Why the Human Brain May Power the Next Tech Revolution

Scientists long have warned we’ll eventually reach the physical limits of what silicon chips can do. Beyond the energy required to power an ascendant artificial intelligence industry and endless landscapes of data farms, semiconductors are limited by the number of transistors we can jam onto them. Eventually they’re going to run out of room. So in order to develop a new level of technology, researchers have turned inward.

The way neurons inside the human brain function and communicate is being used as a roadmap for creating new artificial systems. But more strikingly, scientists now are trying to merge human neurons with semiconductors in the hope of creating something no longer constrained by the physical limitations of a microchip. In this episode of Bloomberg Primer, we explore the world of biocomputing—where scientists are laying the foundation for a field that blurs the lines between the biological and synthetic.