Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video]

#41

Post by birdsongs » Sun, Mar 08, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

delichon wrote: post #34

birdsongs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked into it. They're not feeding the framebuffer to the neurons, but have a "signal" when an enemy is on screen to some of the tissue's inputs, and how to locate it in the x/y axis, and have outputs for the character to turn right or left or fire. It's "see this input signal, send these output signals", which seems consistent with the title. It seems they grow the neural tissue on a chip the neurons can interfac…

> It's legitimately horrifying to me. Would you feel any differently if a product from this tech used the user's own neurons grown from their stem cells?

No. We don't understand our own sentience. I don't know how we can be so confident as to not think it can evolve here using literal human neurons that can learn to take input signals and send output signals.

I don't think this 200,000 neuron array is sentient. But I also don't think we can define the line where that may happen. I assume this company will scale. How far, and to what extent?

Re: Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video]

#42

Post by Chris2048 » Sun, Mar 08, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

birdsongs wrote: post #31

birdsongs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked into it. They're not feeding the framebuffer to the neurons, but have a "signal" when an enemy is on screen to some of the tissue's inputs, and how to locate it in the x/y axis, and have outputs for the character to turn right or left or fire. It's "see this input signal, send these output signals", which seems consistent with the title. It seems they grow the neural tissue on a chip the neurons can interfac…

Replying to myself: how long before one of these with the neuron count of a corvid and trained on pattern recognition gets plugged into a drone? This is a very dark path, and I could not trust the people in charge less.

Why is that the concern of the authors of this paper?

Re: Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video]

#43

Post by jstummbillig » Sun, Mar 08, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

birdsongs wrote: post #37

jstummbillig wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all these people are so excited to explain, but not once, ever What do you mean? What is this class of people in your mind? There are tons of people who consider and talk about the ethics behind what they are doing, long before most people would think it remotely relevant (leading AI labs being an example, and I know the same to be true of various geneticists startups). I do agree that the entire presentation in th…

> What do you mean? What is this class of people in your mind? I'm specifically talking about this presentation in this article (the video and release details of CL1 doom). Did you read it / watch it?

Ah. Yeah, watched it – and agree there.

Re: Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video]

#44

Post by Chris2048 » Sun, Mar 08, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

DrewADesign wrote: post #40

birdsongs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replying to myself: how long before one of these with the neuron count of a corvid and trained on pattern recognition gets plugged into a drone? This is a very dark path, and I could not trust the people in charge less.

I’m kind of sick of how readily the non-managerial tech world accepts “what happens is someone else does this immoral thing before us ?!” rhetoric as a real answer to questioning whether or not we should contribute our talent and ideas to something that we, deep down, know is bad for fellow humans.

> rhetoric as a real answer

Why is it rhetoric? This goes beyond whatever malignant thing was perceived in this study, but why is it a rhetorical non-answer?

> we, deep down, know is bad

this feels like real rhetoric.

Re: Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video]

#45

Post by doug_durham » Sun, Mar 08, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

dustfinger wrote: post #3

> We’ve combined lab-grown neurons with silicon chips and made it available to anyone, for first time ever. There is a line somewhere here that I personally feel we should not cross.

I’m confused by this statement. A neuron is a machine. A silicon chip computer is a machine. All they have done is interfaced two machines.

Re: Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video]

#46

Post by birdsongs » Sun, Mar 08, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #39

birdsongs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked into it. They're not feeding the framebuffer to the neurons, but have a "signal" when an enemy is on screen to some of the tissue's inputs, and how to locate it in the x/y axis, and have outputs for the character to turn right or left or fire. It's "see this input signal, send these output signals", which seems consistent with the title. It seems they grow the neural tissue on a chip the neurons can interfac…

> not once, ever, in the video speak of ethics On the contrary, I dislike premature ethics discussion, where you end up wildly speculating what the tech might become and riffing off that, greatly padding whatever relative technical content you had. I don't want every technical paper to turn into that, ethics should be treated as a higher-level overview of concerns in a field, with a study dedicated to the ethical con…

My concern is creating literal sentience in a box. I don't, personally, think it's unfounded for me to have that concern, given that we're growing masses of human neurons and teaching them to perform tasks.

I'm not going to start campaigning against it or changing my life. But it still makes me deeply uncomfortable, and that's allowed.

Re: Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video]

#47

Post by DetroitThrow » Sun, Mar 08, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

exe34 wrote: post #24

dustfinger wrote: post #3

> We’ve combined lab-grown neurons with silicon chips and made it available to anyone, for first time ever. There is a line somewhere here that I personally feel we should not cross.

I have no mouth and I must scream.

We grew a brain on a petri dish, gave it a shotgun, and sent it to hell.

Next up, we teach it to speed run Getting Over It. What a horrible existence.

Re: Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video]

#48

Post by birdsongs » Sun, Mar 08, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

doug_durham wrote: post #45

dustfinger wrote: post #3

> We’ve combined lab-grown neurons with silicon chips and made it available to anyone, for first time ever. There is a line somewhere here that I personally feel we should not cross.

I’m confused by this statement. A neuron is a machine. A silicon chip computer is a machine. All they have done is interfaced two machines.

This is naive or in bad faith.

Sure, a neuron is a machine.

200,000 neurons connected in a matrix is a brain, albeit a very primitive one. Ants have 250,000 neurons in their brains.

Re: Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video]

#49

Post by jmusall » Sun, Mar 08, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

birdsongs wrote: post #27

sillysaurusx wrote: post #9

Be sure to dig into the details before taking this at face value. There once was a story "Rat brain flies plane" a couple decades ago, and it turned out to be bogus. But to find that out, you had to read the paper and reverse engineer that nothing substantial was actually going on. It's tempting to be charitable, but you can't really know whether headlines like this are legit till you understand exactly what they did…

I looked into it. They're not feeding the framebuffer to the neurons, but have a "signal" when an enemy is on screen to some of the tissue's inputs, and how to locate it in the x/y axis, and have outputs for the character to turn right or left or fire. It's "see this input signal, send these output signals", which seems consistent with the title. It seems they grow the neural tissue on a chip the neurons can interfac…

It is horrifying. OTOH, we force-breed, torture and kill animals and their children in the millions every day just for the pleasure of consuming meat, eggs and dairy products. I'm not saying this makes it okay to create a conscious brain in a dish. But maybe thinking a little more about what constitutes consciousness and how we want to protect it from harm can also bring about some desperately needed change in some other questionable human activities.

Re: Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video]

#50

Post by throwaway613746 » Sun, Mar 08, 2026, 5:18 PM UTC

exe34 wrote: post #24

dustfinger wrote: post #3

> We’ve combined lab-grown neurons with silicon chips and made it available to anyone, for first time ever. There is a line somewhere here that I personally feel we should not cross.

I have no mouth and I must scream.

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