Weird science

From Nature, a story about which I am unsure how to react:

Hundreds of thousands of human neurons growing in a dish coated with electrodes have been taught to play a version of the classic computer game Pong¹.

In doing so, the cells join a growing pantheon of Pong players, including pigs taught to manipulate joysticks with their snout² and monkeys wired to control the game with their minds. (Google’s DeepMind artificial-intelligence (AI) algorithms mastered Pong many years ago³ and have moved on to more-sophisticated computer games such as StarCraft II⁴.)

The gamer cells respond not to visual cues on a screen but to electrical signals from the electrodes in the dish. These electrodes both stimulate the cells and record changes in neuronal activity. Researchers then converted the stimulation signals and the cellular responses into a visual depiction of the game. The results are reported today in Neuron.

Intelligence in a dish

The work is a proof of principle that neurons in a dish can learn and exhibit basic signs of intelligence, says lead author Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer at Cortical Labs in Melbourne, Australia. “In current textbooks, neurons are thought of predominantly in terms of their implication for human or animal biology,” he says. “They’re not thought about as an information processor, but a neuron is this amazing system that can process information in real time with very low power consumption.”

I'm betting the cells in a dish would also be easily persuaded to vote for Trump.