Introduction
Before you read any further, I want you to understand something: what I’m about to share with you is not speculation or science fiction about the future. This is happening here and now — as you read this, there are laboratories already funded, teams already advancing, and results already published in top-tier scientific journals.
Some time ago I wrote about the moral laws of artificial intelligence— and if you haven’t read it yet, I’d recommend starting there, because what we’re going to talk about today is the next level of that conversation. There, I argued something I believe is fundamental: the moral question always has to come before the technical solution and implementation. That no technological innovation can legitimately move forward without someone first stopping to think and ask what our responsibility is — as humanity — toward what we’re creating.
That’s what I said thinking about machines and algorithms that simulate intelligence — what a friend of mine calls Aspirational Intelligence.
Today the landscape has changed entirely. Because now we’re talking about biocomputers that run on human neurons — yes, you read that right — human tissue grown in a laboratory, integrated into chips, that learns, that reacts, that responds and adapts. This has a name: it’s called bio-artificial intelligence, or more technically, as it’s known in the field, organoid intelligence. And this field is already attracting large-scale venture capital, competing startups, and countries betting on leadership in this space.
What it doesn’t have yet — and this is what concerns me most — is a clear ethical framework.
And that gap, I want you to understand clearly, is not just a philosophical problem. For you — the AI developer, the research team leader, the biotech investor — that gap is a real risk for you and your organization: legal, reputational, and strategic. This article is for you.
Part 1 — What Are We Actually Talking About?
We all know the internet is full of noise, and especially around the topic we’re discussing. So let me explain it clearly so you have the full, accurate picture.
Organoid intelligence — or bio-artificial intelligence — combines two fields that until recently existed in entirely separate worlds: cerebral organoids, which are small structures of human nervous tissue grown in a laboratory from stem cells (don’t picture The Matrix — think of human cells grouped together in one place, like when you get a paper cut and a tiny flake of skin comes off), and traditional computing systems (the everyday kind: chips, motherboards, artificial intelligence, software, etc.). After extensive research, scientists discovered that these neurons are not dormant. They are not passive. They learn. They self-organize. They respond to stimuli. (As if they had a mind of their own.) And when connected to a digital interface, they can process information in ways no silicon chip had ever achieved with the same energy efficiency — and that energy efficiency point is critically important.
So the question is: how far have they gotten? Far enough that this is no longer science fiction or pure theory.
Cortical Labs, an Australian company, got a system of human neurons to learn to play Pong — the most basic video game in history — without being programmed to do so. It learned. It simply learned. More recently, research published in *Nature Computational Science* and *ScienceDirect* has shown the field is scaling fast: moving from playing Pong to voice recognition, signal processing, and increasingly complex cognitive tasks. And the most recent 2026 publications are already describing a roadmap toward systems with capabilities comparable to advanced AI models (in certain parameters, not all) — but here’s the thing — consuming a fraction of the energy.
And there’s the appeal. Because one of the biggest problems facing data management and artificial intelligence today is energy consumption. Data centers consume staggering amounts of electricity that are not only generating enormous costs, but have started putting the climate commitments of major tech companies at serious risk. (To give you a sense of scale, though estimates are still rough, some researchers suggest these systems could use a million times less energy.)
That clearly explains why capital is moving. Not out of scientific curiosity — but because it makes economic sense. And let’s remember: no one went to the Moon out of scientific curiosity — it was always about economic or political implications.
And that’s exactly where I want us to focus on the problem that follows from all of this.
Part 2 — The Regulatory Gap Is a Silent Threat to Organizations
Let’s stop here for a moment. There’s something that most reports on bio-artificial intelligence are not saying with the clarity it deserves: the legal framework that exists today does not contemplate this in the slightest. Not in any country. There is no regulation specifically designed for computing systems that incorporate human tissue. And that, for any company betting on this technology, is a risk growing like a snowball in silence.
Let me explain a little further.
