Lab-Grown 'Mini-Brain' Learns Pong - Is This Biological Neural Network 'Sentient'?

A leading neuroscientist claims that a pong-playing clump of about a million neurons is "sentient". What does that mean? Why did Cortical Labs teach a lab-grown brain to play pong? To study biological self-organization at the root of life, intelligence, and consciousness. And, according to their website, "to see what happens." What's next for biocomputing?

CORRECTIONS/Clarifications:

DISCLAIMER: The explanations in this video are those proposed by the researchers, or my opinion. We are far from understanding how brains, or even neurons, work. The free energy principle is one of many potential explanations.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:36 Sentience
1:23 Self-organization
2:00 DishBrain setup
2:17 Punishment and reward
3:43 Results
4:12 Consciousness
5:04 Ethics
6:25 What’s Next

[loganmeurer]

Someone please for the love of God tell me how they got their hands on Neanderthal neurons? Did they just take marrow from Neanderthal bones and converted into neurons?

[UserRedZero]

Make it play the sims.
We’ll know if it’s truly sentient based on whether or not it deletes a ladder when a sim enters the pool.

[binarypench]

Imagine having two of these dish-brains fighting against each other in an eternal game of Pong.

[scripted]

Combining the brain cells with ai and making cyborgs is definitely one of the ideas of all time

[DavidMcCoul]

“I just hope the little brains are havin’ a good time— if they’re havin’ any time at all.” Brilliant.

[khasanshadiyarov]

4:30, I am pretty sure, this little brain doesn't questioned itself about what am I or why am I doing the same work over and over again, because the pong game is all this brain ever received as an information about environment, so the pong is its whole world. Similar to us, we simply can not questioned about something we have never been affected by before.

[PlutozReal]

"We made a life and we taught it to fear us." That's what I'm getting from this.

[gt]

The combination of sentient mini brains and the Unreal Engine's 3D environment is mind-boggling. It's fascinating to think about the cognitive abilities and neural networks at play as these mini brains navigate the virtual world. The visuals are stunning, and I can only imagine the depth of perception they must experience. The idea of virtual societies emerging within this environment is thought-provoking, raising intriguing questions about consciousness and artificial intelligence. Kudos to the cortical labs and the creators for pushing the boundaries of cognitive exploration. This video has left me with so many questions and a newfound appreciation for the intricacies of our own minds. Can't wait to see more mind-expanding content like this! Keep up the great work!

[bansoma]

If we have to live in a dystopia, why are we constantly seeking the worst possible version? Imagine how you would feel to be the brain-jar-person this is leading up to?

[raptorhunter]

Imagine having a bunch of these brain dishes in a game like gta we'd be able to find out quickly what they're level of awareness is and maybe even be able to see how they react to each other

[pyrrhusofepirus]

We may have created what just, even slightly be the first artificially created sentience. And the first thing we did was make it into a gamer…



All I can say, is even if he’s just a dish brain, he’s one of the boys

[samarthtripathi]

You have such a narrator voice, could have listened to it for hours. Great video man!

[sebastianjost]

Very interesting video. I'm glad the algorithm recommended it. learning this much in 15 epochs is incredible compared to reinforcement learning!

One big improvement you could make:
Add references in the description (especially link the paper you talked about). I would love to read more about this.

[luca__]

as a Teen, i remember having this thought, like what if all our technology was really biologically based.. Imagined it with like a fleshy desktop pc with a screen inside lmao.. but this is rlly rad :o.. wondering where this will go!

[goldsilvervscrisiscollapse]

"what is my purpose"

To play pong

"Oh my God"

[yareyarez]

So THAT'S what happened to my foreskin.

[BayLeafff]

Amazing presentation man! Was honestly surprised to see that this came from a <1m sub channel, keep it up!

[TristanMac]

It's definitely experience existential dread when it misses the ball.

[PSTMRTMe]

Hope this reaches the Algo, it's a really interesting topic and good quality production.

[natasha]

neuroscientist that works with these types of neurons here. i sometimes wonder about this very question when im doing my experiments, but i think the anthropomorphizing assumptions in this vid are a bit too much. there is a learning mechanism that is part of how neurons work and how we learn called homeostatic plasticity that goes with the phrase "cells that fire together, wire together". basically, the more neurons get activated by each other, the stronger that path gets, and the more they will fire together in the future. this is thought to be the biological mechanism by which we learn / how behaviors get engrained. that's probably what's causing this learning phenomenon from the synchronized bursts. it doesn't feel quite right to call that "liking predictability", but it certainly does make you question what consciousness even is. is it just a by product of these cells happening to follow this fire together, wire together rule? really thought provoking stuff, thanks for your video!

i will add though that artificial intelligence is definitely going to outpace our research in biological intelligence. biology is slow af, AI research is going basically exponentially rn.