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Can Human Neurons Really Play Doom? The Science Behind Wetware (EP. 33)

Can Human Neurons Really Play Doom? The Science Behind Wetware (EP. 33)

From First Principles vor 5 Monaten

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1:13:03

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna
Choudhary, this episode is a deep dive into one of the
strangest science stories of the year: a dish of human
neurons allegedly learning to play
Doom. We go back to the original 2022 DishBrain
paper out of Cortical Labs, unpack how biological neurons can be
read and written with multi-electrode arrays, and then compare
the peer-reviewed Pong result to the much newer Doom claim. The
result is a story that is both genuinely impressive and, in
places, probably overhyped.

Summary

Wetware engineering — replacing artificial
neurons with real biological neurons plus electronics, and why
some people think this could become a new computing paradigm.

How DishBrain worked — human stem-cell-derived
cortical neurons grown on a multi-electrode array, trained
through sensory encoding and a “minimize surprise” feedback loop.

Where the Doom story gets messy — the newer
system appears to include a reinforcement-learning layer in the
loop, raising the key question: are the neurons actually doing
the learning?

The big idea underneath the hype — even if Doom
is overstated, the broader platform is still a remarkable step
toward programmable biocomputing.

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