A petri dish of human brain cells is currently playing Doom. Should we be worried?

153 points by EchoOfOppenheimer 6 hours ago on reddit | 64 comments

Ghost_Of_Malatesta | 4 hours ago

How long until we decide to train and run an LLM on wetware? What does/will that mean?

lmaydev | 3 hours ago

Running a neural network on neurons does make perfect sense.

They are a very basic model of how neurons work.

It's what will make AI not need such vast amounts of power and training time.

But God what an ethical mine field.

RespectTheTree | 3 hours ago

*mind field

BrazenlyGeek | 32 minutes ago

Thanks, Vsauce Michael!

Ghost_Of_Malatesta | an hour ago

Cant wait for flesh and blood synthetic humans as a slave class

Edit: and ruled by centuries old brains in a jar, copies of copies of copies that only remember the lived human sensory as a dream actually lived out by a different version

BeneficialSimple455 | an hour ago

Isn’t that the original (and much better) plot of The Matrix? That humans are used for their brains’ computing power as opposed to extremely inefficient batteries?

lmaydev | 29 minutes ago

Yeah. They thought it would confuse Americans haha

The original plot actually made sense.

Admirabletooshie | 2 hours ago

Have you seen some of these NPC ass mother fuckers running around here. People are already human AI. We are relics of a different time. Posted from my phone that tracks me every minute of the day and beams youtube shorts directly into my flesh computer.

Shintasama | 2 hours ago

>It's what will make AI not need such vast amounts of power and training time.

How to tell someone has never done neural cell culture.

lmaydev | an hour ago

Do tell

cheshire_kat7 | an hour ago

I just Googled it and I am very distressed to learn that "wetware" is an actual term.

Assimulate | 29 minutes ago

What's wrong with Wetware? Imagine if instead of a Nvidia graphics card we just slide in a tray of human think meat and can run all our favorite games for a fraction of the cost.

cheshire_kat7 | 26 minutes ago

Of all the futures I wanted to live in, a body horror dystopia was not one of them.

SummertimeThrowaway2 | an hour ago

Bro what

Godsbladed | 33 minutes ago

It's pretty common, I feel like I've seen it in sci-fi for at least 10 years now

yeah my buddies and I used to refer to our brains as "Greyware" and that was decades ago. we stopped using that term

purleyboy | 2 hours ago

Part of the theory of the maximum size of the human brain is biological, in that the birth canal constrains had size. Now we could have a pretty freaking huge petri dish....

Shintasama | 2 hours ago

Yeah, because neuroscientists definitely haven't been doing exactly that for 30 years, well before LLMs took off, and it definitely wasn't annoying when CS people started calling early LLMs "artificial neural networks" when that term was already being used to describe disassociated neurons in multielectrode arrays.

🤐

Main-Company-5946 | 3 hours ago

You cannot train and run an LLM on human neurons because human neurons are analogue, not digital.

Shintasama | 2 hours ago

>You cannot train and run an LLM on human neurons because human neurons are analogue, not digital.

Not really though. Neuron membrane depolarisation either exceeds the threshold to trigger an action potential or it doesn't. That's how digital signals work.

How difficult it is to trigger an action potential is also related to changes in things like synapse size, myelin coating thickness, dendritic spine volume, and molecular changes. This is driven by frequency of use, and is pretty analogous to token weighting in LLMs.

Main-Company-5946 | an hour ago

Unless you can demonstrate that human neurons are Turing complete, they are analogue. I don’t think neurons are Turing complete, because they operate on principles inconsistent with Turing machines; they need to be robust towards unpredictable disturbances and neuron death because of how messy the real world environment is. Also, new neurons grow all the time, which doesn’t happen in an LLM.

Ghost_Of_Malatesta | 3 hours ago

It's just different hardware.

ggrieves | 2 hours ago

That's a bit backwards. ANNs are designed to mimic neurons.

Main-Company-5946 | 2 hours ago

ANNs mimic neurons about as well as planes mimic birds.

ANNs took loose inspiration from the brain in their development but they do not work the same way.

Furthermore human brain cells are not a Turing complete computer you can run algorithms on

ggrieves | 2 hours ago

Are you suggesting that because the implementation of ANNs is imperfect that human neurons are inferior in their ability to mimic an LLM?

Main-Company-5946 | 2 hours ago

Not because the implementation is imperfect, because they are 2 completely different things. Your car has far more engine power than a sailboat but that doesn’t mean you should drive your car into the sea.

