Latest news with #CorticalLabs
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"
