We’re already getting glimpses of AI technology that goes far beyond chatbots to model the brains of living beings.
Chinese researchers say they created an AI version of a monkey’s brain, and put it on a computer. It has 960 chips, and each one “supports over 2 billion spiking neurons and over 100 billion synapses, approaching the number of neurons in a macaque brain,” according to Zhejiang University, as translated by Google.
Researchers named the project the Darwin Monkey and say it’s “a step toward more advanced brain-like intelligence.” It’s the largest brain-like, or “neuromorphic,” computer in the world, and the first that’s based on neuromorphic-specific chips, Interesting Engineering reports.
Are human brains next? That might take a while. While macaques are highly capable monkeys, they are not as intelligent as humans. They lack many of our capabilities, such as the brain circuitry for human speech, Princeton University reports. But it could make robot monkeys a step closer, if researchers can match the brain with a body.
The computer contains 960 Darwin 3 chips (Credit: Zhejiang University)
But the Darwin Monkey is still a step forward. With 2 billion artificial neurons, it’s more advanced than Intel’s neuromorphic computer announced in April 2024.
Dubbed Hala Point, Intel’s research prototype has 1.15 billion neurons, or about the capacity of an owl’s brain. Sandia National Laboratory is using Hala Point for “advanced brain-scale computing research” in fields “ranging from commercial to defense to basic science,” says Craig Vineyard, Hala Point team lead at Sandia.
(Credit: Intel Corporation)
Zhejiang University researchers first built the Darwin Mouse in 2020, which has 120 million artificial neurons. They developed the “brain-inspired” Darwin 3 chips in early 2023 in collaboration with the Zhejiang Laboratory. Two years later, the Darwin Monkey was born.
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It uses China’s DeepSeek AI model “for intelligent tasks such as logical reasoning, content generation, and mathematical problem solving.” The team also built a new operating system that it says is more efficient because it achieves “concurrent scheduling of neuromorphic tasks and dynamic optimization of system resources, taking into account communication bandwidth and task characteristics.”
Efficiency seems to be a focus of these neuromorphic systems. Intel also said Hala Point could help curb the “unsustainable rates” of computing costs today.
“Brain-inspired computing systems can address the high energy consumption and computational complexity of existing deep networks and large models,” says Zhejiang University. “Furthermore, [the Darwin Monkey’s] unsupervised online learning mechanism can bring revolutionary advances to AI.”
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About Emily Forlini
Senior Reporter
