Forget AI. WIRED’s all in on OI. Or at least Claire Evans is, and she’s WIRED to her core: for my money the best writer out there on biological computing. (She’s also the lead singer of the band YACHT. Claire is cool.) If “biological computing” sounds niche to you, be better. Not only is it the oldest form of computing—it’s also, Claire believes, the future of technology.
OI stands for organoid intelligence, and an organoid is exactly what it sounds like: a mini organ grown in a lab. Claire’s piece—also this month’s spectacular digital cover—is specifically about brain organoids, tiny neural clusters the size and shape of chia seeds that, in a fairly real way, can think. We’ve been making them for years, but more recently scientists have begun wiring them together. Programming them, in other words. The result bridges the gap between traditional hardware and human wetware. Imagine: a living computer that is born, grows up, and dies.
Claire is, rightly, amazed by this, and as a writer, she’s unafraid to express her awe. Her piece is by turns journalistic and poetic, something of a reported essay that ultimately makes a profound argument about AI: what it is, what it could be. If she’s right, our tech’s about to get so much gooier, and—watch out—more alive.
P.S. Claire’s dispatch from organoidland is just one of, count ’em, five mind-expanding pieces WIRED published last week. Check out our meme-ified landing page here.
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