Researchers from Cortical Labs led by Dr. Brett Kagan claim to have created the world’s first “sentient” mini-brain as the tiny organ reportedly played the 1970 Atari videogame without being taught by a third party.
In a report published in Neuron magazine, the researchers described the experiment that led to this breakthrough.
It began with cultivating the mini-brain by growing human brain cells mixed up with mouse embryos. After they identified that neural connections were being made, the team connected electrodes to the organ and started the game.
The brain cells produced electrical activity meaning that the mini-brain was actively engaged with what was happening in the game. In five minutes, the brain had already learned how to play the game as the paddle started to move and attempted to hit the ball.
There were many misses but the team claims that there were a high enough number of hits to categorize the behavior as intentional instead of random.
“Applying implications from the theory of active inference via the free energy principle, we find apparent learning within five minutes of real-time gameplay not observed in control conditions”, the report summarizes.
DishBrain is the Name of the System Devised by Kagan’s Research Team
The research team led by Dr. Kagan called the system “DishBrain” and describe it as the first evidence that goal-directed behavior can be fostered in an in-vitro cultivated mini-brain.
“Using this DishBrain system, we have demonstrated that a single layer of in vitro cortical neurons can self-organize activity to display intelligent and sentient behavior when embodied in a simulated game-world”, Kagan’s research team states.
The applications for this kind of technology are quite extensive as mini-brains could have the ability to substitute artificial intelligence as we know it today.
In this regard, AI-powered systems nowadays typically need to be taught by a human what their expected behavior should be based on a set of parameters. The system uses a software called machine learning to process all the data that comes its way and defines a course of action within the parameters set forth by its creator.
Many companies are currently developing advanced AI-powered systems for managing multiple tasks more efficiently than humans could. Some prominent examples of companies that are actively developing the next generation of intelligent software include Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG), and International Business Machines (IBM).
Is a Mini-Brain Capable of Exceeding What AI Can Currently Do?
A mini-brain such as the one involved in Dr. Kagan’s experiment may have the ability to analyze the environment and respond accordingly, meaning that it can learn things from itself without the need for human intervention.
That said, claiming that the organism is “sentient” is a bit far-fetched as that would mean that the mini-brain has developed a conscience and can feel things. This is hard to establish as no measures have been applied to determine if the organism has reached that state.
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Other scholars have opted to categorize this type of organism as a “thinking system” as they can process the information they are receiving and proactively “think about it” to come up with an appropriate response.
Dr. Kagan’s team is reportedly discussing their findings with bioethicists to make sure they are not creating systems that can become self-conscious as that could raise several ethical questions.
“Ultimately, although substantial hardware, software, and wetware engineering are still required to improve the DishBrain system, this work does evince the computational power of living neurons to learn adaptively in active exchange with their sensorium”, the research team concludes.
“This represents the largest step to date of achieving SBI that responds with externally defined goal-directed behavior”, according to Kagan.
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