You Heard About the Brain Cells That ‘Learned’ to Play Pong? Here’s the Rest of the Story
Headlines are shouting the news — Brain Cells in a Dish Learn to Play Pong! Any way you look at it, that’s an amazing headline. And good headlines always capture the essence of the news, right?
Well, it is an amazing development, but there’s more to the story, especially when you stop and ask the same question posed by Eric Holloway on Mind Matters, a Senior Fellow at the Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. His PhD is in Electrical and Computer Engineering, from Baylor University.
Holloway explains:
“Here’s the basic idea: What if instead of building artificial intelligence with computer chips, we use human brains? This is the inspiration behind Cortical Labs. It uses miniature ‘brains’ called organoids, which are cells grown from human-induced pluripotent stem cells. These brains are then plugged into computer chips. The company’s first proof of concept is to have the brains ‘play’ Pong.
“But how does this happen? How do these brains understand what is happening to a great enough degree that they can respond coherently?
“The details of the work can be found in their preprint. The scientists at Cortical Labs propose a theory called the free energy principle (FEP). The theory states the brain always seeks to minimize the error between its predictions and observations, either by changing its predictions or changing its observations by acting on the environment.
“For training purposes, the brain is sent a noisy signal for incorrect behavior. If the FEP theory is correct, then the brain will modify its behavior in order to avoid noisy signals, and this is what the scientists observed. When the brains received the noisy signal after missing the pong ball, the brains adapted to move the paddle to deflect the ball. Over a lengthy training period the brains improved the volley lengths, demonstrating that the brains do learn.”
So what’s the big question Holloway poses? Go here to discover that question and to read “the rest of the story.”
Did You Hear About the International Drug Dealer Who Found Christ?
What is HillFaith, Who is Mark Tapscott and Why Should You Care?