As the AI industry grapples with backlash for hyper-scale data centres that draw on huge amounts of water and energy, developers are desperately looking at alternatives and one of the solutions, isn’t made of silicon at all. The human brain runs on roughly 20 watts, about the same as a light bulb, unlike the mainstream data centres needing megawatts to chase the same intelligence.
Somewhere in a lab, a clump of a few hundred thousand human neurons are learning to play Doom, the video game. They’re not very good at it, researchers describe their skill level as a complete beginner who’s never touched a keyboard, but they’re learning. This is biocomputing.
Two companies, Cortical Labs in Melbourne and FinalSpark in Switzerland, are at the forefront of this field. Cortical Labs sells the CL1, a self-contained biological computer that keeps neurons alive for up to six months, while FinalSpark rents out access to its Neuroplatform.
The process itself is fairly straightforward: it involves taking ordinary skin or blood cells, coaxing them back into a stem-cell-like state, and allowing them to grow into organoids. These organoids are placed on a grid of electrodes, which send electrical signals and read patterns, teaching the tissue to associate certain signals with reward or chaos, based on Karl Friston’s free energy principle.
The neurons are not just processing data; they exhibit behaviours that suggest a form of sentience. For instance, they seem to feel frustration when the ball misses the paddle in a game of Pong and adjust their actions to avoid this feeling.
However, this raises ethical questions. Are these neurons aware? What does informed consent mean for cells that outlive the reason they were donated? Who owns the output of a brain that isn’t attached to a person?
For instance, a coma patient can show minimal outward response yet have measurable brain activity. If a dish of neurons can display something that looks like feeling, and a body with no visible response can still hold awareness inside it, the nature of consciousness becomes increasingly complex.
In Aotearoa, these developments carry particular cultural significance. Māori concepts of tapu and whakapapa view human tissue as carrying the mana and lineage of the person it came from. A framework built entirely around efficiency and IP ownership, with no space for this relationship, could sit uneasily here, and probably should.
Which brings us to the real question underneath all of it. If a dish of neurons can learn, adapt, and respond to its environment without ever being a full-grown person, what exactly is it that makes the rest of us human?