Gold_Instruction2315 | 4 hours ago

The petri dish of brain cells currently in charge of the USA worries me a lot more.

FuzzyFrogFish | 3 hours ago

Those aren't brain cells, they are bacteria someone scraped off a rotten chicken drumstick found by the roadside.

CFL_lightbulb | 2 hours ago

The USA does seem to be doing poorly, who’s the president?

ggrieves | 2 hours ago

I'm pretty sure it's Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho

AFetaWorseThanDeath | an hour ago

We'd be better off if that were actually true

glorifiedvirus | an hour ago

Heheh

Plastic-Caramel3714 | 3 hours ago

Is it playing it or living it?

AFetaWorseThanDeath | an hour ago

The question asked by every gamer's concerned parents

Mostly_Armless42 | 2 hours ago

Moisturize me!

Orange-V-Apple | 45 minutes ago

I have no mouth and I must rip and tear

piTehT_tsuJ | 2 hours ago

Not unless it starts to play "Global Thermal Nuclear War"

In that case we will need Mathew Brodrick and why do I have the urge for Burger King all of a sudden.

GovernmentBig2749 | 2 hours ago

Yes we should.

Why would you give it "learning scenario" where it kills?

Why not music, frikking notes, or maybe a colour palette?

F this world, we are DOOMed

DSVhex | 5 hours ago

You only need to be worried if you are a Demon :P

thegoldengoober | 4 hours ago

YES

Brains are the only things we know which can SUFFER, and human brains are the only ones we know which can HATE

This worries me more than any other computing related project currently being pursued. It's practically begging to manifest a real version of "AM".

stilettopanda | an hour ago

You can’t beg if you have no mouth.

cheshire_kat7 | an hour ago

But you must scream.

EatPixels | an hour ago

I mean, emotions are a chemo state. So, I imagine keeping a petri dish of brain cells content wouldn't be too hard considering our emotional state is heavily tied to diet, environment, and other people. That petri dish is likely more comfortable and content than most of us walking the earth.

But I understand your concern.

jimmyharbrah | 2 hours ago

If the brain and brain cells can complete tasks and even survive without consciousness, what the hell is the evolutionary advantage of consciousness? In biological terms, consciousness is a very expensive process calorie-wise. Seeing stuff like this makes you wonder why evolution chose to favor consciousness when it seems it could select brains perfectly capable of surviving without it?

AFetaWorseThanDeath | an hour ago

I think consciousness has driven a lot of the innovation that has allowed us to not just survive, but thrive as a species. I think it is useful, if not necessary, for social order.

ADDeviant-again | 2 hours ago

I'm not worried, but it confirms some things that I have long suspected about gamers.

LastBaron | an hour ago

I have a name you know

3PoundsOfFlax | an hour ago

This is from a "private lab" whose work hasn't been peer reviewed.

oalfonso | an hour ago

That people doesn’t watch enough science fiction to understand why this is a bad idea.

Bustymegan | 48 minutes ago

😬 well whatever they do don't take away its doom

medorian | 44 minutes ago

Way more worried about billionaires.

coredenale | 39 minutes ago

And people are worried about AI, lol.

G-I-T-M-E | 3 hours ago

Why stop now?

RespectTheTree | 3 hours ago

This explains Reddit perfectly

Pet_Velvet | 17 minutes ago

Why does it have to be Doom? Can we make it play something more wholesome like Stardew Valley

A_Spiritual_Artist | 16 minutes ago

The "bio-neural gel packs" from that old 1990s sci-fi series "Star Trek: Voyager" are being made ~350 years ahead of schedule :D

Zacharytackary | 6 hours ago

why the hell are we measuring to the thousandth of a neuron? >!/s!<

EarthTrash | 3 hours ago

I think it means 200k neurons

ficis | 2 hours ago

Past worrying. At this point I hope one of the AI companies is begging its AI to protect humans. This is how humanity will fall

Main-Company-5946 | 2 hours ago

I trust AI more than humans, and that’s not a compliment to ai

CalmHovercraft9465 | 2 hours ago

A violent fpv shooter game is a choice for the very first thing neurons integrated into a chip learns to do. They couldn’t have started off with something like Pac-Man or Tetris

Competitive-Walk-575 | 2 hours ago

If you read the article you’d know they started with pong over 4 years ago. Furthermore, the article mentions that in computer science, getting DOOM to run on a novel piece of hardware is considered a tradition/rite of passage.