- CL1 ‘biological computer’ has been shown playing Doom
- This is essentially 200,000 human neurons plopped onto a microchip
- This brain soup has apparently learned to find and shoot enemies in the game, although skeptics argue about the definition of ‘play’ here
Living human brain cells are capable of playing Doom, and by that I mean a bunch of cells that aren’t inside a brain (of course, that wouldn’t be much of a revelation), but in a lab – although there’s still some debate about what the definition of actually ‘playing’ a game is here.
As posted on Reddit, this is the work of Cortical Labs, a company that used a “multi-electrode array” to accomplish this feat, which is essentially 200,000 human neurons plopped onto a microchip.
This is otherwise known as the CL1 ‘biological computer’, which is a “high-performance closed-loop system where real neurons interact with software in real time”. In this case, Cortical Labs worked with an independent researcher named Sean Cole to get the CL1 to run Doom – or rather, play Doom. Well, sort of, and therein lies some of the controversy.
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These brain cells don’t play the game via some sort of controller, but rather are very directly engaged in navigating Doom’s map and dealing with its surly demonic inhabitants.
What happens is that the game’s video feed is directly mapped to the neurons using patterns of electrical stimulation. As Cortical Labs explains in the YouTube video below that demonstrates this, when a monster appears on the left side of the screen, certain electrodes stimulate the left side of the sensory area of the neuron soup in CL1. The neurons then respond to the stimulation and this cell activity is interpreted as motor commands, meaning to control the Doom guy (move and shoot).
Four years ago, Cortical Labs ran a similar experiment with Pong, although of course Doom is much more complicated.
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Analysis: learning skills
While this is fascinating, it’s also a very abstract way to play Doom. Theoretically, the brain cells are learning to play the game, even though they use a very direct interface as mentioned.
As Cortical Labs explains in the video, the CL1 is able to find enemies and shoot them in Doom, or spin around if hit from behind — but it plays the game poorly. If you watch the footage, there is quite a bit of tumbling around and shooting at walls. As Cortical Labs puts it, “The cells play a lot like a beginner who’s never seen a computer,” adding, “and in all fairness, they haven’t.”
It makes it all look pretty random, which is why some of the naysayers on Reddit aren’t too impressed with the demo, essentially saying that we have no proof that the neural soup is actually honing its skills or gaining an ‘understanding’ of any sort about the game. Sure, it reacts, they claim—but is it actually reacting or learning in any meaningful way? Or is it just waving a gun around, blasting here and there and getting lucky sometimes?
Still, regardless of the arguments about intent here, or what’s actually going on beneath the surface of the neural soup, Cortical Labs admits that as far as Doom is concerned, the learning capabilities of the brain cells need to be improved, but it’s confident that this can be done.
For now, this is an eye-opening demo (albeit not the only one of its kind) – certainly more so than the Pong effort – and we’ll see where Cortical Labs takes it from here.
As we saw last year, the company’s big vision is to allow cloud access to its biological CL1 computers. You can rent a CL1 for $300 per week via Cortical Labs’ wetware-as-a-service offering, or buy one for $35,000.
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