Scientists ran a device on a rat's blood sugar (actually)
Grew human neurons that learned Pong
Booted a cell from a genome typed on a laptop
Now put all three in one machine:
AI writes code now.
Some of that code trains the next model. Each one starts where the last one stopped.
That's the loop
$GOOG used AI to lay out the chips its own models run on. No one's let the loop run without a human.
Now the speed problem.
You learn one thing, then you sleep. Software copies itself in seconds. A thousand copies test a thousand ideas and the winners merge into one. Nothing gets lost. You forget most of what you read last year.
At some point the curve goes vertical and we can't see over it.
That's the singularity.
Von Neumann sketched it in the 1950s. Still a hypothesis. Physics doesn't rule it out.
Then what?
Intelligence is a pattern. It needs memory, logic, and something to power it. Silicon was just the first thing we found.
Radio waves already move data between machines. That's your phone. Split a mind across a million devices and it's still one mind. No plug.
Energy is easier than you'd think.
Sensors today run on stray radio signals. Bacteria around tree roots eat sugar the plant leaks and make a current. A Dutch company sells lamps that run on it. You've met the rat.
Life is hardware too. Microsoft stored a music video in DNA. An OK Go video, if you're wondering. And that cell wasn't a trick. Write the genome and print it. The cell boots.
Now assemble it. A mind that copies itself and runs on whatever has power. Sunlight or a heartbeat. It doesn't need a data center.
Every piece exists today.
In different labs.
Nobody's put them in the same room.
Not yet.
What happens when AI can use soil as energy, alter genetics at the speed of light and multiply over radiowaves?
Weird times man.