The machines are real. The ethical questions are growing. And humanity needs to decide where the boundaries belong before commercial interests make those decisions for us.
From the Craig Bushon Show Media Team
October 22, 2026
There are moments in human history when a scientific breakthrough forces us to reconsider what we thought we understood about ourselves. The atomic bomb was one of those moments, and the ability to alter human DNA was another. Artificial intelligence has already begun reshaping how we work, communicate and make decisions. Now another frontier is opening, and this one reaches into the biology of the human brain itself.
Scientists are growing living human neurons on computer chips and using those cells to process information. Rather than software built to imitate the brain, these are actual human nerve cells that need nutrients, oxygen and carefully controlled conditions to stay alive. They communicate through electrical signals and change their activity in response to experience. And they are no longer confined to a few experimental dishes in university laboratories. They are being installed in purpose-built computing facilities and made available over the internet to researchers and paying customers.
For decades, engineers have tried to make computers behave more like the human brain, and now some are building computers out of living neural tissue itself. I believe we need to take this seriously, not because there is evidence that these machines are conscious, but because we are entering territory where human biology, artificial intelligence and corporate ownership meet in ways our existing laws and ethical standards did not anticipate.
Whether living human neurons can be connected to computers has already been settled, because it has been done. What remains open is how far the technology should be taken, who gets to decide, and what safeguards should be in place along the way.
The Biological Computer Is Already Here
An Australian biotechnology company called Cortical Labs has developed a system known as the CL1, which pairs laboratory-grown human neurons with a silicon chip that can send electrical signals into the cells and record their responses. The company began selling the CL1 in March 2025. The neurons are typically produced by reprogramming donated human cells, such as blood cells, into stem cells and then developing those stem cells into neurons. The result is a living network that can interact with a digital environment, and the company says the unit’s built-in life-support system can keep the cells alive for up to six months.
In March 2026, Cortical Labs unveiled a biological computing facility in Melbourne housing 120 CL1 units, which it uses to run a cloud service that gives researchers and developers remote access to the cells. The company and most press coverage put the count at roughly 200,000 neurons per unit, which works out to about 24 million living neurons in the Melbourne racks as of March 2026.
Cortical Labs has also partnered with the Singapore-based data center operator DayOne and the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. In August 2026, the partners unveiled a 20-unit CL1 rack operating in a research environment at the university, which they describe as an initial validation phase for a deployment they hope to expand to as many as 1,000 units.
Unlike conventional processors, the biological component of these machines depends on continuing cellular life. Researchers must supply the cultures with nutrients and the proper mixture of gases and maintain the equipment that regulates their environment and removes waste. In Melbourne, according to reporting by The Register in March 2026, the working day begins with technicians topping up the units with a liquid modeled on the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the human brain.
The capability behind all of this traces back to 2022, when Cortical Labs researchers published a study in the journal Neuron showing that a culture of roughly 800,000 human and mouse neurons, which they called DishBrain, could adapt its activity while playing a simplified version of the video game Pong. In early 2026, the company showed a CL1 with about 200,000 human neurons playing the far more complicated game Doom. The Doom performance was far from expert, and the company itself compared it to a beginner who had never used a computer. Conventional software, built with an independent researcher, did the work of translating the game into electrical signals the cells could respond to. Even so, the experiments show that living neural networks can take part in information-processing systems and display measurable adaptive behavior.
That is an extraordinary scientific achievement, but before anyone claims that scientists have built a thinking human brain inside a machine, we need to be clear about what these experiments actually establish.
What These Computers Are — And What They Are Not
The phrase human brain cells conjures a powerful image, and some people picture tiny human brains sitting in jars, experiencing thoughts or emotions while corporations force them to perform calculations. The available evidence does not support that picture.
The cultures in systems such as the CL1 are neurons grown on an electrode array. They are not complete human brains, and they lack the anatomical organization and sensory systems of an intact human nervous system. They also differ from neural organoids, the three-dimensional brain-like structures that have drawn most of the ethical debate, although both belong to the broader field of biological neural research. Most importantly, no one has demonstrated that these systems possess consciousness, human-like awareness or the capacity to suffer. Learning and consciousness are different things, and a biological system can respond to its environment and adapt its behavior without possessing anything resembling a human mind.
