American scientists from Indiana University in Bloomington have created a new type of neural network using living brain organoids grown from stem cells. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Nature Electronics (NatElectron).
Organoids, which represent a miniature object made of a specific type of tissue, have little in common with the real human brain. Although thoughts, emotions and especially consciousness cannot appear in it, such structures help to examine the structure of the organ without the need to conduct experiments on humans.
Scientists have turned to organoids to design neural networks because biological brains require much less energy compared to purely electronic artificial intelligence (AI) systems. For example, our brains only need 20 watts to run throughout the day, while microprocessor-based artificial intelligence needs around 8 million watts to accomplish something remotely similar.
The new development, called Brainware, is a sub-nanometer diameter organoid mounted on a high-density multi-electrode array. The chip can send electrical signals to the nerve tissue and read the electrical activity occurring there.
The completed cybernetic system was tested on two types of tasks: speech recognition and solving nonlinear equations. In the first test, the accuracy of decoding Japanese phrases increased from 51% to 78% in two days.
In mathematical calculations, Brainware turned out to be noticeably faster than artificial neural networks (ANNs) without a long-term memory unit and only slightly inferior in accuracy to an ANN with long-term memory. However, higher-performing artificial neural networks spend significantly more time training compared to organoid-based AI, the scientists noted. Under equal conditions, Brainware learned 90% faster than its fully electronic counterparts.
According to the researchers, their discovery was an important step towards a new type of computer architecture. The scientists also emphasized that ethical issues must also be taken into account as such technologies develop further. Additionally, maintaining organoids requires life support systems, which partially eliminates savings in energy consumption.
Earlier Japanese scientists was created cyborg cockroach for rescue operations.