#495

If I Only Had A Brain

That Poor Scarecrow

In the classic story of The Wizard Of Oz one of the characters that the lost Dorothy meets on her way to get home is the scarecrow who wants brain. In the famous song he sings some of the lyrics say this:

And my head I'd be a scratchin' While my thoughts are busy hatchin' If I only had a brain.

I'd unravel ev'ry riddle for my Individdle, In trouble or in pain. With the thoughts that you'll be thinkin', You could be another Lincoln, If you only had a brain. Oh, I, could tell you why The oceans near the shore, I could think of things I'd never Thunk before, And then I'd sit down and think some more.

Now that I’ve got that song in your head, there is something on the scientific horizon that make the search of a brain look like child’s play and may cross the last line God set for judging mankind. If you feel that’s stretching things too much, let me know how you feel after I’ve told you about a new way to power Artificial Intelligence. It’s new technology from a company called FinalSpark and it could revolutionize how we power use the burgeoning ability of computers. The technology is called Neuroplatform and is describe this way in an article from nwahomepage.com:

Swiss tech startup FinalSpark is now selling access to biocomputers that combine up to four tiny lab-grown human brains with silicon chips.

This new product, called the Neuroplatform, uses small versions of human brains to do computer work instead of silicon chips. The company says it can fit 16 of these mini-brains onto the Neuroplatform and use a fraction of the energy required to power a traditional set up.

The platform, currently adopted by nine institutions, integrates hardware, software and biology to create a processing system that is energy-efficient and high-performing.

FinalSpark’s founders, Fred Jordan and Martin Kutter, hope to harness the human brain’s compatibility with silicon chips to make a greener future in the tech industry.

“Potentially, computing may ultimately become an activity with no ecological footprint,” Jordan said.

Gee, what could possibly go wrong with that?

Rise Of The Organoids

According to author Michael Snyder in his article on this, the new hybrid tech is downright scary:

When I first started researching this, I could hardly believe that it was true. A company in Switzerland known as “Final Spark” has constructed a bizarre hybrid biocomputer that combines lab-grown miniature human brains with conventional electronic circuits. This approach saves an extraordinary amount of energy compared to normal computers, but there is a big problem. The lab-grown miniature human brains keep wearing out and dying, and so scientists have to keep growing new ones to replace them. Stem cells that are derived from human skin tissue are used to create the 16 spherical brain “organoids” that the system depends upon. I realize that this sounds like something straight out of a really bad science fiction movie, but it is actually happening.

Snyder muses about the downsides of this biotechnology:

This “breakthrough” is being hailed as a way to save a gigantic amount of energy.

But what about the lab-grown human brains that are being enslaved to run the Neuroplatform?

Each of the 16 mini-brains is made up of approximately 10,000 living neurons, and they are kept alive by a “microfluidics system that supplies water and nutrients for the cells”…

Rather than merely integrating biological concepts into computing, FinalSpark’s online platform ‘taps’ into spherical clusters of lab-grown human brain cells called organoids. A total of 16 organoids are housed within four arrays that connect to eight electrodes each and a microfluidics system that supplies water and nutrients for the cells.

The approach, known as wetware computing, in this case harnesses researchers’ abilities to culture organoids in the lab, a fairly new technology that allows scientists to study what are essentially mini replicas of individual organs.

The author notes that these organoids are actually trainable, but the process sounds a lot like torture:

During their short lives, the mini-brains are literally trained to perform certain tasks using a reward and punishment system…

Researchers do this by training the organoids through a reward system. The organoids are rewarded with dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure (and addiction).

Meanwhile, as “punishment,” the organoids are exposed to chaotic stimuli, such as irregular electrical activity.

If the enslaved mini-brains do what they are supposed to do, they are rewarded with lots of pleasure.

If the enslaved mini-brains do not do what they are supposed to do, they are hit with lots of “irregular electrical activity”.

In other words, these miniature human brains are tortured until they learn to obey.

Reading that should literally make you sick.

What these scientists are doing is so incredibly evil.

Why Worry About Ethics?

Apparently the fact that these organoids are literally tortured if they don’t do what their makers want is too small of an issue because the massive amounts of energy they provide is a good offset:

Final Spark claims that the miniature human brains use “a million times less power than their silicon counterparts”… Swiss technology firm Final Spark has successfully launched Neuroplatform, the world’s first bioprocessing platform where human brain organoids (lab-grown miniaturized versions of organs) perform computational tasks instead of silicon chips.

The first such facility hosts the processing prowess of 16 brain organoids, which the company claims uses a million times less power than their silicon counterparts.

Final Spark hopes that their new “technology” will become the primary energy source for the AI revolution. Because at this point training AI models uses a colossal amount of conventional energy… According to Final Spark’s estimates, training the popular large language model GPT-3 that powered ChatGPT in its initial days alone consumed 10 GWh of energy. This is a whopping 6,000 times more energy than an average European city consumes in an entire year.

