Scientists Are Frighteningly Close to Achieving Synthetic Biological Intelligence

A group of researchers have already grown brain cells on silicon chips and then taught them to perform tasks.

This merging of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology opens a new realm of continual machine learning.

A $600,000 AUD Australian national intelligence grant continues to research into the “cyborg computing chips.”

Lab-grown synthetic brain cells can already learn tasks. Now, the same team that brought us 800,000 Pong-playing brain cells living in a dish has received $600,000 AUD from Australia’s National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grants Program to further push these lab-grown brain cells embedded onto silicon chips into the world of machine learning.

This entire project “merges the fields of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to create programmable biological computing platforms,” Adeel Razi, associate professor at Monash University’s Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, says in a news release.

This new technology capability in future may eventually surpass the performance of existing, purely silicon-based hardware.

The official language from the Australian government’s Office of National Intelligence when listing the three-year research project spells it out:

The project aims to merge the fields of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology to create programmable cyborg computing chips.

Source and full article: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a44612008/scientists-close-to-achieving-synthetic-biological-intelligence/