You know, I always thought it was going

to be the LLMs that make the end of the

world, but um I guess I was

significantly wrong. I just got done

reading this article and it's making me

feel all sorts of ways. Feelings I'm

just not used to feeling. Okay. Human

brain cells on a chip learn to play Doom

in a week. Now, you're probably thinking

this surely has to be some sort of

clickbait article. It's not like actual

human brain cells somehow wired up and

firing and actually playing a video

game, right? No, it is actual human

brain power being used to play Doom.

Okay, I have lots of things to say about

this. The first one obvious is that they

created a chip powered by human brain

cells. And what did they do? They made

the brain learn and play Doom over and

over again. What kind of weird purgatory

existence is this? You made something

that resembles some weird outline of

life and then forced it to play Doom for

all eternity.

You sickos. I know I'm like half joking

and all, but also it's like kind of

messed up, right? Like this is this is

just kind of weird. The version of Doom

they're playing doesn't look like real

Doom. This is some sort of mod andor

just like Teimu version of it. The fact

that you made a hellish experience for a

brain ship and then made them play Te-Mu

Doom, that is just not okay with me.

Okay, I'm not happy about this. But

first off, I figured we'd do a little

bit of background. So, in 2021, an

Australian company, Cortical Labs, used

its neuronpowered computer chips to play

Pong. And it looks like this. I honestly

I [laughter]

maybe I don't have enough brain cells to

understand what that even looks like,

what that's supposed to mean. If you

look at the game image, it's actually

doomed to play by itself. It's just

playing against a wall. Now, the chip

consisted of clumps of more than 800,000

brain cells on these micro electrode

arrays that can send and receive

electrical signals. And somehow that was

able to learn how to play Pong. Now, the

one that actually learned how to play

Doom used about a quarter as many

neurons as the Pong demonstration and

played Doom better than a randomly

firing player. Far below the performance

of the best human player. good, because

that means the best human player could

be matched by 200,000 brain cells.

However, it learned much faster than

traditional silicon-based machine

learning systems and should be able to

improve its performance with newer

learning algorithms. Who the hell forces

brain cells to learn how to play Doom?

Their entire reality is going around

hunting monsters with weapons and

picking up ammo and trying to find the

yellow, red, and blue key cards or

skulls where ultimately when you reach

the end of the first act, you have to

die. They actually created some sort of

Dante's Inferno brain torture machine

where you're just forced to be the Doom

guy and hunt demons. It's just actual

hellish experience. Think about it. That

poor brain just had to just process

nothing but violence all day. its only

existence was in violence and BFGs and

plasma rifles. But if you didn't have

that thought, your probably next thought

is why in the world would anybody

actually ever create this? What is the

purpose of having a brainbased computer

chip? Well, there's kind of like two of

them and this is where we get into like

the funny territory. So apparently the

realworld application that they're going

for is they want these controlling like

bio wetwware chips to control robotic

arms. They unironically want to create

the terminator.

>> The CPU is a neuron net processor a

learning computer

>> because apparently these brain cells

they just learn better than traditional

ML styled learning algorithms. The part

that's like the most terrifying of it

all. Besides for the fact that they

literally want to take brain chips and

shove them into robots and allow them to

walk around the world is that these

chips are actually controlled with

Python. Yes, that's right. The Cortical

Labs has developed an interface that

makes it easier to program these chips

using the popular programming language

Python. An independent developer Shawn

Cole then used Python to teach the chips

to play Doom, which he did in around a

week. You know what this means, dude? We

are going to be vibe coding robots. I

mean, we are we ourselves [laughter]

don't know.

Oh, we're going to be taking Python and

running just absolute critical

infrastructure software. Oh my.

[laughter]

Oh no. That means we're actually

entering into a world where pretty much

effectively everything that's on the

internet is potentially just made by a

robot and fake and then the real life is

just going to be filled with brain

chips. Like that's that's what's

happening. Somehow we're using brains to

make the robots walk around. It feels

deeply unsettling, you know, and I don't

know. And honestly, like just on on an

aside, this is really just kind of

feeling, you know. I I I must say that

this does not make me feel very good

because there's a lot more questions of

life as you add more and more brain

cells. What are we doing?

I don't I don't know if this is very

good. This just feels like a bad idea.

But I think my favorite part of the

entire thing isn't just the fact that

they're going to go freerange this on

some robot arms while vibe coding some

Python. It's that they don't even really

know how it works. Steve Ferour at the

University of Manchester, UK, agrees

that Doom is a significant level up from

playing Pong. But he says there's still

a lot we don't understand about how

these neurons are playing the game, such

as how the neurons know what is expected

of them, or how they can see the screen

with no eyes.

Oh my gosh. [laughter]

I mean, that in in of itself is just

like just that's an insane statement. We

have technology where we're just like,

well, actually, we don't know how they

learn or how they function or how they

see. We just know that when you give it

the data, it just works. And this

actually reminds me of one of my

favorite books of all time when I was

back in my master's day on intelligence,

which effectively one of the experiments

is that they took a ferret and they took

its eyeball eyeball cords and put it

where its ear holes should be and it

took its ear holes and put it where its

eyeballs should be. And guess what?

Couldn't even tell the difference. The

little ferret brain was able to take all

of that input and just be able to go,

"Oh yeah, I totally I totally get this.

Actually, nothing. That doesn't change

me at all." And now we're taking a maybe

what is equivalent to little ferret

brains and making them play Doom. Just a

true hellish experience. Your only

waking memories, your only knowledge of

life is seen through the old pixelated

Doom guy's perspective of just trying to

avenge his rabbit. Yeah, that's so

that's all I really wanted to yap about.

Um, dude, this has to be by far one of

the most interesting and also very

deeply uncomfortable stories I have ever

read. The name is Please don't vibe code

a machine and then put robot baby brain

intelligence on it and put it on a micro

electrode or array, whatever that means,

and then send it after me and my family.

Okay? Please, I'm begging you. Don't do

it. Okay? I Hey, I'm sorry for making

fun of vibe coding. I'm sorry for not

beating Doom enough. Okay? Hey, please,

Mr. Robot. Don't do it

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