In vitro biological system of cultured brain cells has learned to play Pong
Interestingly, this is not a new result; people have been doing stuff like this since at least the 90s, most notably Steve Potter at GA Tech and Tom DeMarse in Florida.[1][2] (I built a shitty counterstrike aimbot using a cultured neural network in college based on their papers.)<p>There was a lot of coverage back in 2004 when DeMarse hooked it up to a flight simulator and claimed it was flying an F-22 [3] (lol, but I don&#x27;t blame him too much...)<p>The basic idea is that if you culture neurons on an electrode array (not that hard) you can pick some electrodes to be &quot;inputs&quot; and some to be &quot;outputs&quot; and then when you stimulate both ends the cells wire together more or less according to Hebb&#x27;s rule[4] and can learn fairly complex nonlinear mappings.<p>On the other hand, these cultures have essentially no advantage over digital computers and modern machine learning models. Once you get through the initial cool factor, you realize it&#x27;s a pain to keep the culture perfectly sterile, fed, supplied with the right gases, among many other practical problems, for a model which is just much less powerful, introspectable, and debuggable than is possible on digital computers.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com&#x2F;sites.gatech.edu&#x2F;dist&#x2F;f&#x2F;516&#x2F;files&#x2F;2010&#x2F;10&#x2F;DeMarseAutonRobots2001.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com&#x2F;sites.gatech.edu&#x2F;dist&#x2F;f&#x2F;516&#x2F;fi...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;potterlab.gatech.edu&#x2F;labs&#x2F;potter&#x2F;animat&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;potterlab.gatech.edu&#x2F;labs&#x2F;potter&#x2F;animat&#x2F;</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2004&#x2F;TECH&#x2F;11&#x2F;02&#x2F;brain.dish&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2004&#x2F;TECH&#x2F;11&#x2F;02&#x2F;brain.dish&#x2F;</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hebbian_theory" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hebbian_theory</a>