The Internet lit up yesterday with news that boffins at Cortical Labs have a petri dish filled with 200,000 human brain cells and they’re playing DOOM.
According to the lab, they have a chip they call CL1 that runs BIOS (BIological Operating System – get it? Clever, huh?). They took donated human cells, induced them to become pluripotent stem cells, and then (did some science stuff? I have no idea really) they become brain cells. They have these cells running inside some custom (obviously) hardware. These neurons sit on an array of electrodes, and these electrodes can stimulate and read the electrical spikes from the neurons.
From there, it’s just a matter of connecting the video input from the game (what a human would see with his eyes) to the electrodes, and then the electrodes to controller input to the game. By using a “reward system,” this “synthetic biological intelligence” was able to “learn”.
Mind-blowing and the next frontier? Not so fast.
First, the “learning” is very overstated. What they have is a neural network that can choose 0 or 1. This is not feeding dopamine into a “brain” or anything like that. The cells are used really more like transistors. And really, it was not playing the game very well.
But more to the point, there is precious little actual hard data on this. We have tweets and a slick YouTube video, but no peer-reviewed journal articles.
I went to their web site and clicked “Buy Now”. I got this:
Thanks for expressing your interest in purchasing CL-1 units or for bespoke solutions. Please email us with key details below and one of our sales staff will get in touch with you regarding your purchase order.
To ensure a prompt response, it is helpful if you can give us an idea of your intended application and whether you are interested in the cloud system or to purchase CL-1 units. Please remember, you’ll need a suitable laboratory facilitates to use a CL-1 unit. If you do not have this we suggest you look at Cortical Cloud, our Wetware-as-a-Service (Waas) option, available on the top right of the website and sign up there.
OK, let’s try “Waas” (cringe). All I got was “The Cortical Cloud will be launching soon.”
This really smells like a hype. The video is interesting and shows their CL1 system, but it’s important to remember that what this “brain” is doing is something that silicon can do millions fo times better. You can write code that will play DOOM perfectly. The argument may be that it’s “early days” for the CL1, but this isn’t like quantum computing where an entire new approach to computing could open up. It’s just a neural network. We already have those, and the ones we have today do not wear out in 6 months like the CL1.
This seems like a proof of concept designed to attract funding. It isn’t clear that this will ever pan out into a new frontier of computing. The only real advantage offered up is the lower energy cost. But that comes with radically reduced compute power, so…
I wish they’d opted to provide a bit more science and a little less hype.
Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.
Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.
His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.
You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.
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