Amazon AWS adds preview access to TBC’s rat brain inspired AI model

In short: Amazon Web Services is letting select customers try an AI model from The Biological Computing Company that is based on activity patterns from rat brain cells.

What happened

Starting Tuesday, some Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers will get limited preview access to a new AI model from The Biological Computing Company, also called TBC. AWS is Amazon’s cloud service, which is like renting computing power instead of buying your own servers.

TBC’s approach starts in a lab. Researchers place living rat brain cells, and in some work human stem cells, on a silicon chip with many tiny sensors. The chip sends small electrical signals into the cells and records how the cells respond. TBC says it then turns those response patterns into software ideas that can make today’s AI models work more efficiently.

TBC is aiming this first product at video generation, meaning AI that can create video clips from prompts. The company claims its model can generate video up to five times faster than the open-source video model it builds on. It also says it can reduce inference costs, which is the cost of running the model to produce a result (like paying for each use), not the earlier training step.

AWS says it expects to roll the tool out more broadly to enterprise customers. Amazon noted it has worked with another biological computing company before, Cortical Labs, which combines lab-grown neurons with computer chips.

Why it matters

Making AI video tools cheaper and faster could affect what people see online, from ads to social posts. It also signals that AWS is testing more unusual ways to improve AI, but questions remain about how well these methods hold up for longer videos and wider use.

Source: Wired