Say someone donates biological tissue for research — their blood, their skin, whatever part of their body. That person signs a consent form. That consent, in virtually every existing protocol, is written for biomedical research — to understand disease, develop treatments, advance health sciences. What that consent does not say — because no one anticipated it, and no one anticipated it because it was science fiction, plain and simple — is that those cells or biological tissue could end up being part of, or the central component of, a commercial processor (or computer chip, to put it plainly) performing facial recognition, data analysis, or any other business task.
Now do you see the problem we have on our hands?
There is already a legal precedent every legal director should be thinking about: the Havasupai case in the United States. If you don’t know it, here’s a summary: members of a Native American tribe sued a university because their blood samples were used for research they never authorized. And you know what? They won. And the gap between “biomedical research” and “a computer with human neurons used commercially” is exactly the same kind of gap — only much larger. In other words: one was a kiddie pool, the other is an ocean.
The clearest parallel for the tech world is GDPR (in case you’re not familiar: the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union). When it arrived, it came as a shock — nobody was ready. Companies that ignored it paid millions in fines and, worse, lost the trust of their customers and users. Bio-AI regulation is coming — the question is not if, but when. And organizations that ignore it will repeat the same pattern, but with potentially far greater consequences, because we’re not talking about personal data here: we’re talking about human tissue, about your DNA.
Those organizations that define their ethical standards before regulation arrives — and it will arrive — won’t just be protected. They’ll be positioned to lead the market.
Part 3 — Why Moral Theology Has Something to Say to Business, and It’s Not What You Think
I know — this is the part where you’re going to pause. I get it, and that’s fine. If you’re a scientist, developer, or tech investor, you probably didn’t expect moral theology to show up in an article about bio-artificial intelligence. So before we continue, let’s take that pause — because I want to explain why it makes sense, not from faith, but from history.
It was 1948. The United Nations was approving the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That document — which today is the foundation and pillar of virtually all international law, labor contracts, privacy standards, and the legal framework under which your products operate — did not emerge from thin air. One of its most important conceptual architects was Jacques Maritain, a French philosopher trained in the Thomistic tradition of moral theology (in case you’re not familiar with the Thomistic tradition: it’s a school of thought based on the ideas of Thomas Aquinas, a medieval philosopher and theologian). What Maritain and other thinkers brought to the table was something that the lawyers and politicians of the time could not build on their own: a solid philosophical argument for why certain rights are inherent to the human person, regardless of their practical value or utility, their productivity, or their capacity to contribute to society.
Put another way: the legal system that protects your users, your employees, and your company was built, in part, with tools from moral theology.
Why am I telling you this? Because I’ve spent years working at the intersection of two worlds that rarely meet — moral theology and artificial intelligence — and what I see from that vantage point has led me to one conclusion: every time humanity has had to expand or redefine who counts as a subject of rights and what responsibilities we have toward that subject, it has needed that kind of thinking. Not as religious doctrine, but as a system of reasoning — a rational framework for human dignity.
And you know what? We are at exactly that moment again today.
The question that bio-artificial intelligence is asking us is precisely that: what is our responsibility toward a system that contains human tissue and processes information? At what point does this system, organism, or even entity stop being a product and start being something that deserves moral consideration? Let’s be honest: science can describe what happens inside that chip, but it cannot answer that question. That’s not a scientific limitation — it’s simply that the question belongs to a completely different field.
And that way of thinking has very concrete practical implications for your company.
What would happen if, in five years, a court determines that cerebral organoids used in commercial computing had some level of moral consideration that was overlooked or not respected? Who assumes that responsibility — the scientist who grew them, the company that chose to integrate them into the chip, or the corporation that ended up buying the processor? I know these are not abstract questions. They are exactly the kind of questions that your competitors’ lawyers should be studying right now.
And I want to be clear, because it’s important to keep in mind: moral theology is not going to give you the definitive answer. But it will give you something that today is as valuable as gold — the framework for asking the right questions before someone else asks them in a courtroom.
