Mini human brains are being grown in labs all over the world. I'm going to let you in on a secret. Every cell in your body has the potential to get smarter. I don't mean this metaphorically, or in a "body keeps the score" kind of way. I mean that if lab-coated biologists took a sample of your skin and very carefully manipulated the cells inside it, they could actually make a brain. They do it all the time. Not a brain as complex as the one behind your eyes, of course, but a glob of gray matter nonetheless, with a few-million-odd neurons that can send and receive electrical signals. Kept at a womblike 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit for eight months, they'll produce repetitive oscillations-- --nearly indistinguishable from those made by a premature baby. In cell culture labs around the world, human brain organoids live out their short lives as neural guinea pigs, testing the effects of diseases, toxins, and new pharmaceuticals. But they may soon be on to more glamorous pursuits. At the University of San Diego, organoids are guiding spidery robots through mazes and taking hero doses of psychedelics.

As intelligent systems are developed across diverse substrates - from machine learning models and neuromorphic hardware to in vitro neural cultures - understanding what gives a system agency has become increasingly important. Existing definitions, however, tend to rely on top-down descriptions that are difficult to quantify. We propose a bottom-up framework grounded in a system's information-processing order: the extent to which its transformation of input evolves over time. We identify three orders of information processing. Class I systems are reactive and memoryless, mapping inputs directly to outputs. Class II systems incorporate internal states that provide memory but follow fixed transformation rules. Class III systems are adaptive; their transformation rules themselves change as a function of prior activity. While not sufficient on their own, these dynamics represent necessary informational conditions for genuine agency. This hierarchy offers a measurable, substrate-independent way to identify the informational precursors of agency. We illustrate the framework with neurophysiological and computational examples, including thermostats and receptor-like memristors, and discuss its implications for the ethical and functional evaluation of systems that may exhibit agency.

Researchers have found a soft and squidgy water-rich gel is not only able to play the video game Pong, but gets better at it over time. The findings come almost two years after brain cells in a dish were taught how to play the 1970s classic, a result the researchers involved said showed "something that resembles intelligence". The team behind the latest study said that while they were inspired by that work, they were not claiming their hydrogel was sentient. "We are claiming that it has memory, and through that memory it can improve in performance by gaining experience," said Dr Vincent Strong, the first author of the research, from the University of Reading. Strong said the work could offer a simpler way to develop algorithms for neural networks – models that underpin AI systems including Chat GPT – noting that at present they are based on how biological structures work.

A team of Australian scientists collaborating across academia and private industry have just received a three-year grant to weaponize their work growing brain cell cultures that are capable of communicating with machines. Over the past two years, the team has already succeeded in teaching a brain cell culture of approximately 800,000 neurons how to successfully play the 1970s video game Pong from its Petri dish. The $600,000 grant was awarded by the Australian government's military and intelligence communities and will be managed by the Australian Research Council. 'The beautiful and pioneering aspect of this work rests on equipping the neurons with sensations: the feedback,' as one of the Pong project's co-researchers, theoretical neuroscientist Karl Friston, put it last October. 'And crucially,' Professor Friston added, the brain culture has been given, 'the ability to act on their world.'

Qualcomm is one of America's leading players in the wireless space. That being said, they are also wrestling with several weak links in their otherwise strong chain. Some of their key wireless sectors like chip sets and smartphones have weakened. I believe that is why Qualcomm is trying to refocus their efforts on new segments for growth to keep investors excited. That's why when we pull the camera back, we see Qualcomm searching for new areas of growth in recent years.

Unlike AI applications such as Chatgpt, cryptocurrencies do not bring "anything useful," a top executive of U.S. chip maker Nvidia is convinced. The comment comes despite his company making significant sales in the space where its powerful processors are widely used to mint digital coins. Cryptocurrencies do not "bring anything useful for society," according to a high-ranking representative of Nvidia, the leading manufacturer of graphics processing units (GPUs). The executive expressed this opinion despite his company selling quantities of video cards to the industry. Other uses of their processing power, such as those associated with artificial intelligence (AI) applications like the Chatgpt chatbot, are more worthwhile than mining crypto, Nvidia's Chief Technology Officer Michael Kagan told the Guardian.

Unlike AI applications such as Chatgpt, cryptocurrencies do not bring "anything useful," a top executive of U.S. chip maker Nvidia is convinced. The comment comes despite his company making significant sales in the space where its powerful processors are widely used to mint digital coins. Cryptocurrencies do not "bring anything useful for society," according to a high-ranking representative of Nvidia, the leading manufacturer of graphics processing units (GPUs). The executive expressed this opinion despite his company selling quantities of video cards to the industry. Other uses of their processing power, such as those associated with artificial intelligence (AI) applications like the Chatgpt chatbot, are more worthwhile than mining crypto, Nvidia's Chief Technology Officer Michael Kagan told the Guardian.

We get so excited about all the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) from companies and developments like Chatbot and generative AI. This is a new and exciting opportunity for investors, workers, governments and individuals. That being said, there are two sides to every coin. While this may indeed help mankind reach new levels, the other side of the coin means it also dulls us down. That, along with other dangers mean we need to stay on top of AI and make sure it doesn't get away from us because we can lose control.

From Bitcoin to Ethereum, cryptocurrencies have been hailed as the new way to pay for products and services online. But according to one expert, they do not'bring anything useful for society', despite using up massive amounts of processing power. Michael Kagan, chief technology officer at chipmaker Nvidia, has said cryptocurrencies will never'do something good for humanity'. The expert has citied artificial intelligence (AI) – including chatbot ChatGPT – as being of more use to the public and a better use of energy than'crypto mining'. Cryptocurrencies perform mining to generate new coins and verify transactions, but it's more environmentally costly than beef production, a recent study found.

The US chip-maker Nvidia has said cryptocurrencies do not "bring anything useful for society" despite the company's powerful processors selling in huge quantities to the sector. Michael Kagan, its chief technology officer, said other uses of processing power such as the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT were more worthwhile than mining crypto. Nvidia never embraced the crypto community with open arms. In 2021, the company even released software that artificially constrained the ability to use its graphics cards from being used to mine the popular Ethereum cryptocurrency, in an effort to ensure supply went to its preferred customers instead, who include AI researchers and gamers. Kagan said the decision was justified because of the limited value of using processing power to mine cryptocurrencies.