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Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong

nature.com

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Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong

#91

Post by dillondoyle »

nier wrote: post #85
seydor wrote: post #4

i would urge people to read the paper instead. The 'learning' is a bit iffy , and this was meant to test the brain theory of Friston rather than plug neurons into pong. Still, great job on the neurotechnology involved and a step in the direction where we should be going, controlling large numbers of neurons Ars Technica has a better article, although they dont describe the dense electode array correctly: https://arst…

For those who like me are wondering where those neurons come from. An answer can be found in the Ars Technica article: “[...] the researchers tested two types of neurons: some dissected from mouse embryos, and others produced by inducing human stem cells to form neurons. ”

Finally a sliver of future I'm psyched about. Induce stem cells to form neurons? Next step induce new neurons to form new connections in existing brain!?

Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong

#93

Post by wruza »

ALittleLight wrote: post #38
wruza wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that experiments on living rodents aren’t hell already? What is the crucial ethical difference between these species, apart from two facts, first that a full human has a legal status, second that most people will relate to an empty human brain more than to a non-empty non-human one (regardless of packaging). I understand legal/relatable parts, but is there more to it?

One scientist studies tumors by causing tumors in rats. Another scientist studies tumors by causing them in humans. If you said to the second scientist "Hey, that's wrong, stop!" And he said "What's the crucial difference between rats and humans?" Would you be convinced by that line of argument?

This hypothetical situation implies something I wouldn’t fail to ask first. Are these humans persons or are they “empty”? I don’t see a difference between a {person,experience}-less human and a rat (in this setting, legal and parental implications aside), but maybe you do. Both are able to experience pain and negative emotions. One of them being of a [non-]familiar kind changes nothing to me.

Iow, put yourself into the shoes of that rat or that empty brain and tell:

- which one would you choose to be (if given no other option),

- why,

- and what you expect to sense differently.

Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong

#94

Post by tiborsaas »

bowsamic wrote: post #86
nazgul17 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every new AI gets demoted pretty quickly. Playing pong would have been once called AI.

That’s because once we understand it and achieve it it’s no longer considered intelligence. The same will happen when we have actual human robots that are indistinguishable from real humans. People will say “obviously not intelligence or anything related to it, just doing x, y, and z”

And then one looks into the mirror :)

Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong

#95

Post by tiborsaas »

d--b wrote: post #64

> he work is a proof of principle that neurons in a dish can learn and exhibit basic signs of intelligence Absolutely not. This shows that you can teach neurons to exhibit a reflex behavior adapted to the given stimuli - which shouldn’t come as a surprise. At best this is jellyfish-like level of intelligence.

Have you seen magic tricks revealed? It's such a let down. After that you can't unsee how it's done and it becomes a regular guy concealing some information. Before that there was a mystery how the heck it was done. It's the same thing going on here, both with AI and the understanding of the wetware mind.

Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong

#96

Post by wruza »

austinjp wrote: post #53
wruza wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To evaluate these chances, one has to understand what “suffering” is. It may (or may not) be purely evolutional thing which cannot be easily reproduced in a dish. Perhaps the whole thing is a plague that only emerges in/for natural-life conditions. While the configuration space is likely(?) almost infinite, the natural selector is only one.

Well.... no. It's only necessary to know whether suffering exists (it does). After that it's sufficient to consider whether there's a greater than zero chance of creating it (there seems to be). That's enough to say "let's not do this until we have better data". If it turns out the second step is unknowable, that's enough to say "let's never do this". These are subjective decisions, and some may suggest that there ar…

I agree and am unconvinced too. But currently we also agree to create suffering at the industrial scale in mice. Pretty strange choice of principles.

Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong

#97

Post by obscur »

drawingthesun wrote: post #52
ummonk wrote: post #43

It seems needlessly provocative to use human neurons to do this. Presumably they could have had the same effects with neurons from another species. It’s like they want to provoke a backlash from religious people against scientific experimentation.

It's not needlessly provocative human neurons have shown in almost every study to be superior to all other animal neurons. Let the backlash happen and as a society let's put a stop to letting religious idiocy get in the way of science. There is an entire field of study for ethical science and I stand behind that 100%. Unethical science can get lost! I'm not a progress at any costs type of person. But is this actually…

I would like a source for the first claim. When I read the preprint for this paper half a year ago it was actually one of their claims that to the best of their knowledge their Pong experiment was the first to show human neurons being ‘better’.

Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong

#99

Post by noduerme »

austinjp wrote: post #34
sidewndr46 wrote: post #5

A question for someone who understands the neurology and biology of this much more than I do: Once I have a group of neurons like this trained to do something, can I actually count on them to continue performing that task until they die? Or is it possible they spontaneously reorganize or "learn" a previously unseen behavioral pattern?

They're biological. A lot can happen :) Remember this includes weirdness like viruses, tumors, aging... as well as specifically neural stuff like habituation (diminished sensitivity to repeated stimulation), sensitisation (increased sensitivity to repeated stimulation), spontaneous misfiring, reorganisation (basically creating/destroying or upweighting/downweighting synapses) etc etc etc. Of course, then you'll need…

Skip the SSRIs and let them loose on Red Dead 2. In a couple weeks they'll be talking to a horse in ways we never imagined.

Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong

#100

Post by noduerme »

lvass wrote: post #66
sidewndr46 wrote: post #5

A question for someone who understands the neurology and biology of this much more than I do: Once I have a group of neurons like this trained to do something, can I actually count on them to continue performing that task until they die? Or is it possible they spontaneously reorganize or "learn" a previously unseen behavioral pattern?

A related question: can I indefinitely test they're performing their task correctly? When operating these neurons for actual tasks, real time challenge-response-like testing is probably a good idea. But if they can learn, eventually they may be able to trick the tests. How would one design automated tests to evaluate the state of learning-capable systems?

The nightmare of AI is it's a black box. The nightmare of people is that they're people. (or, per Sartre, "hell is other people" ... but that's such a freighted human perspective).

Gee if only we could grow meat to eat in a lab and grow brains on substrate to answer phone calls and generate images, we could do away with the complexity of other humans we might have to interact with. Except... you have even less understanding of what motivates that clump of cells than you do what motivates your office secretary.

Don't get me wrong, it's a super cool idea. I'm just not sure exactly when bioethics went completely out the window.

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