[HN Gopher] Clumps of human brain cells in a dish can learn to p... ___________________________________________________________________ Clumps of human brain cells in a dish can learn to play Pong faster than an AI Author : giuliomagnifico Score : 105 points Date : 2021-12-19 19:54 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.newscientist.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.newscientist.com) | dragontamer wrote: | With "Evangelion" being in the (Hacker) news recently, I hope to | remind people of this one scene... | | An advanced AI named "The Three Magi" (which are 3-programs which | vote for strategic effects) exists in the show. Without going too | much into details, a problem occurs in the AI, so the lead | scientist Ritsuko steps into the machine to check things out. | | She comes with a circular saw. She cuts open one computer (the | one named "Caspar") ... revealing to the audience that inside is | a living brain, hooked up to a bunch of wires: | https://imgur.com/MTZ7pzU | | This is the first point where the audience probably starts to | wonder about the ethics of the main characters. The later reveals | of their bio-engineering / morals are more horrifying. But this | is perhaps the audience's first look into the inner-workings of | the NERV organization / science that they do. | serf wrote: | >This is the first point where the audience probably starts to | wonder about the ethics of the main characters. | | that's a very impactful scene, but honestly there are | moral/ethical red flags about many of the main characters from | the very first episode. | amelius wrote: | I can already envision HFT traders putting human brains into | boxes which are then colocated at the exchanges and everyone | thinks it's okay. | dr1337 wrote: | They're already doing it with mice! - | https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2021/crypto-trading- | ro... | calo_star wrote: | That scene was so cool in a disturbing way! | damiankennedy wrote: | But seriously, I wonder if the "clump of human brain cells" gets | tired or needs to sleep or, need any other nourishment. The COHBC | might learn faster but can it then keep playing at the same level | 24/7? | | edit: disclaimer, I am a COHBC. | wolverine876 wrote: | Also: Farahany, Greely "The ethics of experimenting with human | brain tissue" in Nature (2018) | | https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04813-x | pezzana wrote: | Paywalled. From an earlier article in Forbes: | | > Using real neurons avoids several other difficulties that | software-based neural networks have. For instance, to get | artificial neural networks to start learning well, their | programmers usually have to engage in a laborious process of | manually adjusting the initial coefficients, or weights, that | will be applied to each type of data point the network processes. | Another challenge is to get the software to balance how much it | should be trying to explore new solutions to a problem versus | relying on solutions the network has already discovered that work | well. | | > "All these problems are completely eluded if you have a system | that is based on biological neurons to begin with," Friston said. | | https://fortune.com/2020/03/30/startup-human-neurons-compute... | | The other main advantage is low power consumption. | | > AlphaGo, the deep-learning system DeepMind created to play Go | and which beat the world's best human player in that ancient | strategy game in 2016, consumed one megawatt of power while | playing the game, enough to power about 100 homes for a day, | according to an estimate by technology company Ceva. By contrast, | the human brain consumes about 20 watts of power, or 50,000 times | less energy than AlphaGo used. | | However, it's not clear whether these hybrid chips will have | similarly low power consumption. | lucb1e wrote: | > The other main advantage is low power consumption. | | As someone worried about our climate, I'm very curious about | that actually. Is it more efficient to feed neurons biological | food (from an energy perspective, since that food needs to be | grown on land somewhere and takes up solar energy, it needs | water that comes from clouds which were created by evaporation, | etc.) than it is to use low-CO2 energy sources (solar, wind, | nuclear, hydro, wave, whatever) and power a computer with that? | | E.g. electric motors are very efficient compared to combustion, | but it's only effective if you get electricity from a non- | combustion source or else you might as well use a combustion | engine in the vehicle itself. I kind of assumed it's the same | for computers, that they efficiently calculate things compared | to biology, but I never really thought about it. I'm curious | how energy-intensive biological computers are (discounting any | R&D that I assume is currently still a big part of the | equation). | giuliomagnifico wrote: | Paywalled?! I don't see a paywall here, maybe I'm still in | the"free articles limit". By the way thanks for your quotes! | kgc wrote: | There is a company working on biologically inspired neural | chips called Rain Neuromorphics. https://rain.ai | dr1337 wrote: | Yeah but there are lots of companies doing this already | including Intel that has poured millions into their Loihi | neuromorphic chips. | hyperpallium2 wrote: | huh now it's playing badly... wait, it's morse code! _._ .. ._.. | ._.. __ . | fouc wrote: | Ah, the sentient something communicating a "kill me" message. | That reminds me of a scene from a movie, but I can't remember | which one it was. | dole wrote: | More than likely Johnny Got His Gun, although The Fly or | Predator could apply. | damiankennedy wrote: | I thought of "Johnny Got His Gun" too. That's the film they | use the footage from in the video of Metallica's song | "One". | jl2718 wrote: | https://youtu.be/WM8bTdBs-cw?t=306 | bostonbot wrote: | Reminds me of the book "We are legion (We are Bob)". | kregasaurusrex wrote: | Full paper on bioRxiv: | https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.02.471005v1 | dr1337 wrote: | The real MVP. Thanks! | fouc wrote: | "In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in | a simulated game-world" | | Exhibiting sentience, that's a bit awkward ethically speaking.. | Even