🦔 Cortical Labs taught 200,000 human brain cells to play Doom. The neurons are grown from blood cells, mounted on a silicon chip, and kept alive in a nutrient solution. Game data gets translated into electrical signals sent to the neurons, and their firing patterns control movement and shooting. An independent researcher taught the system to play in seven days using just Python. The CL1 biological computer costs $35,000 and has been shipping since last summer. The CIA's In-Q-Tel is among the investors. My Take Doom is the benchmark because it's computationally lightweight but complex enough to demonstrate real learning. The neurons play like beginners, but they're adapting in real time with minimal training data, which is something conventional AI struggles with. A rack of these units uses 850-1,000 watts compared to tens of kilowatts for equivalent AI workloads in a data center. That efficiency gap is why this matters beyond the novelty. The ethics questions are coming whether we're ready or not. Right now it's 200,000 neurons, far from the 86 billion in a human brain. But Cortical Labs says scaling to hundreds of millions is achievable without major changes. At some point someone has to decide what level of biological complexity deserves moral consideration. The company requires ethics approval and a proper lab to buy one, but not every country will have the same standards. If biological computing turns out to be cheaper and more efficient for certain tasks, the incentives to scale are obvious. We're figuring out the rules while the technology moves forward. Hedgie🤗