Where does the soul live when the body is optional? Are these cells suffering in their little box every time the Doom marine dies? Or are they… happy? Is learning the only joy a brain really needs?

And the darkest question of all: if two hundred thousand cells can learn to play Doom in a week… what happens when we scale it to billions? When we connect thousands of CL1s together? When the “material” wakes up and realizes it’s trapped inside our games, our wars, our dreams?

We didn’t just invent a new computer.

We invented a new kind of prisoner.

And we’re handing out the keys on GitHub.

Disclaimer: These are creative stories. The discoveries are real, and I weave in a lot of the facts, but most of the story is made up fiction. Links to sources included for a deeper dive into the real facts and research.
Sources


https://www.newscientist.com/article/2517389-human-brain-cells-on-a-chip-learned-to-play-doom-in-a-week/


https://corticallabs.com/

https://corticallabs.com/cl1

https://corticallabs.com/research

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRV8fSw6HaE


https://github.com/SeanCole02/doom-neuron

https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)00806-6
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.09.001

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/200-000-living-human-neurons-on-a-microchip-demonstrated-playing-doom-cortical-labs-cl1-video-shows-the-gameplay-and-explains-how-the-neurons-learn-the-game

https://newatlas.com/brain/cortical-bioengineered-intelligence/

Music from #Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/adi-goldstein/blank-light

License code: UMTSYQNNG4THEG5C