Brain cells in lab dish learn to play video game

WASHINGTON — Neuroscientists have shown that lab-grown brain cells can learn to play the classic
video game Pong, and could be capable of “intelligent and sentient behavior.”

Brett Kagan, who led a study published in the journal Neuron Wednesday, told Agence France-Presse
(AFP) his findings open the door to a new type of research into biological information processors,
complementing normal digital computers.

“What machines can’t do is learn things very quickly—if you need a machine learning algorithm to
learn something, it requires thousands of data samples,” he explained.

“But if you ask a human, or train a dog, a dog can learn a trick in two or three tries.”

Kagan, chief scientific officer at Melbourne-based Cortical Labs, set out to answer whether there is a
way to harness the inherent intelligence of neurons.

Kagan and colleagues took mice cells from embryonic brains, and derived human neurons from adult
stem cells.

They then grew them on top of microelectrode arrays that could read their activity and stimulate
them. The experiments involved a cluster of around 800,000 neurons, roughly the size of a bumblebee
brain.

In the game, a signal was sent from the left or right of the array to indicate where the ball was
located, and “DishBrain,” as the researchers called it, fired back signals to move the paddle, in a
simplified, opponent-free version of Pong.

One of the major hurdles was figuring out how to “teach” the neurons.

In the past, it has been proposed to give them a shot of the “feel good” hormone dopamine to reward
a correct action—but that was difficult to achieve in a time-sensitive way.

Instead, the team relied on a theory called the “free energy principle” that was coined by the paper’s
senior author Karl Friston, which says cells are hardwired to minimize unpredictability in their
environments.

When the neurons succeeded in making the paddle hit the ball, they received “predictable” electrical
signals. But when they missed, they were sent randomized, or “unpredictable” signals.

‘Sentient, not conscious’

“The only thing that the neurons could do is actually get better at trying to hit the ball to keep their
world controllable and predictable,” Kagan said.

DishBrain’s performance isn’t up to AI (artificial intelligence) or human standards, but “the fact we see
any significant learning is really just evidence of how robust neurons are at processing information
and adapting to their environment,” he added.

The team believes DishBrain is sentient—which they defined as being able to sense and respond to
sensory information in a dynamic way—but drew the line at calling it “conscious,” which implies
awareness of being.

DishBrain also tried out another task—the dinosaur game that appears in Google Chrome when no
internet connection is found—and the preliminary results were encouraging, Kagan said.

For their next steps, the team plans to test how DishBrain’s intelligence is affected by medicines and
alcohol—though Kagan himself is most excited by the future possibilities of biological computers based
on this discovery.

“We compare it to the first transistor,” he said, the building block of modern electronics invented in
1947, which eventually led to today’s powerful digital computers.

“This is robustly conducted, interesting neuroscience,” said Tara Spires-Jones of the Centre for
Discovery Brain Science at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study.

“Don’t worry, while these dishes of neurons can change their responses based on stimulation, they are
not sci-fi style intelligence in a dish, these are simple (albeit interesting and scientifically important)
circuit responses.”

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 Turkey introduces jail terms for ‘fake news’

Ankara, Turkey — Turkey’s parliament on Thursday approved a tough pre-election law that could see
reporters and social media users jailed for up to three years for spreading “fake news”.

The new rules cement the government’s already-firm grip on the media eight months before a general
election that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enters trailing in the polls.

The Council of Europe said the measure’s vague definition of “disinformation” and accompanying threat of
jail could have a “chilling effect and increased self-censorship, not least in view of the upcoming elections in
June 2023”.

The legislation — comprised of 40 amendments that each required a separate vote — was proposed by
Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted AKP party and furiously opposed by Turkey’s main opposition groups.

One lawmaker from the secular CHP party smashed his mobile phone with a hammer in parliament to
demonstrate how freedom of expression was being destroyed — particularly for the young.

“I would like to address my brothers who are 15, 16, 17 years old and who will be deciding the fate of
Turkey in 2023,” CHP lawmaker Burak Erbay said before taking out his hammer.

“You have only one freedom left — the phone in your pocket. There’s Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. You
communicate there,” he said ahead of the vote.

“If the law here passes in parliament, you can break your phone like this,” he said.

‘War on the truth’

Most Turkish newspapers and television channels fell under the control of government officials and their
business allies during a sweeping crackdown that followed a failed coup in 2016.

But social networks and internet-based media remained largely free of oversight — much to the growing
annoyance of Erdogan.

This began to change when Turkey used the threat of heavy penalties to force giants such as Facebook and
Twitter to appoint local representatives who can quickly comply with local court orders to take down
contentious posts.

Erdogan began to argue at around the same time that Turkey’s highly-polarised society was particularly
vulnerable to fake and misleading news.

Social media have “turned into one of the main threats to today’s democracy”, Erdogan said last December.

The new legislation imposes a criminal penalty for those found guilty of spreading false or misleading
information.

It requires social networks and internet sites to hand over personal details of users suspected of
“propagating misleading information”.

It also allows the courts to sentence accredited reporters and regular social media users who “openly spread
misleading information” to between one and three years in jail.

The government has also started publishing a weekly “disinformation bulletin” aimed at debunking what it
deems as false news with “accurate and truthful information”.

Lawmakers rejected repeated opposition attempts to dilute the legislation before the vote.

“This law declares war on the truth,” pro-Kurdish opposition HDP party lawmaker Meral Danis Bektas said.

‘Legal harassment’
Turkey was ranked 149th out of 180 countries in the annual media freedom index published by Reporters
Without Borders (RSF) earlier this year.

“Authoritarianism is gaining ground in Turkey, challenging media pluralism,” RSF said. “All possible means
are used to undermine critics.”

Award-winning media rights campaigner Veysel Ok said everyone in Turkey was now exposed to potential
prosecution for their views.

“The members of the opposition, NGOs, bar associations, professional associations, journalists and ordinary
citizens… Now, all will be subjected to legal harassment,” Ok tweeted.

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