A Petri Dish Of HUMAN Brain Cells LEARN TO PLAY THE GAME DOOM! In a groundbreaking fusion of biology and silicon, scientists at Cortical Labs have taught a cluster of lab-grown human neurons to play the iconic video game Doom. Not your typical AI triumph, it’s a petri dish of actual human brain cells, reprogrammed from adult donor skin or blood samples, wired into a $35,000 biological computer called the CL1. Building on their earlier Pong demo, this new feat sees the neurons navigating hellish levels, dodging demons, and even firing shots with surprising efficiency. Programmer Sean Cole pulled it off in just a week using a Python API on GitHub, a stark contrast to the year-plus effort for Pong. Astonishingly, these organic gamers outperform GPT-4 in speed and latency, proving that even a tiny blob of human intelligence can adapt and learn in ways silicon struggles to match. The excitement is palpable: this isn’t just a gimmick; it’s a window into revolutionary medical advancements. Imagine using such bio-computers to model brain diseases, test drugs, or even restore neural functions in patients. With cloud access to CL1 rentals, developers worldwide can experiment, accelerating discoveries that could redefine neuroscience. We’re witnessing the dawn of hybrid intelligence, human biology augmented by tech, evolving beyond our wildest dreams. Yet, amid the thrill, a chill runs down my spine. What are we building here? These neurons aren’t conscious (we hope), but they’re derived from humans and exhibit learning behaviors that echo our own cognition. Echoes of The Matrix or dystopian sci-fi like the “torment nexus” from Doom novels loom large. Could this lead to ethical nightmares—exploiting bio-intelligence for warfare simulations, or worse, creating sentient systems trapped in digital hells? And the philosophical rabbit hole deepens: Is life merely nested Russian dolls (matryoshka, if you prefer) of biological smarts? We, as evolved intelligences, are now crafting our own mini-brains, layering complexity upon complexity. Are we “gods” in the making, or just the next doll in an infinite regress, destined to birth something that surpasses—and perhaps supplants, us? This experiment, detailed in HotHardware’s coverage, pushes boundaries we might not be ready to cross. It’s exhilarating proof of human ingenuity, but let’s proceed with caution lest we summon demons we can’t control and we wind up in the Petri dish?