Researchers from Melbourne-based start-up Cortical Labs have grown human brain cells that learnt to play pong in just 5 minutes
The objective of this video game, which has a table tennis motif, is to hit a ball by moving a paddle vertically across the screen.
And today, even lab-grown human brain cells have mastered the game of Pong.
For the first time, researchers from Melbourne-based start-up Cortical Labs have demonstrated that 800,000 brain cells are capable of carrying out goal-directed tasks, in this case, playing Pong.
According to the research, brain cells in a petri dish can also have inherent intelligence and can change their behaviour over time.
"This new capacity to teach cell cultures to perform a task in which they exhibit sentience – by controlling the paddle to return the ball via sensing – opens up new discovery possibilities which will have far-reaching consequences for technology, health, and society," said Dr Adeel Razi, an author of the study.
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