Human Brain Cells On a Chip Learned To Play Doom In a Week (newscientist.com) 35
Researchers at Cortical Labs used living human neurons grown on a chip to learn how to play Doom in about a week. "While its performance is not up to par with humans, experts say it brings biological computers a step closer to useful real-world applications, like controlling robot arms," reports New Scientist. From the report: In 2021, the Australian company Cortical Labs used its neuron-powered computer chips to play Pong. The chips consisted of clumps of more than 800,000 living brain cells grown on top of microelectrode arrays that can both send and receive electrical signals. Researchers had to carefully train the chips to control the paddles on either side of the screen. Now, Cortical Labs has developed an interface that makes it easier to program these chips using the popular programming language Python. An independent developer, Sean Cole, then used Python to teach the chips to play Doom, which he did in around a week.
"Unlike the Pong work that we did a few years ago, which represented years of painstaking scientific effort, this demonstration has been done in a matter of days by someone who previously had relatively little expertise working directly with biology," says Brett Kagan of Cortical Labs. "It's this accessibility and this flexibility that makes it truly exciting."
The neuronal computer chip, which used about a quarter as many neurons as the Pong demonstration, played Doom better than a randomly firing player, but far below the performance of the best human players. However, it learnt much faster than traditional, silicon-based machine learning systems and should be able to improve its performance with newer learning algorithms, says Kagan. However, it's not useful to compare the chips with human brains, he says. "Yes, it's alive, and yes, it's biological, but really what it is being used as is a material that can process information in very special ways that we can't recreate in silicon." Cortical Labs posted a YouTube video showing its CL1 biological computer running Doom. There's also source code available on GitHub, with additional details in a README file.
"Unlike the Pong work that we did a few years ago, which represented years of painstaking scientific effort, this demonstration has been done in a matter of days by someone who previously had relatively little expertise working directly with biology," says Brett Kagan of Cortical Labs. "It's this accessibility and this flexibility that makes it truly exciting."
The neuronal computer chip, which used about a quarter as many neurons as the Pong demonstration, played Doom better than a randomly firing player, but far below the performance of the best human players. However, it learnt much faster than traditional, silicon-based machine learning systems and should be able to improve its performance with newer learning algorithms, says Kagan. However, it's not useful to compare the chips with human brains, he says. "Yes, it's alive, and yes, it's biological, but really what it is being used as is a material that can process information in very special ways that we can't recreate in silicon." Cortical Labs posted a YouTube video showing its CL1 biological computer running Doom. There's also source code available on GitHub, with additional details in a README file.
Horrors (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh boy! Man made horrors beyond my comprehension!
Re:Horrors (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
In a self-referential plot twist, the ultimate result of this experiment was the Spiderdemon.
Most likely bullshit (Score:3)
You can get any logic-gate system to "play Doom". One of the ways I'm familiar with to do this with neurons is use an effect called "spike-timing-dependent plasticity". It's basically like creating a circuit with flip-flops and logic gates at that point and claiming "yo, I got transistors to play doom bro". I don't know if that's what they did here .. if it is (someone find out?).. that's pretty damn lame. STDP produces a deterministic behavior. Either way, the cells have no idea they're playing Doom the same as a clock has no idea what time it is.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd love to see what logic gate you can get to do this.
I guess if we extend "flip-flops and logic gates" to extend to essentially several bits for a stored action potential, and a way to measure it- i.e., artificial fucking neurons- then ya, you're right.
This story is about the learning/training. Flip-flops do not learn.
Re: (Score:3)
Either way, the cells have no idea they're playing Doom
The concept of an "idea" of doing something is for beings of higher consciousness. Most living things have no "idea" what they are doing.
if it is (someone find out?).. that's pretty damn lame
Everything sounds lame if you don't put any effort into understanding it. You just needed to read to the end of TFS (I know too hard for you right?) to see what the implications of this research are.
Relative (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
And now you know, it only took a small number of your brain cells to do so!
Re: Relative (Score:2)
Lots of chips?
Yes, me too. I had a '386 (with a '387, but I don't think that was used much) and lots of memory, timing, and other chips
I don't know why (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
"flesh robots made from the poor" - that made my skin crawl when I read it. LOL Yikes.
Re: I don't know why (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It's a lot easier to just grow em on a lab than going all the effort of cracking skulls and re-training and all that.
Check the The Thought Emporium youtube channel, he's growing his neurons "at home", and his goal is actually to make exactly what this study did.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know why it is modded Troll. The feeling is appropriate.
But on the other hand, think about the meat industry. Using some lab grown brain cells is harmless against what's already happening at industrial scale to produce food.
Re: (Score:2)
fuck (Score:3, Funny)
So on top of electricity (Score:1)
this device presumably needs temperature control, consumable chemicals, and strict biosecurity protocols in order to turn into a mass of goo*.
This doesn't seem like better. It seems like gee whiz in the same way a cat piano [wikipedia.org] is gee whiz.
*I'd have said "in order to not grow intelligent life" but that would be one witticism too many in this context.
Re: (Score:2)
Maaaaybe showing that it can play doom is not because the goal is to find an efficient way to play goal, but to prove that something works one wasn't sure it would work. Not every prototype competes with proven products.
Re: So on top of electricity (Score:1)
I understand that. My statement is that even if it works in practice doing what silicon can already do, it is an inferior technology unless it can demonstrably do something silicon cannot do. Because being biological makes it more expensive to run for the reasons I stated.
Re: (Score:3)
This is not a product, this is science. I am always surprised, that people think a cool proof of concept would need to do something that well-proven current solutions don't. A concept like this may be the standard obsoleting silicon in 20 years. Today they show that it might work.
If you look at the power consumption of early computers one would also say they cannot compete with the traditional way things were done in that time. But development is a progress and it takes it time until a new tech gets better
Don't (Score:2)
Re: Don't (Score:2)
Are you referring to berserker mode
Sure, okay (Score:4, Insightful)
By all means, let's start cybernetic organisms off by having them learn to play games like Doom. What could go wrong - for us? There's no way they learn to perceive us as the enemy, right? Right? How about city/civilization building games instead so maybe they might eventually help us out. And, no, not empire or kingdom building games -- we seem to good with that already. (sigh) /s
Yes, but does it run (Score:2)
Linux?
better than a randomly firing player (Score:2)
So it is not really "playing doom". It has learned to point the mouse at a moving object and press the fire button.
Are you smarter than... (Score:2)
a few brain cells on a chip?
If you can't figure out how to play Doom, it might be a bad sign. Just don't tell anybody!
Even More Notable (Score:2)
It all makes sense now (Score:2)