Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, what's going on, everybody?
Chapter 2: What is neuromorphic computing and how does it work?
Welcome to The Daily AI Show. Today is Monday, March 9th, 2026. Hard to believe. But we're here for another week, another five days of shows. So glad that y'all are all here to hang out with us. Today on the show, we have Andy, Beth, and Brian. I think it's the three of us today based on who said they were available or not. So we're looking forward to having a really good show with you guys.
And I actually have... I have some new stuff or whatever. I want to hear you guys' new stuff too. But then I have a bigger new story that I think I'll hold for a little bit while longer that has to do with the idea of maybe burnout. There was a study that came out, Harvard Business Review, but that's a new story in itself.
Chapter 3: What innovations are emerging from Andrej Karpathy’s Auto Research project?
But I thought maybe after the news, if we have time, it'd be a great discussion to talk about because it's the opposite of what everybody is claiming AI will do for all of us, which is give us time back. And that seems to maybe not be the case for a lot of people. So it's an interesting conversation. So maybe we'll come to that later if we have time.
But I know there was one big story for me, but I'll hold and see if that comes out from you guys. But I don't know, Andy, what was the news that caught your eye over the weekend?
Yeah, I've become interested in the progression from what we talked about last week with respect to the neural interface to a big cockroach and being able to control a cockroach for reconnaissance purposes to several different developments that are in sort of the sort of neuromorphic computing space. And so the first one,
Chapter 4: How is Microsoft integrating Anthropic’s co-work capabilities into Copilot?
is that there's lots of coverage in the newsletters about Eon Systems building a connectome. It's a simulation of the actual neurons of a fruit fly, which is more complex than a worm, you know, or that sort of thing. So they create a direct copy of the biological brain's wiring. So they're creating, not with...
with biology but mimicking the biology exactly it's as if you took a scan of your neurons in your brain and could build a model a computing model that exactly mirrors all the connections of all those neurons okay so reconstructing neuron by neuron from electron microscopy data so in this simulation they have sensory inputs flowing into that digital model and then the neural activity of that
neural network propagates through that full model and then motor commands come out. So they're kind of focusing on playing with the motor neurons that are a part of that model. And out of that, the system creates a learning process that doesn't rely on any specific reinforcement learning algorithms that have been applied to that. It just it has the ability
when it's built as a model of a real brain, to do that without a scripted animation or anything like that. So Sandia National Laboratories took that connectome and they got...
Chapter 5: What impact are tech layoffs having on entry-level hiring?
and, you know, validated the model's behavior against reference simulation.
Chapter 6: How is Google Search evolving in an AI-first landscape?
So they're validating that this approach of designing a deep neural network based on a real biology works. So Eon, the company that's behind this, they're working on this and progressing. Their next attempt will be to simulate a mouse's brain, which has 70 million neurons rather than, I forget the number that's in a fly brain, but it's smaller.
So then there's another company called Cortical Labs. which has just released a thing called CL1 for Cortical Labs 1. It's 200,000 living human neurons on a chip. So they put the neurons on a chip to connect them up, inputs and outputs. And those neurons that are on that chip then can receive electrical signals. They fire their, you know, biochemical responses.
And then those firing patterns get translated into real world actions by the system.
Chapter 7: What insights does the Harvard Business Review provide on AI brain fry?
So it's a computer with actual human neurons doing the computation. which is very interesting as a progression, right? So that CL1 and its API are now available to researchers. And this is biocomputation, where biological neural networks are used for real computing tasks. You can imagine that scaling up from 200,000 neurons to billions of neurons.
And you have a real human brain, basically, available to use for compute. This is really mind-boggling stuff. It's about the Sci-Fi AI show. Yeah, right. And the only problems that they notice here is that the neurons die frequently. It's nothing that. Right. Well, that's when I was, that was going to be my question.
And maybe I don't know where you're about to go, Beth, but what constitutes a living neuron? Like what does it need in order to sustain on a chip? And I don't know if that came up or they mentioned that or whatever.
Chapter 8: What does the future hold for AI and human collaboration?
I'm like, yeah, what, what constitutes a neuron living or dead? And I'm just got it.
it needs energy so when it stops firing entirely then i think you know it's dead that's easy to detect in the circuit but but i think i i'm curious about this now to kind of dig one step deeper to find out whether the chip that they're describing which holds the 200 000 neurons is in a vat yeah is it a salt solution or something or like what nutrient solution yeah yeah that's what i was thinking too like what's got to be is you
something it's biological so there's like there's got to be yeah anyway well it's very very sci-fi sounding for sure it's referred to as wet wear which is like yes Excuse me. If you've watched the show for a long time, you know this is a skeeve place for me. But there has been a company, I believe in Norway or somewhere over there, that has been doing this for a long time.
And it was able to keep it alive for, I don't know, a day, a week. Last I heard it was a month. So I'm curious whether this is a story because it's moved countries and now this is happening somewhere where it's a little more controversial or if it's a bigger mound of neurons and is able to be kept alive longer. Because those are the pieces that have been advancing during this time period.
And I really do think that we're just... Those are continual experimental but solvable problems. And the reason that this is important is because the human brain is the most efficient power user that we have. And so if you can mimic it, yay. If you can use it, maybe also yay. But there's got to be a conversation at some point. about what constitutes something that could be human, right? Yeah.
I mean, so. It's very interesting, to say the least. It's very interesting. And the thing that I find really interesting about the two stories Jeff said, two routes that could lead to understanding about how bio brains learn. Absolutely. But one of the side projects for Elon, I think, and a couple other people in that realm are the idea that you'll be able to upload your brain, right?
So I'm going to be able to upload my learning and my existence into into a virtual something, but now then can it be then added to a human brain on a chip? So now it's back into a human brain that could continue living. Right. So I think you're leading to the combination of the two news items that triggered my imagination about this.
And the one is using electron microscopy, mapping your individual neuronal connections. Right. Which is what they're doing now with the fruit fly and with the mice brains. Right. So that you know how to imitate that thing. But now let's build it out of real neurons. Right. So now I have a replication of my brain.
And maybe before I pass on, I spend some time talking to that one so that it can start to learn, you know, exactly how I would, you know, think or act. Now, of course, ultimately, there are different parts of our brain. Right. And much of it is occupied with visual things.
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