Researchers build biocomputer out of lab-grown brain cells

Well, this is interesting. And something I and other SF writers have speculated on before.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03975-7

‘Biocomputer’ combines lab-grown brain tissue with electronic hardware

A system that integrates brain cells into a hybrid machine can recognize voices.

Researchers have built a hybrid biocomputer — combining a laboratory-grown human brain tissue with conventional electronic circuits — that can complete tasks such as voice recognition.

The technology, described on 11 December in Nature Electronics1, could one day be integrated into artificial-intelligence (AI) systems, or form the basis of improved models of the brain in neuroscience research.