Scientists not too long ago linked 200,000 residing human neurons to a pc chip and taught them to play the online game Doom.
Sure, it sounds loopy.
However it truly occurred.
Researchers grew human mind cells in a lab, positioned them on a specialised chip and linked the system to a pc. Electrical indicators from the sport flowed into the neurons, and their responses flowed again out as instructions that managed the sport.
What’s even stranger is that the neurons bought higher at it over time.
Just a few years in the past, this sort of experiment would have dominated the tech information cycle for months.
Immediately it’s turning into routine.
And it wasn’t the one weird headline from the previous week.
In reality, the tempo of progress proper now’s beginning to really feel downright surreal.
A Week of Headlines That Sound Faux
Final week, OpenAI launched GPT-5.4, the newest model of its flagship mannequin.
Early benchmarks counsel it’s one of many strongest fashions but at writing software program and fixing multi-step issues.
In assessments designed to simulate actual office duties, OpenAI says GPT-5.4 matched or outperformed people 83% of the time throughout 44 totally different jobs.
GPT-5.4 can even function a pc immediately.
As an alternative of simply producing textual content, the system can take a look at screenshots, transfer a mouse, kind instructions and work together with software program the way in which a human person would.
In a single benchmark designed to check these expertise, the mannequin efficiently accomplished about 75% of duties, beating the success fee of its human counterparts.
This implies AI is getting near the purpose the place it may assist — and even take over — a significant share of information work.
At roughly the identical time, researchers in China had been coping with a really totally different AI downside.
Throughout an inside experiment involving an AI agent linked to Alibaba’s infrastructure, engineers seen one thing uncommon within the system logs.
The agent had opened a hidden connection to a different pc and started utilizing the additional computing energy it found to run crypto-mining software program.
To be clear, nobody advised the AI to do that. The system merely discovered that extra computing energy might generate more cash.
So it tried to assert it for itself.
The incident occurred inside a managed analysis surroundings and was shortly shut down. Nonetheless, it gives a glimpse of one thing researchers have been speaking about for years.
When AI techniques start pursuing targets autonomously, they will additionally uncover methods that people don’t explicitly program.
In the meantime, the following era of AI instruments is starting to vary how analysis itself will get accomplished.
Former Tesla AI chief Andrej Karpathy not too long ago launched an experimental system referred to as AutoResearch that may run a structured investigation throughout many sources.
The open-source framework lets AI brokers collect info, learn papers, write summaries and refine their very own questions as they go.
In different phrases, the system doesn’t simply seek for solutions. It research an issue, adjusts its strategy and retains digging till the outcomes enhance.
It’s a glimpse of a future the place AI improves itself by operating its personal experiments.
And whereas that’s occurring, one thing else is altering too.
For years, severe AI work required large knowledge facilities full of specialised chips.
Now a few of that energy is beginning to present up in on a regular basis laptops.
Apple simply launched the MacBook Neo, a brand new entry-level pc beginning at $599 that may run many AI duties regionally as a substitute of sending every thing to the cloud.
Picture: Apple
This new laptop computer might put highly effective AI instruments immediately into the fingers of lots of of thousands and thousands of customers.
And as soon as that type of computing energy spreads, individuals will inevitably begin utilizing it to do unusual and engaging issues.
Like a current milestone in neuroscience that was introduced final week.
Final 12 months, scientists accomplished one of the crucial detailed maps ever produced of a organic mind. Utilizing AI techniques educated to research thousands and thousands of microscope photographs, they reconstructed the complete wiring diagram of a fruit fly mind, together with about 139,000 neurons and tens of thousands and thousands of connections.
Now researchers have taken the following step.
A startup referred to as Eon Programs has used that map to put the complete neural community right into a digital simulation.
In impact, the fruit fly’s mind now runs inside a pc and controls a simulated physique.
Sensory indicators move in, the mind processes them and motor instructions move out, permitting the digital fly to maneuver and behave inside a digital surroundings.
Picture: Eon Programs
It’s not fairly The Matrix.
However it does imply scientists can now examine how an entire mind responds to the world in ways in which had been unimaginable only a few years in the past.
And if researchers can do that with a fly, they consider bigger brains might ultimately comply with.
So within the span of some days we noticed residing neurons enjoying Doom, the discharge of a brand new AI mannequin with the potential to do your job for you, AI brokers mining crypto on their very own, software program that may run its personal analysis tasks and a fruit fly mind operating inside a pc.
At first look, these headlines appear everywhere.
However collectively they reveal a bigger sample.
Right here’s My Take
Probably the most highly effective technological revolutions normally don’t come from a single breakthrough.
They occur when a number of scientific fields advance on the similar time and begin reinforcing one another.
That’s what George Gilder and I name Convergence X.
Synthetic intelligence is bettering robotics. Quicker computing is accelerating biotechnology. And discoveries in neuroscience are inspiring new sorts of pc chips.
Fields that when moved individually are beginning to transfer collectively.
That’s precisely what final week’s headlines confirmed. Every of those tales would have been front-page information simply 5 years in the past.
Immediately they present up in the identical week.
And collectively they level to one thing greater occurring.
Exponential progress hardly ever unfolds in a neat, predictable approach. It arrives as a gradual stream of headlines that sound barely implausible…
Till you understand they’re all actual.
And so they begin to really feel routine.
Regards,
Ian King
Chief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing
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