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Last year, an article published in MedicalXpress said a team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Australia and the United Kingdom had taught a small group of human brain cells to play the video game Pong.
Pong is the first generation of video games. The single player version consists of a paddle and a ball. Players move the racket to the path of the ball to maintain the game when the ball bounces off the ball, just like the racket in a real table tennis game. In this new effort, the researchers taught a small subset of connected human brain cells to play the game.
The substance, which researchers call a cyborg, is produced by placing human stem cells on microelectric arrays and growing them into brain cells there. In their configuration, cells can either stimulate other cells or read the activity of other cells around them. Electrical signals are sent to the array to tell them where the ball is. For example, if the electrodes on the right side of the cluster catch fire, brain cells will know that the ball is on their left side. The distance of the signal provides the cell with information about the frequency. Like the real Pong, the paddle can only move left and right. And as in real games, the goal is to move the racket into the path of the ball.
Robots are taught to play games in the same way as humans — to learn how to move paddles in a successful way by playing games repeatedly. In this case, it is feedback in the form of an electrical signal in the electrode.
The researchers found that the system was able to learn how to play games in about five minutes — significantly faster than an AI machine. However, they note that the skill level of the system is much lower than that of humans or AI systems.
The researchers say their work could improve the design of machine learning systems or be used for other applications, such as testing therapies that target the brain.
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Brett J. Kagan et al, In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a simulated game-world, biorxiv (2021). DOI: 10.1101/2021.12.02.471005