Digitising smells the next frontier for artificial intelligence, which might use human brain cells for low-power biocomputing

Quiet weekend in TechLand the last one, but I can't help mentioning Osmo. That is, Osmo the smell-digitising artificial intelligence. "In this era, computers will generate smells like we generate images and sounds today," is the promise.

I admit to being old enough to having seen Polyester in my dissipated youth, but never did I think we might be realising the Odorama vision of that movie.

To be honest, Odoroma was a disgusting experience but now we have a team led by Alex Wiltschko from Google Research at the Osmo startup creating smells with neural networks. How that'll pan out I can't tell, but Osmo has some serious backers like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Henry Kravis, Hugo Barra of Android smartphone fame, Jeff Dean and of course, Google Ventures and Lux.

The above is possibly a segue into biocomputing, "the next evolutionary leap for AI". The problem with AI is that the current iteration of the technology uses absolutely silly amounts of energy. Well, one of the problems, but either way, Swiss company FinalSpark wants to fix that with the "it's alive!" approach. Literally. 

FinalSpark compared the human brain with 86 billion neurons (apparently) using only 20 Watts of power. Silicon-based AI doesn't come anywhere near that bang for the buck ratio.

So, it seems FinalSpark is putting together a scheme whereby researchers can rent access to biocomputers made out of human brain cells. And it's pretty affordable too, like US$500 a month.

"See our neurons working in real time" with the 0.5 millimetre organoids in question being alive for around 100 days, hooked up with electrodes. Possibly a good thing, that shortish life span, and it doesn't bear thinking about how the cells are harvested. Yes, that's a joke. I hope.