American billionaire Jeff Bezos has backed the establishment of a secretive neurotechnology startup named Flourish, which is valued at $2.5 billion. The company aims to fundamentally rethink artificial intelligence architecture by mimicking human brain functions.
Researchers have raised concerns about the energy consumption of current AI systems, such as ChatGPT and Google’s virtual assistants, which they describe as “catastrophic” in their demand for electricity and data. Despite their origins in biological concepts, these modern digital models diverge significantly from living organisms.
Among the main challenges facing the AI industry today are:
- Excessive energy consumption: Humans require about 20 watts to process information, while a single chip in a training cluster can consume 30 times that amount.
- Massive scale: Large data centers demand gigawatts of power, comparable to the needs of small cities.
- Limited adaptability: Once trained, current models remain static and cannot adjust to new conditions independently.
Developers are striving to overcome these hurdles. However, while a computer needs billions of text pages to learn basic language, a typical child learns to speak with just a few hundred thousand words.
Thomas Reardon, the founder of Flourish and a former developer of Microsoft’s first web browser, has enlisted over 20 leading experts for the project. The team’s goal is to discover fundamental algorithms that drive natural intelligence.
Researchers are focusing on cortical columns, the basic computational units of the brain’s cortex. Recent studies on the nervous system of fruit flies have shown that their biological networks are ten times more efficient than the transformer architecture used in services like ChatGPT.
To investigate these processes, Flourish is acquiring high-precision electron microscopes. Scientists are analyzing cell structures and neurobiological mechanisms at nano and micro levels, intending to translate the mathematical principles discovered into silicon chips.
Creating a fully functional analog of the human brain is a long-term project expected to take 7 to 10 years. However, Flourish plans to launch its first commercial products in the near future.
The developers are currently designing a memory system that mimics the functions of the biological hippocampus. This approach will enable AI models to learn in real-time during operation, avoiding the lengthy and costly retraining processes on large servers.
Startup leadership is already in discussions with a major semiconductor manufacturer to integrate the developed algorithms into mobile processors, paving the way for high-performance AI to run locally on smartphones.
Jeff Bezos has invested in Flourish, a neurotechnology startup aiming to transform AI by mimicking human brain functions. The company is addressing significant challenges in energy consumption and adaptability while planning to launch commercial products soon.