Daniel’s Public Writings
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to work on a project with FinalSpark, a Swiss startup developing the world’s first wetware cloud platform. We created the Neuroplatform, a system that enables researchers and developers to interact remotely with human brain organoids. Our platform essentially allows ’running software’ on biological neural networks (BNNs), with the ultimate goal of achieving and deploying synthetic biological intelligence.
The potential benefits of BNNs over traditional silicon-based artificial neural networks (ANNs) are numerous, though they are mainly theoretical today. Nonetheless, the advantages include significantly lower energy consumption ( the human brain operates on only about 20 watts per hour), truly higher cognitive and adaptive behaviour such as creativity, true zero-shot learning capabilities, superior pattern recognition and generalisation, better handling of ambiguity and noise, and the potential for self-repair and neuroplasticity.
A brain organoid is a three-dimensional cellular model of the human brain grown in a laboratory from stem cells, as shown in Figure 1. These miniature “mini-brains” are typically the size of a pea or smaller and contain various types of brain cells organised in a structure that mimics aspects of a developing human brain. While they don’t have the full complexity of an adult human brain, brain organoids can develop basic neural circuits and exhibit spontaneous electrical activity. Researchers usually use brain organoids to study human brain development and neurological disorders and, more recently, as is the case with FinalSpark, as biological/wetware computing components.