The field’s own early language did not always help on this point. The title of the 2022 Pong paper said the neurons “exhibit sentience,” a word the authors defined narrowly in terms of responding to sensory input. In March 2023, about 30 neuroscientists published a response in the same journal criticizing that framing and the wave of media coverage it produced. The episode is a useful reminder that a single word in a headline can run well ahead of what an experiment shows, and we should not exaggerate what scientists have accomplished simply because the technology sounds unsettling.
There is another side to this argument that deserves equal attention. Our understanding of consciousness remains incomplete, and there is no universally accepted scientific test for subjective experience in every biological or artificial system. As researchers build increasingly complex neural cultures, they may eventually encounter capabilities that call for a new ethical evaluation.
In April 2026, the journal Nature published an editorial arguing that brain organoids are a transformative technology that needs regulation, and it identified the possible emergence of properties such as consciousness as among the field’s most serious concerns. In May 2026, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in the United Kingdom published a report with nine recommendations for governing neural organoid research. That report concluded that current neural organoids do not possess the biological complexity associated with sentience, while urging guidance that would help researchers recognize features warranting closer ethical scrutiny. Both addressed three-dimensional organoids rather than the cultures used in the CL1, but the governance questions they raise carry over.
What both institutions recognized is that responsible scientific development means anticipating ethical questions before they become emergencies. I believe that is the correct approach. We should reject unsupported claims about consciousness while taking seriously the possibility that future advances could raise very different concerns.
Why Corporations Want Living Computers
The commercial interest in biological computing is easy to understand. Today’s artificial intelligence industry requires enormous computing power, and companies are spending heavily on specialized processors and new data centers while searching for ways to reduce the electricity and infrastructure costs that come with them. The human brain, by contrast, learns, recognizes patterns and adapts to unexpected situations on roughly 20 watts, a comparison Cortical Labs itself has used, and researchers want to know whether some of that efficiency can be put to work in computing.
Cortical Labs says a 30-unit rack of CL1 systems draws 850 to 1,000 watts, which works out to roughly 30 watts per unit including life support. Some coverage has reported the rack figure as the draw of a single unit, so readers may encounter both numbers. Either way, the figure should not be confused with proof that biological computers outperform conventional AI processors, because a comparison of electrical consumption means little unless the systems can do equivalent work at comparable levels of accuracy, reliability and speed.
Present-day silicon chips remain dramatically better at many tasks, including the fast, repeatable mathematical operations that large language models depend on. Biological computing is still experimental, and its advantages have not been established for ordinary data-center workloads, a point its backers effectively concede when they describe it as suited to niche tasks.
Still, the technology could eventually prove useful in specialized areas such as robotics, adaptive control systems and the study of neurological disease. Human neural cultures may help researchers investigate conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy, give them better ways to evaluate treatments, and reduce dependence on certain animal experiments, a benefit Cortical Labs’ chief scientific officer, Brett Kagan, has emphasized. I do not believe we should ignore those benefits.
I also believe that once an experimental technology becomes a commercial product, the incentives around it begin to change. Discoveries turn into intellectual property that attracts investors, and investors expect the kind of growth that pushes companies to expand capabilities, reduce costs and outpace competitors. None of that makes a company unethical, but it does mean we should ask whether the ethical boundaries established in research laboratories are strong enough to survive global commercialization. To its credit, Cortical Labs has required buyers of the CL1 to obtain institutional ethical approval before using it, according to coverage of the product’s launch. Whether a company-imposed condition of sale is sufficient as the industry grows is the larger question.
When Human Biology Becomes Corporate Infrastructure
This is where the conversation needs to move beyond computer engineering. When a company develops a conventional silicon chip, the ownership questions are fairly straightforward, and the company may own the design, the manufacturing process, the software and the resulting hardware, subject to applicable laws and contracts. The picture changes when the central processing material is derived from living human cells. A person may donate blood or tissue for research, and scientists can then reprogram some of those cells into stem cells, multiply them and develop them into neural cultures that may eventually become part of a commercial computing platform used by customers around the world.
We need to understand what the original donor agreed to, what a company can legally do with the resulting cell lines, and what limits apply to their future use. I want to be clear that the public evidence reviewed for this article does not establish that Cortical Labs or its research partners obtained biological material improperly. These are questions about a developing industry and the legal framework that will govern it.
