Cortical Labs would like to sell you a brain in a box.
Itll cost about $35,000, and you could teach it to do all kinds of nifty things.
Cortical Labs has been working on this computer for six years and detailed many of its featuresin New Atlas.
The CL1, a commercial wetware brain in a box.© Cortical Labs photo.
The New Atlas article is built around a long interview with Cortical Labss Chief Scientific Officer, Brett Kagan.
He said that the CL1 is powered by lab-grown neurons that are placed on a planar electrode array.
Basically just metal and glass.
The lab-made hunk of brain is hooked up to 59 electrodes that create a stable neural data pipe.
This is all plugged into a life-support unit and hooked up to a proprietary software system.
We have pumps like the heart.
Filtration units like the kidneys.
The marketing of the CL1 on the Cortical Labs website is morbid.
They grow across a silicon chip, which sends and receives electrical impulses into the neural structure.
And whats the fate of this unholy melding of flesh and machine?
It runs a simulated world and sends information directly to the neurons about their environment.
As the neurons react, their impulses affect their simulated world.
And what are the applications for the wetware?
Cortical Labs got an early version of the system to playPong a few years ago.
The pitch here is that the CL1 can match or exceed the performance of digital AI systems.
This robust environment can keep your wetware machine alive for up to 6 months.
The cloud version can support a wealth of USB devices.
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