Prof. Thomas Hartung, MD, PhD, Organoids, Intelligence in a Dish

Pushing Boundaries with Dr. Thomas R Verny

• Intro to organoid intelligence
• Comparing brain organoids to supercomputers
• Is there any danger of organoids becoming conscious
• How much does it take to claim an intelligent system
• Impact of the work in the long run, on treatment of diseases like Alzheimer’s

My guest today is Prof. Thomas Hartung, MD, PhD. He is the former Head of the European Commission’s Center for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM), Ispra, Italy, and has authored more than 560 scientific publications and received 16 different awards ranging from the German Ministry of Health to Hellenistic Society of Toxicology.
Prof. Hartung is presently the Doerenkamp-Zbinden-Chair for Evidence-based Toxicology in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, with a joint appointment at the Whiting School of Engineering. He also holds a joint appointment for Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Bloomberg School. In addition, he holds a joint appointment as Professor for Pharmacology and Toxicology at University of Konstanz, Germany; is Director of Centers for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT, http://caat.jhsph.edu) of both universities. He is adjunct professor at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. and he is Chief Editor of Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence.
These past few weeks, image generators like DALL·E 2 and language models like ChatGPT are grabbing headlines. But Prof. Hartung has been working on what sounds like an equally, if not more, revolutionary research, namely computers powered by human brain cells, part of a new field called “organoid intelligence.” Prof. Hartung explains the concept and the research.
“Brains have an amazing capacity to store information, estimated at 2,500 (terabytes). We’re reaching the physical limits of silicon computers because we cannot pack more transistors into a tiny chip.”
In essence, Prof. Hartung is interested in two different things. One is in advanced cell culture, focusing mainly on the brain referred to as brain organoids, which is a really a breakthrough technology in recent years. And the second one is artificial intelligence, AI. And merging these two, brings them together to AI Augmented Intelligence. So the idea is, how far can we get by letting brain organoids for us do also some computational work.
.In response to my questions as to what's the most important thing he has learned about, about life, Prof. Hartung said, “It all happens between people. It is not about the next scientific paper, or the speech you give. It is about talking to others, inspiring each other and motivating each other to work for a goal. It's not something which is done when I'm writing my next article on the computer.”
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