Mini brain organoids ‘reading’ Braille key step towards biohybrid computing

JimmyBuckets

Terrifying. I just don't see how this doesn't inevitably lead to brain-scale organoids. The ethics of it seem impossible. Given how we treat non-human animals this reminds me of the torment nexus meme.

themgt

However, when engineers scale these chips toward cortex-level complexity, projected power climbs into the kilowatt-megawatt bracket, whereas the human brain performs comparable computation on roughly 20 watts (Mehonic and Kenyon, 2022). Biocomputing has been proposed as one route to address energy limitations in silicon-based systems by using brain organoids grown on multielectrode arrays. All our experiments were conducted using FinalSpark's NeuroPlatform (Jordan et al., 2024), providing access to organoids over a cloud-based system, as shown in Figure 1. In this setup, forebrain organoids are cultured to approximately 500 μm in diameter (Govindan et al., 2021) and contain mature neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes displaying robust network activity. Maintained under continuous perfusion, they can remain electrophysiologically active for up to approximately 100 days under favorable conditions This is absolutely fucked. The original argument for these human brain organoids were they're only 10k neurons. Now five minutes later they're talking about energy savings in scaling to cortex-level human brain cloud API.

bondarchuk

One of those research areas where nothing they currently do is unethical, but also nothing they currently do is useful, and right about the point where it might ever become useful is also the point where it becomes hugely unethical. So we'd do well to outlaw it right now, but seems like we don't really have a moral framework for cases like this.

wilbo

This is terrifying. Also it isn't new: https://research.ufl.edu/publications/explore/v10n1/extract2... From 2004. I can't help but think of "I have no mouth, and I must scream"

neom

Ethics and Regulation of Human Brain Organoid Research: Recommendations from the Asia Pacific Neuroethics Working Group - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41649-025-00398-6 I wondered if anyone had written about the ethics of this type of research, they have. It's super long so I've not finished it yet, but it generally seems the standard scientific assessment is that current organoids very likely lack the organization needed for "sentience", but, that methods for detecting subjective experience in organoids are not at all well established.

meander_water

Radiolab had a good episode on brain organoids - https://radiolab.org/podcast/brain-balls

un-diletante

Do human brain organoids provide any advantage over animal brain organoids in these types of use cases?

saidnooneever

"The researchers can’t yet tell why three organoids performed better than just one; it could be because individual variation between the organoids means that they complement each other." i know ofc that for them 'knowing' means measurements and proofs etc. but i found this excerpt tickle me a bit and wanted to highlight it :'). my first thought was a bit tongue in cheek: "who knew, working together with others that think alike is better than working alone" Cant wait for biosofts and the ability to jack-in instead of jack-off :D

redanddead

who is asking for biohybrid computing? this is how we get on people's bad list, can we just get quantum

exe34

I have no fingers and I must read Braille. (But I really want to scream).

anthk

Someone call Stuart Hameroff and Anirban.