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

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

#142

Hot take here, but I think the version of this experiment that used rat neurons instead of human neurons was more interesting. I can't look for the link right now but there's a video on Youtube, the equipment and techniques are fairly similar. We know a human can play Doom, so it kind of makes sense a portion of a human brain can do so in some fashion. But it's way more interesting when an animal that normally doesn'…

I imagine the point is not replacing hardware with neurons, but improving our ability to understand in vivo brains.

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

#143
post #102

If this can be taken at face value... it's creepy. I get that they're doing it for the meme. But perhaps something getting close to human intelligence, made out of human cells, shouldn't be forced to play a violent video game without any alternative options? Does 'the meme' justify that? I dunno. Nothing against violent games myself. Just feels like it's starting to get quite questionable, ethically speaking.

Maybe you're a brain in a jar somewhere being forced to live this life you're living.

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

#144
post #102

If this can be taken at face value... it's creepy. I get that they're doing it for the meme. But perhaps something getting close to human intelligence, made out of human cells, shouldn't be forced to play a violent video game without any alternative options? Does 'the meme' justify that? I dunno. Nothing against violent games myself. Just feels like it's starting to get quite questionable, ethically speaking.

> it's creepy. It's awesome. People's ick around bodies, which are machines , have always held us back. It wasn't until we started cutting them open that modern medicine was developed. We might have brain uploads already had we not been so averse to sticking brains with electrodes. I'll go further: had we not been so scared of cloning, we'd probably have cured cancer and every major ailment if we'd begun cloning mono…

Sounds like a high tech hell.

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

#145
post #131

I've searched and can't find a technical paper on this. Has one been released? This is very problematic.

These are lab-grown biological neurons. Why are they any more problematic than Nvidia's silicon neurons?

Speaking for myself : it's a bit creepy and unsettling. Using brain cells is probably inching closer to consciousness than today's silicon is, and consciousness isn't well understood so I'd fear this line of research could eventually lead to the "I have no mouth and I must scream" the other commenter referenced. Many decades from now we might be wondering how much of a human brain needs to be grown in a lab before it's considered unethical.

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

#146
post #115

I feel like they probably could use another mammals neural cells and get similar results, but they use human cells because it'll get them attention - and that kind of rubs me the wrong way.

Counterpoint: a major use case for this technology would be to experiment on human brain structures to research and hopefully cure neurological diseases like Alzheimer's. If you want to cure Alzheimer's in humans, you might as well use human brain cells from the start.

But yes, I agree that they're likely using human brain cells mainly because it's attention-getting.

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

#147
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's creepy. It's awesome. People's ick around bodies, which are machines , have always held us back. It wasn't until we started cutting them open that modern medicine was developed. We might have brain uploads already had we not been so averse to sticking brains with electrodes. I'll go further: had we not been so scared of cloning, we'd probably have cured cancer and every major ailment if we'd begun cloning mono…

Sounds like a high tech hell.

High tech hell is reversing the light cone, pulling everyone who ever lived throughout history back into consciousness by simulating them at the neurotransmitter level, and then forcing them into actual hell / torture simulators with no way to die. All without consent, mind you.

That's also sci-fi. I hope.

What I described before - using clonal technology to solve nearly every disease - is a medical miracle that will vastly improve the state of people's lives throughout the world.

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is creepy, I agree. I saw this article over the weekend and felt similarly: https://theinnermostloop.substack.com/p/the-first-multi-beha... > Watch the video closely. What you are seeing is not an animation. It is not a reinforcement learning policy mimicking biology. It is a copy of a biological brain, wired neuron-to-neuron from electron microscopy data, running in simulation, making a body move. And the simulat…

It's 200k neurons. Less than an ant has. Somewhat creepy, but if you're imagining that this thing is conscious and knows that it's in doom... yeah definitely not. Still I don't understand why they would invite the extra creepy factor of using human brain cells rather than e.g. mouse brain cells. Surely it makes no difference biologically but it's going to lead to fewer comments like this.

Elephants have 3x the neurons of a human. Bees have about a million and they have complex relationships, emotions, and can remember the faces of humans. Neuron counts correspond more to body size than actual cognitive abilities.

And brains are pretty complicated in how they're arranged. A large portion of the brain basically serves as an operating system of sorts, just managing breathing, moving, detecting smells, producing language, decoding language, etc. Cut all of that out and we're left with thinking and emotions.

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

#149
post #115

I feel like they probably could use another mammals neural cells and get similar results, but they use human cells because it'll get them attention - and that kind of rubs me the wrong way.

Counterpoint: a major use case for this technology would be to experiment on human brain structures to research and hopefully cure neurological diseases like Alzheimer's. If you want to cure Alzheimer's in humans, you might as well use human brain cells from the start. But yes, I agree that they're likely using human brain cells mainly because it's attention-getting.

A more likely and immediate use case is having these mini humans autonomously pilot drones in which they'll kill big humans.

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 200k neurons. Less than an ant has. Somewhat creepy, but if you're imagining that this thing is conscious and knows that it's in doom... yeah definitely not. Still I don't understand why they would invite the extra creepy factor of using human brain cells rather than e.g. mouse brain cells. Surely it makes no difference biologically but it's going to lead to fewer comments like this.

> if you're imagining that this thing is conscious and knows that it's in doom... yeah definitely not. I'm not imagining that (although one assumes their plan is to scale this up), but nonetheless there's something troubling to me about taking any living thing and wiring its senses up to a profoundly incomplete simulacrum of reality. Of course we (as a species) have a long history of doing horrible things to living c…

> there's something troubling to me about taking any living thing and wiring its senses up to a profoundly incomplete simulacrum of reality.

How do we communicate this to the engineers at YouTube who refuse to make an offramp for children from the infinite baby shark AI video loop?

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