The whole point of the CNNs is to act like a auto encoder for input and an auto decoder for output. The only reason why this is done in the first place is because the number of electrodes in the dish is pitiful and has no chance of describing something as complex as Doom. They are there to create a latent space that can be fed through 60 odd electrodes and decode the neuron latent space into pressing buttons.
The pong version of the game was the proof of concept that neurons can learn without a latent space intermediate in either direction. Both the world state and neuronal control were raw signals: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36228614/
What I wanted to do after dish brain pong, but never had the budget for, was using live animals as the computational substrate. Use the visual cortex of one as the input, send the neural spikes to a second animals frontal lobe for computation and finally send those signals to a third animals motor cortex to physically press buttons. It's a shame we never raised enough because it wouldn't have cost more than $15m to build the hardware and do the biological proof of concept.
That sounds terrifying.
This sounds a bit suspicious though. If we're confident that the neurons aren't complex enough to understand Doom, how can they be said to be complex enough to play it? Playing a game is a loose term but it seems difficult to say that it is playing something that it can't comprehend or interact with. By analogy, if there was a CNN between me and a game of Doom people would say "roenxi is cheating with an AI aim-bot", not 'roenxi is playing Doom".
The whole thing is still pretty cool though. Hopefully the neurons are having fun, I'm sure we all wish them what happiness they can muster.
That's all the artificial neural networks are doing.
If we could have gotten an MEA with 320x200 electrodes we wouldn't have used any encoding and just let the neurons figure it out. Instead it is an 8x8 grid.
I mean maybe ANN just means sampling the screen in which case I'm not sure why we're talking about it as a "network". But the type of compression seems critical.
Have I watched any of the videos or read the code? No I have not.
It's rather unfortunate that in the West it is impossible to get elective brain surgery. The countries that will do it have at best a spotty record. I talked to someone who had it done in Brazil and their electrodes became dislodged after a few months.
There is nothing new or horrifying about self experimentation. Newton for one did it in conditions that were far more dangerous: https://psmag.com/social-justice/newtons-needle-scientific-s...
Or not so perverse, as this makes running these ventures much safer. Safety first!
Edit sweet Jesus never mind I missread it.
What does the ethical due diligence process look like, for something like this?
Yeah it feels like they constructed the conclusion and worked backwards from there. I'm not seeing how their claim has much merit.