Replacing silicon chips with bioprocessors could lead to drastic energy savings. Final Spark allows research labs to experience the power of biological processors on the Neuroplatform.

Snyder isn’t buying what they’re selling, though:

To a lot of people out there, this is going to sound really great.

Final Spark insists that the processor that it has created will use a million times less energy compared to a normal silicon chip.

So why the concern? Well Snyder is all too happy to tell us:

There is just one enormous problem. The mini-brains keep dying and must be regularly replaced. At first they would die “in just a few hours”, but now they are apparently living for up to 100 days…Final Spark faced many challenges in its early years since the organoids would die in just a few hours. The company has worked on this shortcoming and improved its MEA systems to ensure that organoids live for 100 days.

And then he gives us the money quote:

These “organoids” are literally worked to death.

Here is how he explains that hard-hitting line:

They are hooked up to electrodes and worked until they can work no more…

Final Spark has made working these varied components possible through an innovative setup called Multi-Electrode Arrays (MEAs), where the three-dimensional masses of brain tissue are placed.

Each MEA has four brain organoids that interface with eight electrodes. These electrodes perform the dual role of stimulating the organoids and recording the data they process.

Data transfer is done through digital analog converters with a 16-bit resolution and a 30 kHz frequency. A microfluidic system provides life support for the MEAs, and cameras can monitor their overall operation.

Like The Matrix?

Snyder thinks so and he could be right:

Have you ever seen “The Matrix”?

I was reminded of that film as I researched all of this.

Just like in that movie, human energy powers the entire system.

And just like in that movie, those that power the system are enslaved.

The creators of “the Neuroplatform” insist that this is perfectly okay because the mini-brains are not sentient beings.

He questions that logic based on the overall premise:

Whether that is true or not, what they are doing is still very wrong.

Creating miniature human brains and using them to power a computer may be a way to save a lot of energy, but it also perfectly illustrates how far our society has fallen.

We are crossing lines that should never be crossed, and eventually we will pay a very great price for the crimes that our scientists are committing.

It’s That Bad

Is he right? Do we know enough about what these scientists created to speculate that they are a scarecrow in need of a brain? Or are they a brain and can develop into more than what they currently are? In an article found on theblaze.com they think it is as bad as Snyder says it is:

The idea of harvesting anything from a human being to power technology might make for a great dystopian novel or a science-fiction television show, but to apply such a concept to reality is surely crazy, right?

Well, yes, it is undoubtedly crazy. But it is happening.

“This is actually in practice and being used by the University of Michigan right now,” says Glenn Beck. “Environmentalists are worried about how we make enough power to be able to power AI.”

As mentioned earlier, AI consumes a lot of energy and nuclear energy is hated by environmentalists. These scientists are turning to humans to solve the problem:

Scientists in the field are taking “stem cells out of embryos or out of the lab (sometimes even out of tumors)” and “[turning] them into brain cells basically and [using] those as batteries to power what they're calling bioprocessors.”

This method is considered superior because it apparently requires “about a million times less power than a typical digital processor.”

Blaze Media editor at large and host of “Zero Hour” who wrote an article about this expounds on the practice:

The hype surrounding this dark concept, (James)Poulos says, originates from “the same folks who brought you the idea of going to Carbon Zero [or] Net Zero carbon use.”

“They look at human beings as a waste of space — a waste of energy — and they want to harness that to run AI,” he says.

“So, are we harvesting embryos, using them to power a supercomputer for 100 days, and then killing them and looking for more embryo stem cells?” asks Glenn in shock.

The short answer is yes.

Unlike Snyder, Poulos connects the dots this way:

“What you do is you start the embryonic process, but you arrest it before it gets too far and then you harvest the stem cells out of this artificially induced embryonic organism ... and you just grow those cells sort of in the way they grow fake meat cells,” Poulos explains, adding that this process is “not one and done.”

“It's not like, well, maybe once upon a time there was an embryo who had to die for the greater good. No, this is like a perpetual-motion machine; you’ve got to keep harvesting,” he says.

Beck was not pleased when he heard that:

“Lord, that’s terrifying,” says Glenn.

“If we were created in the image of God, how far can you stray from that before something really horrible happens?” Poulos asks rhetorically, pointing to Nikola Tesla’s prescient warning: “You may live to see manmade horrors beyond your comprehension.”

“You now have scientists who don't necessarily believe in God [and] think that they are creating a god in AI now harvesting God's creation to power their new god,” says Glenn.

When you put it like that, it really is a horrible thing. Worse is that the scientists just think it’s a fantastic solution. Snyder uses the Matrix movies as a parallel. I think Soylent Green is another good one.