You Say “AI,” I Hear “Organoid”

Health Tech Oct 2, 2026• By KIM BELLARD I must admit, ever since I learned about, and wrote about (OI May Be the New AI), “organoid intelligence” over three years ago, I’ve been looking to do a follow-up. I mean, sure, AI is in a very exciting stage, but that stage no longer seems like the future; it seems more like the present, with implementation issues. It’s data centers, hacking, impacts on jobs, open weight versus closed, and so on. It’s market share, IPOs, and AI’s role in driving the stock market. People should certainly pay attention to it, but AI is not quite the open field that it was just a few years ago. Organoids, on the other hand, are not quite here yet. They may – or may not – be the future of AI, among other things. I always like to look ahead to the next thing more than the at-hand, so when I saw some cool developments with organoids, I didn’t want to miss my chance. Making some news last week, researchers at Harvard reported that they’d kept lab grown human brain organoids alive for over five years, three times the previous record. Not only that, but the organoids seem to “retain a memory of the time spent in vitro,” recording the passage of time, as it were. “We...