Tech Talk w/ Mathew Dickerson (21st February, 2024)

Oxford University has developed the ability to 3D print artificial brain cells for use in simulations and testing, such as testing new drugs. This raises the question of whether 3D printed brain cells could eventually be used to enhance or replace human brains. There is also a new AI tool called Sora that can generate realistic videos from text, which could have implications for creating deepfake videos. Additionally, there is a Mars habitat simulation where people can apply to live for a year to study how humans would react in a Mars-like environment. Applications are open for this simulation. Matt Dickerson is in for Tech Talk. Good morning, mate. Welcome back in. Morning, Keegan. Good to see you. Good to see you as well. Now, I've heard that there is a lot going on. I always think this is a good example of how far we're going towards the Terminator future, because we can just watch the progress as it slowly goes on. But I've heard, I mean, I don't know if this is a sort of a Terminator plot going on, but artificial brains. What is going on with that? That's a phrase I didn't think I'd ever hear. Oxford University actually came up with the concept of being able to 3D print artificial brain cells, which sounds absolutely crazy. Oh, yeah. It's been reported in some medical journals, and it seems like it's all legitimate, and everything seems fine with it. Now, we're not talking at this stage about, oh, Keegan, you missed out on a bit of school in Year 7. Let's just slot a new few brain cells in there. Oh, that seems highly likely, yes. But the idea here is to print the 3D brain cells, use them in a simulation, if you like, to test things like, for example, you might have a new drug you wanted to test. Rather than take Keegan and test it on Keegan, we might just test on these artificial brain cells, and the 3D printing is meant to simulate the same connectivity that we have in our brain. But it does start to raise the question for me to the future. So if we can 3D print brain cells, we use them in the laboratory, we do some testing, then someone finally says they've got to do it. Let's see how we go printing these in a human, and maybe you could just have some 3D printed brain cells. So if you want to be a lawyer, you go, here's the already pre-programmed brain cells, just slot those in in place. Here's a different occupation for me. A radio host, for example, here's the 3D printed brain cell. The appropriate brain for that one. I think there'd be a huge demand for them in Canberra, for example, at Parliament House there'd be some 3D printed brain cells that might be needed for certain occupations like that. There'd be a huge demand for that. But you then start to think about, well, do we get to the stage where we've just got our own 3D printer at home and 3D print our own brain cells? Many of the companies that are out there with printers say, only use genuine ink. So you can imagine that there'd be a high warning there. Make sure you have the right ink. Yeah, I wonder what the price of ink for brains would be. It's already through the roof with the normal ink. Now, I hear, actually I've seen recently, there's always been these AI image generators, but there's now AI video, and about a year ago it was something you really didn't pay attention to, but it's taken off recently. There's a famous video clip of AI-generated Will Smith eating spaghetti. Yeah, yeah. And it looked horrific. I mean, go and Google it. It's almost nightmare fuel. It is. The hands look wrong, the face is going in all sorts of different directions, the spaghetti doesn't look right. You know that either someone's taken a real video clip of Will Smith and manipulated it incredibly, or it's something that's been horribly generated by AI, and that's what it was. Goes forward only a year, and now it's the same tool. It's basically OpenAI, so OpenAI's got JATTPT, we've got DALI to generate images, but it's the same tool, it's all the same background. It's called Sora, S-O-R-A, and it will generate videos from text. So you could type in Matthew and Kegan sitting in a studio having a discussion about Tech Talk, and you'd actually see a video of not necessarily someone that looked like you and I, but two people sitting in a studio, and the videos that I've watched so far look pretty impressive. You've got to look very closely. You might just see someone in the background. So there was one there that had a woman walking through the streets of Tokyo, and if you look closely at some of the people in the background, their gait just looked a bit funny, things just looked a bit off. Minor things, just slightly off-putting. But the image, the person walking at the front, just looked like a video of someone walking, for some reason, in slow motion, but again, you might do that if your video's that long. So it looked very realistic. Now, this is a tool that, if you look at OpenAI, ChatGPT, accessible to everyone. This tool isn't accessible to everyone yet, but I can't imagine why it won't be at some stage in the very near future. And we talk about things like elections in the U.S., talk about anything where you're trying to create some sort of hope, some sort of scam, and then you say, let's create a deepfake video that just looks like something's happening. So whatever you could imagine, whatever you could think you could write down in text, you could then create a video from it. So this is pretty scary. That's incredibly worrying, but also it's slightly piqued my interest, because I want to see what I can try and create on the program by diving it in. Well, that's exactly right. And I found that with images, you're just typing in to Darlene saying, I want to have a polar bear sitting on the space shuttle going to the moon. I mean, whatever you want to create, it will create that for you. And you look at it and go, that's pretty cool. And it doesn't have much problem with it, yeah. Well, that's right. And if you wanted to try and create that setting normally, you'd spend a lot of time trying to create that background, trying to create that exact setting. We can just type it in and say, there you go. So it's a scary world out there. Where it leads to, I don't really know. I have noticed that the one thing that's been the dead giveaway the entire time is, especially with the image generators, they have a problem with people's hands. They always give you about seven fingers, and it's just that slight detail. That's right. They think you're always from Tasmania. Well, speaking about small places to live in, there's a Mars habitat. I think it's a trial. Is it going on already? There's one going on already, but there's applications open. This is the exciting part. Put your applications in now if you would like to live in a 1,700 square metre area for a year with a group of people, and you can't leave. It's a Mars simulation. So essentially what they're doing is they're saying, how will humans react physically, mentally, which is the big issue, I think, if they're in this environment? So they've put them in an environment as if they've just been flown to Mars They have things such as a delay in communication. So when you talk back to the people outside the little atmosphere, then it's a delay because you would have a delay with that from Mars, travelling that distance to Mars. So you're sitting there, they'll throw some problems in, so they'll have a piece of equipment fail. You've got to try and work that out. I mean, I've lived with some housemates that I don't know that I want to spend an hour with at the same time, but a year with, that sounds pretty scary. Yeah, it's a bit far-fetched. It is, but it's really trying to work out, if we do start going to other planets, how are we going to react as humans and what things we need to think about. The whole environment there is growing your own food. It's got everything you need to be able to handle it so that you shouldn't need to be touched from the outside world. Sounds fascinating. So applications are open. You've got to be between 30 and 55 years of age. You've got to have a degree in some sort of STEM, so maths or engineering or science or some sort of degree in that and basically put your application into NASA right now. I mean, all they have to do is just ask Matt Damon after he was growing potatoes on Mars, and he seemed to do that quite well until the door flew off, so all they need to do is communicate with him. I'm sure they'll be right. Yeah, they should bring Matt Damon in from India. Thanks for coming in again, mate. It's much appreciated. They can catch more information on all these strange technological advancements through your podcast Tech Talk, is that right? That's exactly right. Every Monday morning at 9 o'clock a new episode drops. About 45 minutes of this sort of discussion around a whole new technique. Absolutely brilliant. I'll chat again with you, what, two weeks' time? Yeah, why not? Sounds fantastic. Thanks for coming again. Thanks, mate. Cheers, mate. You're on Zoo Breakfast.