though this type of testing will help us understand how | our brains work. | hlbjhblbljib wrote: | ethics only comes in when they exhibit consciousness. | T-A wrote: | From 2004: | | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041022104658.h... | gus_massa wrote: | I cant find the part about "faster than AI" in the research | paper. It's very difficult to compare. Do you use a single | computer or a cluster? Do you compare wall clock time, or energy | consumption, or weigh of the processor, or ...? | cblconfederate wrote: | Me neither, i don't think that was the interesting part about | the paper at all, but the fact that they were even able to | train a clump of cells to do something is very exciting. Also | their finding that human cells work better than mouse cells. | [deleted] | omarhaneef wrote: | I know supply chain issues have researchers trying out novel | solutions but this was unexpected. | | Still, I'm not worried about some new ghoulish supply chain | unless it mines crypto. | rzzzt wrote: | "The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world, built to keep | us under control in order to change a human being into this." | [reveals 1000W PSU and row of graphics cards] | kadoban wrote: | The original story for the Matrix was pretty much that, I've | heard. I still wish they'd kept that bit, it made way more | sense than using humans as batteries or power supplies. | dr1337 wrote: | Found the visualizer they used for the videos here - | https://spikestream.corticallabs.com | | Very cool WebGL implementation. I hope they release the dataset | so that we can visualize all the games and maybe do our own | analysis on them. | Geee wrote: | How do they do it in practice? How do the neurons know when they | succeed / fail? | lucb1e wrote: | From my very limited understanding, feedback is done by | releasing chemicals. Not sure if hormone is the proper word but | that's what comes to mind. Perhaps someone else here knows more | about it. | [deleted] | CactusOnFire wrote: | The concept of using human neural networks instead of artificial | neural networks is both terrifying and intriguing. | Razengan wrote: | I have no mouth and I must scream. | yholio wrote: | That some unexplainable force cheats the rules of the | universe to beat me at Pong. | BariumBlue wrote: | Samsung Z-35, now with 50% more HBC (Human Brain Cell) inside! | cblconfederate wrote: | Don't forget to feed your phone, it might die! | authed wrote: | modern fuel cells | polskibus wrote: | Check out ,,Black Oceans" by Jacek Dukaj if you're interested | in sci-fi that explores this idea. | | https://culture.pl/en/work/black-oceans-jacek-dukaj | rzzzt wrote: | De Lift (1983) / Down (2001) also highlights certain | shortcomings of brain-on-chip embedded systems. | | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087622/ | ReptileMan wrote: | Go read Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos | ampdepolymerase wrote: | This is not the first attempt. Growing tiny brain organoids is | fairly well understood, scaling it up is not. I have not read | the paper but previous attempts at this have struggled with | getting useful outputs out of the neural culture, most of the | time the spikes just add up to noise. | 323 wrote: | They should also compare human brain cells with chimp/dog/... | brain cells. See if the human ones perform better, which would | suggest there is an advantage even at the lowest cellular level. | amelius wrote: | They should also compare different regions of the human brain. | See which ones learn better, and which ones are closer to | animals in terms of learning. | cblconfederate wrote: | They compared human induced stem cells with real mouse cells, | and human cells learned better. | ekelsen wrote: | They compared against mice. Human cells were better. | ReptileMan wrote: | Was it Pinky or Brain's cell though? | dragontamer wrote: | With "Evangelion" being in the (Hacker) news recently, I hope to | remind people of this one scene... | | An advanced AI named "The Three Magi" (which are 3-programs which | vote for strategic effects) exists in the show. Without going too | much into details, a problem occurs in the AI, so the lead | scientist Ritsuko (who built these machines) steps into the | machine to check things out. | | She comes with a circular saw. She cuts open one computer (the | one named "Caspar") ... revealing to the audience that inside is | a living brain, hooked up to a bunch of wires: | https://imgur.com/MTZ7pzU | | Or at least, she shoves a bunch of wires in to check out the | problem. Its very macabre, especially because Ritsuko clearly | knows what she's doing here... | wolverine876 wrote: | Is there published research? Looking through verious reports, all | I see are references to the New Scientist article. | cblconfederate wrote: | preprint is available | https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.02.471005v1 | bobm_kite9 wrote: | Everyone seems to be joking about this, but doesn't this result | indicate that human neurones have a better learning algorithm | than the ones we are using to train AI? | | It's interesting that this is evident in even small clumps of | human brain tissue. | | Really interested to know how this might work. | azeirah wrote: | What always perplexes me about AI is that while the neuron | models may be reasonably representative of how neurons work in | brains, the connections are not similar at all. | | Deep learning uses layers. All neurons in layer one connect to | layer 2, connect to layer 3, connect to layer 4, and so on... | | In a real brain, neurons connect all over the place. It's a | bigraph. Deep learning isn't even really a graph per se, it's a | hierarchy, or a weird tree if you will. | | I suspect a lot of our intelligence comes from neurons living | connecting through a bigraph substrate rather than a hierarchy. | | Is there any research on this? Neurons feeding back onto | themselves just seems natural to me, but I don't encounter | anything on it. | ahartmetz wrote: | I'd be very surprised if biological brains couldn't do better | than fancy gradient descent, which is what the current standard | seems to be for artificial neuronal networks. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-19 23:00 UTC)