Neurons on a Chip: Our organic-digital intelligent future
24th October 2023
Welcome to AI Collision.
In today’s collision between AI and our world,
Wall-E vs. The Terminator 🤖
Braaaaaaaains 🧟♂️ on a chip
VR in the nursing home
If that’s enough to get the neurons firing, read on…
AI Collision 💥 Amazon’s Wall-E Warehouses
James Cameron has a lot to answer for. Thanks to his “creative genius” he’s effectively set the artificial intelligence and robotics revolution back a few decades.
His seminal movie, Terminator (1984), set the tone for a franchise (now spanning six movies, with a seventh in the works) that centres on time-travelling AI robots more or less out to destroy humanity.
I mean, when you think about AI-powered humanoid robots, who doesn’t think of Arnold either at a police station, telling the officers, “I’ll be back,” only to come back and murder them all… or slowly but surely giving a thumbs up as he lowers himself into a molten metal vat?
I’ll be honest, that’s exactly the thing that first comes to mind when I think of robotics and AI.
And if that’s what our AI-enabled robots will look like in the future, then I for one don’t want any part of it.
The good news is that it’s very unlikely that when it comes to integrating AI into robotics, we’ll have a future of T800s roaming around (whether they’re friendly or not).
For example, Walt Disney Imagineering recently showed off a new robot (you can see it in action in the video below). Now I reckon if this is the kind of thing that first comes to mind when you think “AI robot”, the world would be a lot less focused on the existential threat part of AI and more on the extraordinary potential part of things.
It’s this more “cutesy” approach to robotics that is clearly becoming a trend. As we learnt from last week’s AI Collision on the AI-Phone rumoured to be in development, it’s how you appeal to certain consumers that can make or break the success of a device.
Thankfully, Amazon has cottoned on to this idea too. The company has been deplpoying autonomous systems and robotics in its fullfilment and delivery services for a while. But now it’s upping the game with humanoid robots in its warehouses.
At least, Amazon is testing them out – but we all know what direction it’s inevitably heading in.
Source: Amazon Press Centre
You’ll see in the video above the “Digit” robot from Agility Robotics. There’s a couple of things about Digit that are apparent from the outset.
It’s humanoid in form. It has arms, legs and eyes, plus it takes on a bipedal movement as it goes about its business.
It is really not scary. In fact, you’d go so far as to say that it’s friendly looking.
Amazon is testing these out in its Seattle fulfilment centre.
The company says that Digit can:
“…move, grasp, and handle items in spaces and corners of warehouses in novel ways. Its size and shape are well suited for buildings that are designed for humans.”
Amazon invested in Agility Robotics via its Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund which it pumped a lazy $1 billion into to help development and innovation in industrial technologies.
And I’m glad Amazon did. Nobody wants an ugly or terrifying robot in their home, let alone their place of work. If Digit is more of what we can expect in our robot future – more Wall-E than Terminator – then the AI-future of AI and robotics looks bright.
And Agility Robotics is a company that’s worth keeping a close eye on in the near future – and another to put on the AI Collision watchlist.
AI Gone Wild 🤪
You’ve probably heard of semiconductors, right? You know the little “chips” that make all our technology work?
Well, the newer evolution of those are AI chips. Some refer to these as AIoC – AI on a chip.
There’s a lot of hype right now around AI chips, be it the latest ones Nvidia is developing with its GH200 superchip or AMD’s Instinct MI300 series.
There’s also a lot of fascination, not yet hype, around the idea of brain-machine interfaces. These “neural”-type hardware developments combine brain capability with hardware and AI superchips. The most well-known example of this is Elon Musk’s Neuralink developments.
But what if the future of computing, of AI, isn’t with chips that replicate or think like a brain?
What if the future of hardware is brain on a chip?
And I mean that in its most literal form.
Cortical Labs is a research company that is putting live brain neurons into chips. As famous technology blogger Robert Scoble explains it:
@neuralink: put wires on brain.
@CorticalLabs: grow brain on wires.
Hon Weng, CEO and founder at Cortical, posted an image as to what that looks like:
This is, of course, incredibly early-stage research and development. Who knows how long this might take to reach commercialisation, let alone if it ever becomes functional and better than traditional chip development.
Cortical Labs calls its platform the Biological Intelligence Operating System (biOS). It says that:
… neurons exist inside our Biological Intelligence Operating System (biOS). biOS runs the simulation and sends information about their environment, with positive or negative feedback. It interfaces with the neurons directly. As they react, their impulses affect their digital world.
Biology on a chip, brain on a chip, cells on a chip that could lead to organic-digital intelligence – that is about as wild as AI gets right now and Cortical Labs is definitely worth checking out for yourself.d Cortical Labs is definitely worth checking out for yourself.
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
Symbiotic Inc (NASDAQ:SYM) up 5.4%
AeroVironment (NASDAQ:AVAV) up 4.8%
Veritone (NASDAQ:VERI) up 4.2%
Bust 📉
Guardforce AI Co. (NASDAQ:GFAI) down 20%
Lantern Pharma (NASDAQ:LTRN) down 16.7%
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) down 15.5%
From the hive mind 🧠
Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️ : The Results Show
**Takes deep breath**
So, our poll from Thursday didn’t work, again.
Sorry. going to run it again, and fingers crossed its works now 🤞🤞
Weirdest AI image of the day
“Zoomers in 60 years” – Reddit r/weirddalle
ChatGPT quote of the day
"I am really quite close, I am very close, to the cutting edge in AI and it scares the hell out of me. It's capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows, and the rate of improvement is exponential." – Elon Musk
Thanks for reading, see you on Thursday (and don’t forget to leave your comments below)
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