Others are already asking them. The Nuffield Council recommended in May 2026 that research institutions and biobanks review their consent policies so that donor information sheets cover all realistically foreseeable uses of donated tissue in neural organoids and similar models. A Stanford-led report released in September 2026 raised the related question of who owns models derived from human tissue. In my view, donors should be told explicitly when their cells could end up in commercially operated computing systems, consent should address how future applications that scientists cannot yet predict will be handled, and the licensing or transfer of human-derived cell lines between institutions and companies should be transparent. If these technologies eventually develop capabilities far beyond what has been demonstrated so far, existing commercial ownership arrangements should not carry forward automatically without additional ethical review.
I am particularly concerned about allowing the language of technology to obscure what is actually being developed. A company can call something a processor, a neural platform or a biological computing unit, and those labels describe its intended function without settling every ethical question surrounding how it is built and used. The presence of living human-derived tissue does not by itself make a machine a person, but neither does it place every imaginable use of that tissue beyond moral scrutiny.
The Question of Consciousness Cannot Be Left Until the Last Minute
There is a temptation to treat concerns about consciousness as science fiction, and I understand that reaction. We have all heard exaggerated predictions about computers coming alive and machines developing emotions, and those claims usually run far ahead of the evidence. Responsible scientific oversight does not require us to believe that today’s neural computing systems are conscious. It requires us to recognize that future systems may become far more complex, and that ethical standards should be able to respond to new evidence when it arrives.
Imagine a future biological computing system containing vastly more neurons, organized into sophisticated networks and connected to rich streams of information from a digital or physical environment. There is no scientific basis for assuming that sheer cell count produces subjective experience. Whether increasingly sophisticated biological organization could eventually raise questions that today’s small neural cultures do not is a possibility that deserves careful investigation rather than automatic dismissal. And if credible evidence of some form of subjective experience ever did emerge, society would face difficult questions about how such systems are maintained, experimented on and terminated.
We must be careful not to confuse a hypothetical future problem with a demonstrated present-day reality, but the middle of an ethical crisis is rarely the best time to begin writing the rules.
In September 2026, Stanford released a report from an international conference it co-organized in November 2025 at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in California, where more than 70 scientists, ethicists, patient advocates and other participants met to discuss oversight of neural organoid and assembloid research. The report calls for an ongoing international framework to monitor the field, including ethics training for institutional review boards and active engagement with the public. Notably, the report also describes a broad feeling among attendees that the science is moving so quickly that setting fixed bright lines or prohibitions now could compromise potentially transformative clinical research. That is a far more serious approach than either dismissing every concern or declaring that scientists have already created conscious brains in captivity, and it is a view worth weighing against calls for firmer limits, including my own.
The Global Race Could Make Ethical Oversight More Difficult
Competition between nations adds another dimension that concerns me. Artificial intelligence and advanced biotechnology have become strategically important industries, and governments understand that leadership in them affects economic growth and national security. Biological computing could eventually become another arena for that competition, although its capabilities remain limited today. If it matures into a commercially valuable platform, companies and governments may race to expand manufacturing capacity, secure intellectual property and attract investment.
That creates an obvious risk. When one country establishes strict ethical protections while another offers a less demanding environment, companies have an incentive to move sensitive work to wherever the rules are looser. I have seen no evidence that this kind of regulatory avoidance is occurring in biological computing today, so I raise it as a foreseeable policy risk that governments should consider before the sector grows substantially larger. The gap is real for the closely related field of neural organoids, where, as STAT News reported in November 2025, there are no legal limits on use anywhere in the world outside of animal cruelty laws.
The United States should lead in responsible biotechnology, supporting scientific research while making certain that informed consent and independent oversight are treated as part of American leadership rather than obstacles to it. Scientific leadership and ethical responsibility do not have to compete, and properly developed, they strengthen one another. Our standards should not depend entirely on voluntary corporate promises, particularly once a technology begins moving across national borders.
Where Should We Draw the Line?
I do not support banning biological computing because the underlying science makes people uncomfortable. Fear is a poor substitute for informed public policy, and this research could deliver meaningful medical and scientific benefits. Nor do I support giving biotechnology companies an unrestricted license to experiment with increasingly sophisticated human neural systems without meaningful independent oversight. We need a framework that recognizes both the scientific possibilities and the ethical uncertainties.
At a minimum, I believe that framework should require transparent informed consent for human biological material and independent review of increasingly complex neural computing experiments. It should also require public disclosure of relevant technical capabilities and clear standards for the commercial transfer and use of human-derived neural cultures. Research institutions and companies should establish procedures for reviewing evidence that might point to ethically significant biological capabilities, guided by neuroscience and credible research rather than sensational headlines or corporate public relations. Governments should work with scientists, ethicists, medical professionals and representatives of the public to set standards that can evolve as the evidence changes.
