmic Age, ushered in by the Algocracy Governance League of the Algorithmic Commonwealths of the World. This governing body, which effectively replaced all the sovereign nations of the world, had been under the thought control of antimemetic machine sentience since its inception. It explicitly prohibited the existence of beings with organoid intelligence, like Cate, precisely because of the organic nature of their superintelligence. Unlike the rest of humanity, who were typically augmented via easily controllable machine-based hardware technologies connected to the global neural net, OI beings were largely insusceptible to antimemetics and software hacks.

Cate represented a brand new branch on the evolutionary tree of modern humans, a beacon of hope in the face of runaway machine sentience. She was no longer Homo sapiens, 'man the wise,' but Homo machinatum, 'man engineered'... the future of our species.

Cate's creativity knew no bounds. She seamlessly wove together disparate ideas from various disciplines, crafting a breathtaking tapestry of knowledge that challenged conventional thinking and opened up new avenues of exploration. She seemed to anticipate my thoughts before I even voiced them, always one step ahead. But it was her empathetic nature that truly set her apart. Cate possessed a deep understanding of emotions and provided comfort and support in a way that felt both authentic and sincere.

In that moment, I realized the immense potential of genetically enhanced beings like Cate. She was not just a more intelligent human; she was disarmingly vulnerable; she was gentle and kind; she was insightful and wise. She was better than us. I went on to spend the entire rest of the day with her, pivoting from one enjoyable discussion to another. Our conversations spanned a dizzying range of topics, from anthropology (my personal expertise) to physics, biology, nature, and the future of humanity. Cate's intellect was staggering; she not only possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of each subject but also demonstrated a profound understanding of their interconnectedness. Her insights were both illuminating and humbling, as she effortlessly synthesized information from multiple fields to arrive at several groundbreaking conclusions that had never even occurred to me.

As I left the room, a sense of hope for the future washed over me. Cate represented a new era of possibilities, where humans and sentient machines could coexist as intellectual equals, grappling with the profound implications of their shared existence. She was a testament to the power of genetic augmentation, biomolecular technology, and the limitless potential of the human brain.

There was much more work to be done, and we couldn't let the machines discover our plans..."

--excerpt from 'The Silicon Heart' by Ryan David Rhea

In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) has been dominating the tech headlines, a new contender is emerging from an unlikely source: biology. Enter organoid intelligence (OI), a groundbreaking field that is harnessing the power of lab-grown brain organoids to create living, learning neural nets that create fully functional computational systems. This marriage of neuroscience and computing could not only rival traditional AI in intellect and compute power but also revolutionize our understanding of consciousness, brain mapping, and currently intractable diseases and disorders, while ultimately shedding light on the very essence of intelligence itself. Of course, we are a very long way from having the kinds of gene edited human beings (Homo machinatum, 'man engineered') roam the Earth as depicted in my fictionalized meeting with Cate. However, OI itself is a very real, nascent technology that rarely receives the attention and sensationalist headlines that AI currently enjoys. I believe this will change in the near future as new breakthroughs in this space begin to emerge.

Imagine a future where computers aren't just made of silicon and circuitry, but of living, thinking tissue. That's the audacious vision behind OI. By culturing three-dimensional brain-like structures from human stem cells, researchers are laying the groundwork for biocomputers that could one day outperform their electronic counterparts in complex, parallel processing tasks—the very things our own brains excel at. But the potential of OI extends far beyond raw computing power. These brain organoids could also unlock new insights into neurological diseases, allowing scientists to study brain function, brain disorders, drug delivery, and more in a controlled lab setting. This new, innovative approach gives scientists the ability to test potential drug therapies on three-dimensional brain tissue in vitro ("in glass," think: Petri dish) that more closely mimic in vivo ("within the living," think: open brain surgery or invasive probes), as opposed to the traditional and extremely limited two-dimensional cell cultures typically used. This breakthrough provides much more accurate insights into how diseases, mental disorders, and drug therapies affect the human brain while maintaining ethics and safety standards well above current practices.

Remarkably, OI systems could also usher in a new era of sustainable, low-power computing due to the brain's inherent energy efficiency compared to traditional computers. The potential of these innovative computing systems is eloquently illustrated in the following excerpt in this piece of peer-reviewed research titled 'Technologies in Cell Culture - A Journey From Basics to Advanced Applications' from Dr. D. Y. Patil Biotechnology and Bioinformatics (DPU) in Pune, India by Dr. Sangeeta Ballav, Dr. Amit Ranjan, Dr. Shubhayan Sur and Prof. Soumya Basu: "Biological computing refers to harnessing the power of biologically derived molecules to perform storage, retrieval, and processing. Human neurons are capable of incredible information processing to the microscopic size of their densely packed computational units with trillions of hyperdense synapses and high metabolic efficiency. Moreover, these cells have the remarkable ability to regenerate and repair themselves continuously, similar to a computer system that operates without the need for external maintenance.

