Episode 9

The podcast "Strange Bites" delves into a fascinating story about the CL-1, a shoebox device in a Melbourne lab with 200,000 living human brain cells that were taught to play Doom by an ordinary guy using electrodes. This innovative biological computer, developed by Cortical Labs, represents a new era of synthetic biological intelligence. The cells learn and adapt, raising ethical questions about their consciousness and potential applications in robotics and AI. Scientists envision groundbreaking advancements, such as drug testing and energy-efficient AI. Welcome to Strange Bites, the podcast where we chew on the weirdest true science the world tries to hide from you and wrap it all up in a fun and mysterious story delivered in 15 minutes or less. So don your white coat and come follow me into the lab for episode 9 to bring in the box that learned to kill. In a quiet Melbourne Australia lab there's a lone shoebox shaped device sitting on a table. No circuits. No code. No silicon soul. Just 200,000 living human brain cells. Tiny pink squishy little things growing from stem cells. They're floating in warm broth kept alive by pumps and heaters like a high tech aquarium for ghosts. And one ordinary guy with a laptop taught them how to play Doom. Not Pong. Not some cute paddle bouncing a ball. Doom. The 1993 hellscape where you run through blood-soaked corridors shotgun blasting demons straight out of your nightmares in one week. This isn't sci-fi. This is happening right now. And the box is called the CL-1. Let me take you back to the beginning the way scientists tell it but darker. It started in 2021. A scrappy Australian startup called Cortical Labs had an insane idea. What if we stopped pretending computers have to be dead? What if we grew real human brain cells, actual neurons, the same stuff inside your skull right on top of a silicon chip riddled with thousands of microscopic electrodes. Tiny wires that could whisper electricity into the cells and listen to the cells whisper back. They called the first crude version Dish Brain. 800,000 neurons. They hooked it to a simple Pong game. Left paddle, right paddle, bouncing pixel ball. At first the cells did nothing. Just random sparks. They kept missing the ball. The scientists zapped them with little electric punishments every time they missed. And something changed. Within minutes, yes, minutes, those disembodied brain cells started keeping the ball alive longer. They weren't programmed. They weren't running code. They were learning like a kid who burns his hand on the stove and never touches it again. The cells wired themselves together, firing in new patterns, figuring out cause and effect. The scientists called it synthetic biological intelligence. The rest of us would call it live. But Pong was too simple, too safe, too boring. Fast forward to 2025, Portacle Labs ships the CL1, the world's first commercial biological computer. Looks like a sleek white lunchbox with a glowing screen. Inside, the same living neurons, but now on a perfect self-contained life support system. Temperature locked at body heat. Fresh nutrient soup flowing 24-7. The cells can stay happy for up to six whole months. And here's the creepy part. Anyone with a laptop and a little Python code can plug straight into them. No PhD in biology required. The CL1 turns real living brain tissues into something you can program. Enter Sean Cole, just a regular developer, not a neuroscientist, not a mad genius. Guy sits down, fires up the CL1's open API, and decides to do the most unhinged thing possible. Teach the brain cells to play Doom. Just picture it. The cells have no eyes, no hands, no body. They're trapped in darkness inside their plastic tomb. But the CL1 feeds them information through those electrodes. Zaps that stand for demon on your left, wall ahead, health pack glowing. The cells don't see Doom the way you do. They feel it as patterns of electricity, like dreams made of lightning. When the cells fire in the right rhythm, move forward, turn, shoot, the characters on Sean's screen actually obeys. When they mess up, the demons rip the player apart. The CL1 sends a little jolt of negative feedback, a biological slap on the wrist. Death in the game equals pain in the dish. Day after day, Sean tweaks the code. The cells start adapting. They learn to strafe. They learn to scan corners. They learn to charge straight at a demon and pull the trigger. Not perfectly, not like a human who's played for years, but better, noticeably better, than pure random chaos, in one week. 200,000 living human neurons playing Doom. And here's where the story gets darker than any pixelated hell. Those cells aren't just twitching, they're plastic. That's a scientific word for it. They rewire themselves every single time they succeed or fail. Every death in the game is teaching them something. Every kill is reinforcing new connections. They have no mouth, but they're screaming in electricity. They have no mind, but they're getting better at hunting. And the CL1 keeps them alive, feeding them, warming them, for months. What happens when the game ends and the screen goes black? Do they still remember the corridors? Do they dream of shotguns and whatever passes for a soul? The scientists at Cortical Labs are thrilled. Brett Kagan, their chief scientific officer, says it out loud. Yes, it's alive. And yes, it's biological. But really, what it is being used as is a material that can process information in a very special way, that we can't recreate in silicon. A material like leather, like wood, like metal. They are already talking about next steps. 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