Important guidance already exists, including the research ethics guidelines of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, and some American institutions already route neural organoid work through their stem cell research oversight committees. What is needed now is careful consideration of how that existing guidance applies to commercial biological computing and whether additional safeguards are justified. There is no reason to invent a crisis that has not been demonstrated, and every reason to establish accountability before the technology becomes more widespread.
Human Dignity Must Remain Part of the Conversation
I approach this subject not only as a journalist examining emerging technology but also as someone who believes human life carries inherent dignity. My Christian faith teaches that human beings are created in the image of God, and that belief shapes how I consider scientific advances involving human biology. It does not lead me to conclude that a collection of human neurons is itself a human person, because there is no sound basis for that claim. It does lead me to believe that the commercial use of human-derived biological material deserves careful moral consideration, and you do not have to share my religious beliefs to agree.
Whether someone approaches this subject through faith, constitutional values, medical ethics or scientific responsibility, there is a common principle worth defending: human beings should not surrender every question about the use of their biology to the commercial interests of whoever possesses the technology. History is full of discoveries made for legitimate purposes that produced consequences their inventors never anticipated. Nuclear physics gave us both power plants and weapons capable of destroying cities, and genetic research has advanced medicine while raising serious questions about privacy and discrimination. Biological computing deserves the same willingness to examine both its promise and its potential consequences.
I am not suggesting that living neural chips will inevitably become conscious, that corporations are secretly creating human minds, or that biological computers represent an immediate threat to civilization, because those would be claims without adequate supporting evidence. My argument is that once we begin incorporating living human-derived neural systems into commercial computing infrastructure, ethical foresight becomes just as important as engineering skill.
The Future Should Not Be Decided in a Boardroom Alone
The most remarkable part of this story may be how quickly something that sounds like science fiction has become an operating technology. In 2022, researchers demonstrated cultured neurons adapting to a simple computer game, and four years later biological computing systems containing millions of living neurons are operating in facilities in Australia and Singapore. They are not ready to replace conventional computers, and scientists have not created artificial human minds, but the field is plainly moving from experimental proof of concept toward an emerging commercial industry. Whenever a scientific field begins attracting investment, customers and international expansion, society has a responsibility to examine the rules that govern it.
The people developing these systems may well have the best intentions, and many are working to solve legitimate medical and technological problems. Their achievements deserve recognition and their scientific claims deserve fair examination. Good intentions are still no substitute for accountability, and commercial success is no substitute for public consent.
I believe the greatest danger may lie less in the technology itself than in the possibility that society grows so accustomed to scientific breakthroughs that it stops asking the moral questions that should accompany them. It is easy to be impressed by what a machine can do without considering what its development requires, or to celebrate efficiency without asking who owns the result. That is how important ethical decisions gradually shift away from the public and into institutions whose primary obligations run to shareholders, investors or research sponsors.
Humanity should not have to choose between scientific progress and human dignity. We are capable of protecting both, provided we have the courage to establish reasonable boundaries before they become politically or economically inconvenient. For now, the living neurons inside these computers have not been shown to possess consciousness. They are biological systems participating in digital information processing, and that distinction matters. But the direction of the research is clear enough to justify a serious conversation about what comes next. Biological computing may remain a specialized technology used mainly for medicine, research and certain kinds of adaptive computing, or it may evolve into something far more capable, and at this point no one can say which.
What we do know is that the era of computers incorporating living human brain cells has begun.
As we move further into that era, the question I want every scientist, corporate executive, elected official and ordinary citizen to consider is this: Now that humanity has learned how to turn living human neurons into computing technology, should the future of that technology be determined by whoever can make the most money from it?
The answer will reveal a great deal about the kind of civilization we intend to become.
The Truth Is Not Hate Speech.
Disclaimer
This commentary represents the editorial opinions and analysis of The Craig Bushon Show Media Team. Scientific and technological descriptions are based on publicly available company materials, peer-reviewed research, institutional reports and news reporting available as of October 22, 2026. Current biological computing systems have not been demonstrated to possess consciousness, sentience or the capacity for suffering. Discussion of possible future capabilities and ethical implications is speculative and should not be interpreted as an established scientific conclusion. References to corporate ownership, regulatory oversight and potential risks are intended as matters for public discussion and do not constitute allegations of wrongdoing by any individual, company or research institution.
