Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the nineties shooter game “Doom.”
It’s the work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system.
Each so-called “biological computer” contains around 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells.
“Doom” involves a chaotic 3D game-world where the user is required to explore its surroundings and dispatch enemies.
Initially, the neurons were “were walking into walls a lot, shooting the walls, turning around,” Alon Loeffler, Cortical Labs scientist, said. “And then eventually they started targeting the enemies more regularly and correctly.”
The mind-bending research proves the neurons can adapt to stimuli in real time and complete goal-directed learning, Cortical Labs say. The researchers converted the digital environment in “Doom” into patterns of electrical signals the neurons on the chip could understand.
When an enemy appears, specific electrodes stimulate the neurons on the special chip called a CL1, causing them to react.
Different patterns of neuron activity produce specific responses, such as firing the gun or moving left or right. Researchers monitor the electrical activity of the neurons from a computer screen connected to the CL1, represented by thousands of tiny dots. From this data, the team adjusts their input to influence and train the neuron’s activity.
The CL1 isn’t limited to computer games, the chip can be coded to perform a range of applications, from drug screening to AI-like machine learning.
“Our neural cultures have been explored for a variety of tasks,” said operations officer Brett Kagan.
everything from “robotics, real-time learning tasks that are similar to AI, as well as healthcare, medicine, disease modelling, drug screening and even personalized medicine.” He describes the CL1 chip as “a more sustainable and more powerful form of intelligence.”
While it’s “not aimed to replace what AI is doing” it’s intended to “give us abilities that we’ve never had before.” Kagan said. The cells have a six-month lifespan and aren’t yet capable of producing programmable results.
But analysts say the project’s value could lie in its more sustainable power consumption compared to regular chips.
