{"id":149490,"date":"2022-11-05T00:36:44","date_gmt":"2022-11-05T05:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/pong-in-a-dish"},"modified":"2022-11-05T00:36:44","modified_gmt":"2022-11-05T05:36:44","slug":"pong-in-a-dish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/pong-in-a-dish","title":{"rendered":"Pong in a Dish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/pong-in-a-dish.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ever hear of the <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/untold-history-of-ai-charles-babbage-and-the-turk\" target=\"_self\" class=\"\">Turk <\/a>\u2014the 19th<sup><\/sup>-century mechanism topped by a turbaned head that played chess against all comers? In fact, hidden inside was a diminutive chessmaster, one you might imagine deadpanning, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pyxJ7GKGFG0\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Eh, It\u2019s a living.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pyxJ7GKGFG0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Then there\u2019s its namesake, the <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/untold-history-of-ai-mechanical-turk-revisited-tktkt\" target=\"_self\" class=\"\">Mechanical Turk <\/a>\u2014a 21st<sup><\/sup>-century service offered by Amazon to mark up images on the Web with the help of crowdsourced freelancers. They, too, might intone, glassy-eyed, \u201cIt\u2019s a living.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now we have a kind of Biological Turk. A mass of neurons act as a computer that mimics a human being playing the classic computer game Pong. The neurons, some taken from mouse embryos, others grown from human precursor cells, spread out into a one-layer, 800,000-cell mesh called a biological neural network, which lives in a giant petri dish called the DishBrain. There it interfaces with arrays of electrodes that form an interface to silicon hardware. Software mounted on that hardware provides stimulation and feedback, and the minibrain learns how to control a paddle on a simulated ping-pong table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever hear of the Turk \u2014the 19th-century mechanism topped by a turbaned head that played chess against all comers? In fact, hidden inside was a diminutive chessmaster, one you might imagine deadpanning, \u201cEh, It\u2019s a living.\u201d Then there\u2019s its namesake, the Mechanical Turk \u2014a 21st-century service offered by Amazon to mark up images on the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,418,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-internet","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}