I get that they're doing it for the meme. But perhaps something getting close to human intelligence, made out of human cells, shouldn't be forced to play a violent video game without any alternative options? Does 'the meme' justify that?

I dunno. Nothing against violent games myself. Just feels like it's starting to get quite questionable, ethically speaking.

Personally, dislike this direction a lot. I don't like that they're using a killing game (I understand the trope, doesn't make me like it any less) and the general idea of this whole thing makes me quite uneasy.

(The rat brain guys repeated the experiment until the plane stopped crashing, but no "learning" was happening; it was expected that when the neuron's range reached so-and-so, that the plane would fly level. So they started with a neuron outside that range, showed that it crashed, then adjusted the neuron until it flew level. But that's not what "rat brain flies plane" implies.)

Me? I didn't like the idea (then or now), but it would be demagogic to try to fight against it, with so much wrong already existing. The difference between a neuron and a nanostructure is merely the embedded technology.

Back in the 50s and 60s, guided rockets used pigeons. Laika in space. Chimpanzees in orbit. Let's accept that we will have bio-drones and Jonny-Mneumonic style upload interfaces.

There is a line somewhere here that I personally feel we should not cross.

Was surprised to see no mention of wetware in the comments.

Does anyone have insight into how you would even start to source or grow/create the cells?

Also the machines look very organic and clearly have to keep the cells alive. Do they have to change them out every so often?

Classic humans.

From what I’ve read elsewhere, our understanding of neurons is still very basic, and we need a lot more fundamental research before reaching results like these. We still don’t even properly know how migraines work, nor can we cure paraplegia, yet somehow we supposedly have the capacity to grow second brains and program them on top of that.

We know a human can play Doom, so it kind of makes sense a portion of a human brain can do so in some fashion. But it's way more interesting when an animal that normally doesn't play Doom can, specially if it's just a portion of its brain.

Outside of that, I'm personally not very fond of hardware that can rot or die from malnutrition though. It's fun as an experiment, but as a thing you can actually use I just don't see it. It has a literal limited lifespan, requires more maintenance and imagine trying to debug it ("Turns out it caught some bacteria and it's malfunctioning" kinda scenarios? No thanks.)

What would be surprising is for dead human cells to play anything at all.

Why not tackle Robocop next!

I was under the impression that the relative intelligence of humans versus other animals was largely a function of brain cell quantity, not quality. Can 200k human brain cells really learn faster than 200k mouse brain cells?

A more cynical take is that they're just using human brain cells for shock value. They chose DOOM because of the "can it run DOOM" meme, so they clearly value publicity a lot.

https://corticallabs.com/research

We are potentially moving in the direction of uploading conciousness.

    We can build out discreet systems of brain cells and use them for the purpose we want. They're not going to have traits like consciousness, and we're able to test and assess for that, and build away from it if there is that risk.

From their marketing website [2]:

    Neural compute on demand: We continuously monitor neural health and performance, ensuring optimal conditions and continuous access to an always-on network of living neurons.

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-03-05/cortical-labs...

[2] https://corticallabs.com/cloud