Computer chip with built-in human brain tissue gets military funding


Thank you most kindly Mr. Jose Barrera for sharing,,, both fictional story and reality… God Bless you !

I never knew I would be able see a fictional story culminating into a fucking reality and a horrendous crime against the word of Allah,,,

You Alims/Sufis are least bothered by such matters,,, uh,,, spare me,,, I do not want to startover again,,, to them such matters are “grey areas”,,, God, have mercy on them,,, Amen…


Fictional Story:

The Chinese Girl

Six months ago, a kidnapping ring was discovered and cracked down in Asia. It is now estimated that the ring had stolen more than ten million babies during the last four decades.

Yun, a Chinese new born girl from the city of Guangzhou, disappeared one afternoon in a food market where her mother was shopping.

An anonymous source revealed Yun’s location to her father, a Chinese-American correspondent for a major western news paper. He learned that his daughter had been taken to a vast industrial complex in the outskirts of the city. He entered into the complex disguised as a factory worker and hid in a bathroom until sundown. Then he broke into the corporate offices and the production line where he collected hundreds of documents and photos.

His findings were published during the following days, bringing waves of outrage, protests and riots around the world. The operation of most factories specialized in the production of electronics has been suspended ever since and their executives are now detained by the authorities.

The United Nations General Assembly will vote in the next hour after hearing the conclusions from the report presented by the International Bioethics Committee this morning.

Here are some excerpts from the report:

“Scientists discovered in the early sixties that at the end of the first month after birth, the human brain goes into a process of specialization that fixes the function of its cells for the rest of the person’s life.

During this first month, human neurons are highly adaptable and resilient, making it possible to transplant them into electronic circuits. The brain of one healthy specimen can produce around ten thousand processors.

At the heart of every microprocessor there is a network of these neurons cleverly concealed inside a wafer of silicon that protects and keeps them alive. This is the source of digital computational power.”

If this resolution is adopted by the General Assembly, the use of all electronic devices will be banned around the world, bringing our society back before the information era.


Reality:

Last year, Monash University scientists created the “DishBrain” – a semi-biological computer chip with some 800,000 human and mouse brain cells lab-grown into its electrodes. Demonstrating something like sentience, it learned to play Pong within five minutes.

The micro-electrode array at the heart of the DishBrain was capable both of reading activity in the brain cells, and stimulating them with electrical signals, so the research team set up a version of Pong where the brain cells were fed a moving electrical stimulus to represent which side of the “screen” the ball was on, and how far away from the paddle it was. They allowed the brain cells to act on the paddle, moving it left and right.

Then they set up a very basic-reward system, using the fact that small clusters of brain cells tend to try to minimize unpredictability in their environment. So if the paddle hit the ball, the cells would receive a nice, predictable stimulus. But if it missed, the cells would get four seconds of totally unpredictable stimulation.

It was the first time lab-grown brain cells had been used this way, being given not only a way to sense the world, but to act on it, and the results were impressive.

A scanning electron microscope image of DishBrain neurons growing on an array of electrodes
 
A scanning electron microscope image of DishBrain neurons growing on an array of electrodes Cortical Labs
 

Impressive enough that the research – undertaken in partnership with Melbourne startup Cortical Labs – has now attracted a US$407,000 grant from Australia’s National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grants program.

These programmable chips, fusing biological computing with artificial intelligence, “in future may eventually surpass the performance of existing, purely silicon-based hardware,” says project lead, Associate Professor Adeel Razi.

“The outcomes of such research would have significant implications across multiple fields such as, but not limited to, planning, robotics, advanced automation, brain-machine interfaces, and drug discovery, giving Australia a significant strategic advantage,” he said.

A microscope image of neurons within DishBrain, with cells highlighted using fluorescent markers
 
A microscope image of neurons within DishBrain, with cells highlighted using fluorescent markers Cortical Labs
 

The DishBrain’s advanced learning capabilities, in other words, could underpin a new generation of machine learning, particularly when embodied in autonomous vehicles, drones, and robots. It could give them, says Razi, “a new type of machine intelligence that is able to learn throughout its lifetime.”

The technology promises machines that can continue to learn new abilities without compromising old ones, that can adapt well to change, and that can map old knowledge onto new situations – while continually self-optimizing their use of computing power, memory and energy.

“We will be using this grant,” says Razi, “to develop better AI machines that replicate the learning capacity of these biological neural networks. This will help us scale up the hardware and methods capacity to the point where they become a viable replacement for in silicon computing.”


Attributions:

Fictional Story: https://josemariabarrera.com/ideas/?writing=eng/data/Short-Stories/The-Chinese-Girl.html

Reality (Human Brain Chip): https://newatlas.com/computers/human-brain-chip-ai/

Monash university research: https://www.monash.edu/turner-institute/news-and-events/latest-news/2023-articles/research-to-merge-human-brain-cells-with-ai-secures-national-defence-funding#:~:text=Monash%20University%2Dled%20research%20into,Security%20Discovery%20Research%20Grants%20Program.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.