Human Brain Cells Petri Dish Pong Cyborg
Australia-based Cortical Labs utilized thousands of human brain cells grown atop of arrays of microelectrodes, or in other words, a biotechnological hybrid called ‘DishBrain’, to play a single-player version of the classic arcade game ‘Pong’. The researchers then compared the speed at which the mini-brain picked up the skill with that of artificial intelligence (AI).



Believe it or not, the human brain cells beat their artificial intelligence counterpart without any question, as they former learned the game in just five minutes compared to the 90 minutes AI required. What the researchers took away from this experiment is basically that a single layer of in vitro cortical neurons can self-organize and display intelligent and sentient behavior.

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Human Brain Cells Petri Dish Pong Cyborg

We think it’s fair to call them cyborg brains. We often refer to them as living in the Matrix. When they are in the game, they believe they are the paddle,” said Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer of Cortical Labs.

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