[HN Gopher] Clumps of human brain cells in a dish can learn to p...
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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.
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(page generated 2021-12-19 23:00 UTC)