AE 1436 - 5-Minute News: Why Do These Computers Need To Be Fed?

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1. 0:03G'day guys, Pete here from Ozzy English.
2. 0:05Welcome to this episode of 5 Minute News.
3. 0:07So the goal here is to cover a recent news story in around 5 minutes, okay?
4. 0:12So let's get into it.
5. 0:19Imagine walking into a data center full of computers and being told something pretty strange.
6. 0:25These computers don't just need electricity, part of them needs to be fed.
7. 0:30The living cells inside them need fresh nutrients every three days.
8. 0:35There's even a system supplying gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide.
9. 0:41So why on earth would a computer need food and oxygen?
10. 0:45Well, because part of it is alive.
11. 0:48Inside each machine are around 200,000 living human neurons, the cells in your brain and nervous system that send and receive information.
12. 0:59Now just to be clear, scientists haven't taken pieces of someone's brain and put them inside a computer.
13. 1:05These are human neurons grown in a lab from other human cells.
14. 1:10And the whole computer isn't alive either.
15. 1:13It's still a machine.
16. 1:14It's the neurons inside it that are living cells.
17. 1:17Which raises another pretty obvious question.
18. 1:20What are two hundred thousand human neurons actually doing inside a computer?
19. 1:26Well, the neurons are growing on a silicon chip where the biological and electronic parts can communicate with each other.
20. 1:33The computer sends tiny electric signals to the neurons.
21. 1:37The neurons respond with electrical activity of their own, and the computer can read the response.
22. 1:43So information goes in, the neurons respond, and information comes back.
23. 1:49Now although that sounds like some kind of crazy science fiction, this idea didn't come out of nowhere.
24. 1:55The company behind the technology is Cortical Labs, and it's based in Melbourne.
25. 2:00Back in 2022, Cortical Labs and other researchers carried out an experiment called Dishbrain.
26. 2:08They connected groups of neurons to a simulated version of Pong, a simple video game where you use a paddle to hit a ball.
27. 2:16Electrical signals gave the neurons information about what was happening in the game.
28. 2:21Activity from the neurons then affected what happened next.
29. 2:25And researchers found that the neurons began changing their activity in response to the game.
30. 2:31In other words, they appeared to adapt.
31. 2:34Today, Cortical Labs has taken the idea much further.
32. 2:38The company is now working with researchers and a data center company in Singapore where a prototype containing 20 biological computers is operating.
33. 2:49A prototype is basically an early version that's being tested.
34. 2:53And this brings us back to that strange detail we started with, feeding the computers.
35. 2:59The neurons need to be kept alive, so they sit in a special liquid containing nutrients.
36. 3:05That includes sugar and other substances the cells need to survive.
37. 3:10And every three days those nutrients need to be replenished.
38. 3:14Which sounds like an enormous amount of effort compared with switching on a normal computer.
39. 3:19So why bother?
40. 3:20Well, researchers want to know whether living neurons might eventually be useful for certain kinds of computing.
41. 3:27And energy is one part of that equation.
42. 3:30Researchers hope biological computing could eventually perform some tasks using less energy than normal computer technology.
43. 3:39But that's still something they're trying to establish.
44. 3:42It hasn't yet been proven that these machines are more energy efficient than normal computers at a large scale.
45. 3:48And scale is the next big test.
46. 3:51Right now, the Singapore prototype contains 20 units.
47. 3:55In the future, the partners are considering expanding that to as many as a thousand.
48. 4:00But that would depend on further testing and regulatory approval.
49. 4:05So we still don't know how well this technology will scale up, what kinds of tasks it'll actually be used for, or whether it can become commercially practical.
50. 4:15And if systems using living human neurons become much more sophisticated in the future, they could also raise some pretty interesting ethical questions.
51. 4:24But there's currently no evidence that these computers are conscious or that they think or feel like humans.
52. 4:31Right now, they're experimental machines combining something familiar, computer electronics, with something completely different, living human neurons.
53. 4:41And that's why these computers have a requirement your laptop definitely doesn't.
54. 4:46Every few days, someone has to make sure the living part of the machine gets fed.
55. 4:51And one useful expression from today's story is why bother?
56. 4:56We use why bother when we're asking why something is worth the time or effort.
57. 5:02For example, the shops close in five minutes.
58. 5:05Why bother going now?
59. 5:07Or like in today's story, normal computers already work incredibly well.
60. 5:12So why bother building biological ones?
61. 5:15Anyway, thanks for joining me for this episode.
62. 5:17I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you in the next one.