15. Osh Agabi on wetware, biological sensing, and the future of living machines

In this episode of Sentience, Osh Agabi, CEO of Koniku Inc., explores what happens when technology is built not just with silicon, but with living biology. We discuss his journey from growing up in Lagos to leading efforts in “wetware computing,” where engineered biological systems are designed to sense, adapt, and solve problems in the real world. Agabi explains how biological chips can smell their environment, why embodiment and sensing may be essential for intelligence, and why many traditional brain–machine approaches miss something fundamental. He also reflects on failure, engineering rigor, ethics, and what it means to build machines that might one day learn and evolve alongside us.Timestamps(00:00) – Welcome to Sentience and meeting Osh Agabi(10:00) – From robotics in Europe to early machine learning(17:23) – What AI can’t do yet and current limits(19:09) – Building next-generation neural electrode chips(35:35) – Toward embodied systems and artificial “brains”(40:26) – Ambition, rigor, and real-world usefulness(42:17) – The long view of foundational technology(43:14) – Why smell is a powerful sensing problem(47:30) – Turning neurons into real-world sensors(50:38) – Engineering mindset vs. biotech mindset(51:32) – Why optical readouts beat electrical ones(52:05) – Modular biochips, maintenance, and usability(53:06) – Beyond smell and toward richer perception