Part 4 — The Questions Your Organization Needs to Face Today, Not Later
I’m going to be honest and direct: I’m not going to give you a manual or a list of rules to follow — and truthfully, they don’t exist yet. What does exist — and what truly marks the difference between organizations that will lead this field and those that will be scrambling to react just to survive — is the willingness to ask the right questions before someone else does.
My father taught me a saying when I was growing up: *the one who moves first, moves twice*. It’s the most straightforward way of saying that the proactive player wins, the reactive one just survives.
So I’m going to put my questions on the table.
Does the person who donated the cells or tissue actually know what you’re using them for?
Not whether they signed a consent form — whether they actually understand. And let me be clear: I’m not calling them naive or uninformed. There is a huge difference between a legal document and truly understanding that their cells could end up being the core component of a commercial chip. This is not just an ethical question — it is the first point of legal vulnerability for your organization. And to be honest about it: the truthful answer for most teams working in this space right now is that no, the donor probably doesn’t know. There are isolated cases where they do, but most don’t.
Have you considered that that tissue carries a specific genetic code linked to a specific human being?
This is something very few bio-AI discussions are taking seriously. We’re not talking about inert plant tissue. We’re talking about biological material with a unique, traceable, identifiable genetic code — the same code that defines a person. And let’s think through this together: that means the chip processing information could, in principle, be linked back to a real individual, with a real name, a real address. The privacy implications go far beyond any data regulation you know today. The question is: does your organization have answers for this?
What are your protocols for when science cannot tell you whether this system experiences anything?
I know some people will say I’m going too far — but let’s be real: five years ago, chips with human neurons were science fiction. Today they’re not. That moment is coming — and in fact, it’s already arriving. The very researchers working in this field have admitted they don’t know with certainty what is happening from the inside of these systems. Until now, consciousness was a phenomenon we associated exclusively with human beings and their biology. But if we integrate human neurons into artificial systems that learn, adapt, and respond, we are walking on a frozen lake that could give way beneath our feet at any moment — because the old definition no longer holds. Does your company have the protocols for that scenario, or is it simply waiting for someone else to solve it first?
What happens to this organism if your company closes tomorrow?
With digital code, a company closing means turning off a server — done. With human tissue integrated into a chip or a computer, the answer is no longer that simple. Who assumes responsibility for that biological material? What obligations survive beyond the organization? Nobody is answering this yet. And that, in itself, is an answer.
Conclusion — The Question That’s Coming
The world of bio-artificial intelligence is advancing faster than any ethical, legal, or philosophical framework we have available today — and the truth is that lawyers, theologians, and philosophers alike are like the three wise monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. And unfortunately, history has shown us more than once that when technology outpaces ethical and moral thinking, real people pay the consequences — not the algorithms, not the chips, not the quarterly earnings reports.
The organizations that will lead this field are not necessarily the ones with the best neural tissue or the most efficient processor. They are the ones with the maturity to stop and ask themselves what they are building — and what their responsibility is toward every part of what they are building.
There is one more question, however, that I haven’t touched on in this article — and which I believe is the most important one of all, and also the most controversial in these modern times. If we accept that human tissue carries a unique genetic code that defines a person, and if bio-AI uses that tissue as a functional component of a system with the capacity to process, learn, and respond… here I go… at exactly what point does human life begin to carry moral relevance? Is it the DNA? Is it consciousness? Is it the capacity to feel? Or is it all of them at once?
Because if a human being is defined by their unique genetic code within living cells, then these biomachines are extensions of that individual — and if that living genetic code defines what a human being is, then from the moment of conception, a human being exists.
That question is complicated but necessary — and today it echoes in bio-AI laboratories just as it has echoed for decades in the debate over the beginning of human life. It deserves a full article. And that will be the next one.
So I leave you with a final question: are we prepared to take responsibility for the Frankenstein we are bringing to life?