This New AI Chips Built With Mouse Neurons Can Smell Explosives

Navin Bondade 0 Comments Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Deep Learning, Machine Learning

At the airport, U.S uses human worker and screening devices to search weapons and banned items. But in a test conducted by the Department of Homeland Security found that human screeners repeatedly fail to detect banned items at security checkpoints.

Though it has not shown a great impact yet, but then who knows what the future might bring.

The researcher now found an excellent way that can make security unbreakable. Nigerian Oshi Agabi has created an AI Chips that could recognize the smell of explosives. What makes this AI Chips more interesting is that it’s based on mice neurons rather than silicon.

The AI Chips are called the Koniku Kore. The Koniku Kore device is a ‘world first’ that is able to breathe in and smell the air, meaning it could detect volatile chemicals and explosives or even illnesses such as cancer.

Koniku Kore has been trained to recognize the smell of explosives and could be used to replace traditional airport security. This means in the future passengers could skip tedious airport security lines, while the special device sniffs out explosives silently in the background.

Nigerian neuroscientist Oshiorenoya Agabi says his supercomputer – the pictures of which cannot yet be publicly revealed – could simulate the power of 204 brain neurons.

“Instead of copying a neuron, why not just take the biological cell itself and use it as it is? That thought is radical. The consequence of this is mind-boggling,” Agabi said.

As many grapple with the finite processing power of silicon, the 38-year-old said he had looked to the brain which is ‘the most powerful processor the universe has ever seen.

So he and a team of geneticists, physicists, bioengineers, molecular biologists and others set about doing just that, focusing on the problems that were particularly hard for silicon devices to solve.

This lab-grown neurons reportedly can live for two months in the device and for two years in a lab.

He launched his start-up Koniku over a year ago, has raised $1m (£800,000) in funding and claims it is already making profits of $10m in deals with the security industry.

He said ‘major brands’, including those in the travel industry, had signed up and the start-up’s current revenues of $8 million (£6.2 million) were expected to leap to $30 million (£23 million) by 2018.

According to some experts, developing such artificial intelligence systems for mass-market was a challenging task. Tech giants like Microsoft and Google are currently in furious competition to develop artificial intelligence modeled on the human brain.

We all know that computers are better mathematical equation solver than human, but there are so many cognitive functions where the brain can perform better. For instance, teaching a computer to recognize smell would require an enormous amount of computational power, as well as energy.

Agabi hopes that in the future, this new AI Chips will be able to detect disease by sensing markers of it in the air molecules. He believes his company could build a cognitive humanoid system based on synthetic living neurons in the next five to seven years.

Agabi did a bachelors degree in theoretical physics in Lagos before taking an interest in neuroscience and bio-engineering for his Ph.D. in London.

He spoke at the opening session of the four-day TED Global conference, putting African ideas, innovation, and creativity in the spotlight with a variety of speakers who each get an 18-minute window to get across their message of choice.

TED—originally known as Technology, Entertainment and Design—has built a global following for its online videos of inspiring talks devoted to “ideas worth spreading.”

The annual international version is taking place in Africa for the first time in a decade with a new crop of “TED Fellows” from the continent to take to the stage.

“This gathering couldn’t come a moment too soon,” said TEDGlobal co-curator Emeka Okafor. “Africa has experienced spectacular economic, demographic and creative growth, but both opportunity and danger are rising at an exponential rate. Our conference will gather the idea catalysts, problem-solvers, and change-makers already hard at work here charting Africa’s own path to modernity.”