Can Synthetic Biology Inspire The Next Wave Of AI?

In building the world’s first airplane at the dawn of the 20th century, the Wright Brothers took inspiration from the “insightful” movements of birds. They observed and reverse-engineered aspects of the wing in nature, which in turn helped them make important discoveries about aerodynamics and propulsion. 

Similarly, to build machines that think, why not seek inspiration from the three pounds of matter that operates between our ears? Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer of artificial intelligence and winner of the Turing Award, seemed to agree: “I have always been convinced that the only way to get artificial intelligence to work is to do the computation in a way similar to the human brain.” 

So what’s next for artificial intelligence (AI)? Could the next wave of AI be inspired by rapid advances in biology? Can the tools for understanding brain circuits at the molecular level lead us to a higher, systems-level understanding of how the human mind works? 

The answer is likely yes, and the flow of ideas between learning about biological systems and developing artificial ones has actually been going on for decades. 

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.