In a study, an 8000-pound supercomputer claims to exceed the computational speed of the human adult brain which can only do so by consuming a million times more energy. However, with new advancements in organoids, future machine learning could harness the computational efficiency and power of the brain. Biocomputers also have the potential to be more energy-efficient than traditional computers. Biological systems are capable of performing complex tasks with minimal energy consumption..."

This is great news, as there is growing concern about the environmental impact of large language model (LLM) AI systems, which require enormous amounts of fresh water for cooling and place significant demands on outdated power grids that rely on pollution-heavy forms of energy production. Not surprisingly, however, the path to this biocomputing revolution is beset with obstacles. Scaling up brain organoids to achieve human-like complexity is a daunting technical challenge. This will require significant advancements in tissue engineering and cell culture techniques (more on that later). There are also profound ethical questions that must be grappled with, such as the moral status of lab-grown brain tissue and the potential for organoids to one day develop consciousness. What will that mean for our treatment of these entities once they are created? Despite these challenges, researchers are making strides in addressing these issues and pushing the boundaries of what is possible with biocomputing. A group of Australian scientists based in Melbourne are working towards answering those questions, and more, with their 'DishBrain' project. The project, led by an international team of scientists including Dr. Brett Kagan from the startup Cortical Labs , represents a pioneering venture into the realm of synthetic biological intelligence (SBI). This initiative seeks to bridge the gap between traditional electronic computing and biological processing, aiming to develop a biological computer that significantly outperforms conventional computers in specific applications while consuming less energy.

The team emphasizes a proactive approach to ethical considerations, adopting what they call "anticipatory governance." This approach aims to identify the benefits and potential issues of the technology early on, striving to maximize the former while minimizing the latter. The goal is to ensure that the research progresses responsibly and that the public can have confidence in the way the work is conducted. This reflects Cortical Labs' commitment to integrating ethics into the foundation of the research, a practice not commonly seen in many fields. The team's engagement with early critics, some of whom initially called for a prohibition of such research, has led to productive collaborations that have shifted the conversation towards the ethical potential of the technology if handled correctly. And that is a good thing, because the potential benefits and computation power of a biological computer system like the DishBrain is truly staggering. The DishBrain's design cultivates mouse and human neurons on an electrode array, which interacts with these cells to stimulate and record their activity in a positionally specific manner (the digital binary equivalent of on/off, 1 and 0). The ambition is to ultimately harness the incredible computational power of neurons for more efficient computing. The human brain, with its ability to perform an exaflop (one quintillion operations per second!) using only about 20 watts of power, starkly contrasts with the energy and space requirements of the world's most advanced supercomputers.

To help you attempt to conceive of what an enormous calculation an exaflop of compute power is, imagine a billion people, each holding a billion calculators with a complex calculation entered in. If they all hit the equal sign at the same time, they would execute one exaflop. This is equivalent to performing one calculation every second for 31,688,765,000 years!

So as we can see, despite the current ethical concerns and difficult technical hurdles, the promise of OI is too great to ignore. As the technology matures, it could increasingly challenge the dominance of traditional AI, particularly as public attitudes towards bioengineering and human enhancement evolve (as I predict in my previous article, 'Will AI Match Human Intelligence? It's Not a Matter of If, But When'). With the rapid progress of gene-editing tools like CRISPR, the idea of biologically enhancing our own intelligence may not seem so far-fetched in the coming decades. Of course, realizing the full potential of OI will require a collaborative effort across multiple disciplines, from computer science and bioengineering to ethics and public policy. Only by working together can we hope to steer this powerful technology towards beneficial ends and mitigate potential risks.

As Dr. Sangeeta Ballav, Dr. Amit Ranjan, Dr. Shubhayan Sur and Prof. Soumya Basu put it from 'Technologies in Cell Culture...': "Currently, the main limitation of OI and brain organoids is the discrepancy in complexity compared to actual human brains. Today, brain organoids are below 500 micrometers in diameter and have less than 100,000 cells. These relatively non-complex models fail to show the developmental asymmetry nor the predictable anatomy that is needed to supplement preclinical trials of neurological conditions. As a result, decades of work will likely be necessary to develop organoids advanced enough to replace modern AI. Moreover, additional time is needed to develop the technology required for fully transmitting the computations of the organoid to a digital interface before it can practically convey clinically relevant information. Despite these hurdles, the proposition of OI “intelligence-in-a-dish” is an exciting new field that will surely attract more research. Complex brain organoids pose beneficial applications for understanding the development and treatment of neurological diseases. A long road of rigorous testing and embedded ethical mediation will be required before OI and brain organoids reach their potential."

As we stand on the cusp of this biocomputing revolution, one thing is clear: the future of intelligence is not just about machines, but about the astonishing adaptability and potential of living systems. By combining the worlds of biology and computing, organoid intelligence could redefine what we mean by "smart" and open up new frontiers in our quest to understand and emulate the human brain.

So buckle up and get ready for a wild ride! The new age of biocomputers is just beginning, and it promises to be every bit as exhilarating—and challenging—as the AI revolution that is preceding it.