Do you know how your computer or laptop is made? You’re probably imagining some kids in China or Taiwan assembling hardware. But, that’s so old school. Hardware and software? What is this, pre-COVID?
By any stretch of the imagination, it seems like the time we’re living in might have once been deemed to be improbable or a literary device in a science fiction novel collecting dust in a desolate library, because everyone’s busy on their iPads.
But, even then, have computers gone beyond the status quo to breathe, eat, learn and – for lack of a better word – live? You’ve heard of constitutions being called living documents, now, get ready for a living computer. Because there’s something out there and it’s called CL1. It’s the shape of a shoebox and it’s said to combine silicon-based hardware with human neurons. That’s right, human neurons. Like the ones that come from human brains.
And what could be done with this computer? Play Call Of Duty? Use Tally or MS Word or Google Sheets? Unfortunately, this is not your regular general-purpose computer, this is for specialized research. This kind of computer is said to be designed to perform tasks that require learning or pattern recognition when it comes to human biology.
For instance, maybe, the neurons in the computer could be tested to check out how they respond to new drugs or what might lead to diseases, like Alzheimer’s or epilepsy. Like, if there’s someone studying schizophrenia or someone who wants to understand how Hector Salamanca can recover from his stroke, this might be a prudent purchase. Could this help us understand how we form habits? Or how the brain might react to Parkinson’s? Could anything be done to stop it? Michael J Fox would have liked to know.
Basically, this is about neurons interacting with stimuli and then, based on feedback loops, stuff gets observed, measured and retrained. That’s kind of cool, right? Because neurons are in the brain and somehow, we have living neurons integrated into a computer to find out things about the brain.
That’s, kind of, one step further than a lab microscope. Forget magnifying a cell, what about something that is the cell itself? It’s like you had to do some history project on Theodore Roosevelt Jr and Robin Williams appeared in front of you. And this might not be something you could run in an office or your home, it might require controlled lab conditions.
The reason this might be cool is that understanding the human brain is one of science’s most elusive goals. Billions are spent on research, but it seems like drugs used to develop mental illnesses or neurological conditions might fall short. If there’s a neurony computer, in real-time, some burned-out researcher could catch a break in understanding how brain cells process information, form memories, react to issues, fail and die. It’s the circle of life and it moves us all. Take that, lab mouse, your services are no longer needed.
Of course, there’s something, fittingly, at the back of your head that might worry you about this. Human brain cells inside machines? Will Hannibal Lecter be constructing the computer in a Taiwanese manufacturing facility? Maybe, laboratorily, it’ll all make sense in the end.
And could LLMs use training data based on assumptions and ideas from this human brain computer? That might sound outlandish at this point. But, it’s interesting how a computer could be taught to respond to stimuli the way a person might.
So, this might be a cool DeepTech x NeuroTech play for India. The market might be there. Around 3 billion people are said to be living worldwide with neurological conditions with such conditions being the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide. Would VCs in the space like how a neuron computer compresses timelines that HealthTech or pharma startups deem to originally be protracted?
Should India click “refresh” when having a brainy computer? Are we copy-pasting a tech we’re importing from foreign shores? Will startups compute what it takes? Or will this crash and take down the whole system?
