A team of scientists in Australia has taught a petri dish of brain cells to play Pong. According to an article from Input Magazine, “As Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer of Cortical Labs explains, these neurons are more than just a dumping of brain cells on a dish. They’re a network capable of learning and completing tasks. ‘We often refer to them as living in the Matrix,’ Kagan says. ‘When they are in the game, they believe they are the paddle.’ Kagan and his team are able to educate the neuron network (which, by the way, they refer to as ‘DishBrain’) via electric stimulation. The electric signals tell the DishBrain where the ball is and, in just five minutes’ time, the DishBrain figures out how to move its ‘paddle’ to hit the ball. The network of cells becomes the paddle.”
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