{"id":159594,"date":"2023-03-05T09:23:42","date_gmt":"2023-03-05T15:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/whos-afraid-of-organoid-intelligence"},"modified":"2023-03-05T09:23:42","modified_gmt":"2023-03-05T15:23:42","slug":"whos-afraid-of-organoid-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/whos-afraid-of-organoid-intelligence","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s afraid of organoid intelligence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

For fans of bioethical nightmares, it\u2019s been a real stonker of a month. First, we had the suggestion<\/a> that we use comatose women\u2019s wombs to house surrogate pregnancies. Now, it appears we might have a snazzy idea for what to do with their brains, too: to turn them into hyper-efficient biological computers.<\/p>\n

Lately, you see, techies have been worrying about the natural, physical limits of conventional, silicon-based computing. Recent developments in \u2018machine learning\u2019, in particular, have required exponentially greater amounts of energy \u2013 and corporations are concerned that further technological progress will soon become environmentally unsustainable. Thankfully, in a paper<\/a> published this week, a team of American scientists pointed out something rather nifty: that the walnut-shaped, spongy computer in your skull doesn\u2019t appear to be bound by anything like the same limitations \u2013 and that it might, therefore, provide us with something of a solution.<\/p>\n

The human brain, the paper explains, is slower than machines at performing basic tasks (like mathematical sums), but much, much better at processing complex problems that involve limited, or ambiguous, data. Humans learn, that is, how to make smart decisions quickly, even when we only have small fragments of information to go on, in a way that computers simply can\u2019t. For anything more sophisticated than arithmetic, sponge beats silicon by a mile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For fans of bioethical nightmares, it\u2019s been a real stonker of a month. First, we had the suggestion that we use comatose women\u2019s wombs to house surrogate pregnancies. Now, it appears we might have a snazzy idea for what to do with their brains, too: to turn them into hyper-efficient biological computers. Lately, you see, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2229,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-mathematics","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}