The Last Invention Wetwear
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Apr 9, 2026 A lab-grown brain-on-a-chip learns to play Pong through reward and punishment. Human neurons are cultured on electrode chips and sold to researchers, gamers, and roboticists. Engineers imagine embedding living tissue as robotic skin to boost dexterity and speed. The conversation explores ethical questions, commercialization, and speculative futures of brain chips and human augmentation.
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How A Lab Tour Sparked A Wetware Computer
- Gregory Warner describes Hon Weng Chong seeing mouse brain tissue on a fingernail-sized chip during a neuroscience tour.
- The lab showed him electrodes capturing activity from the tissue, which sparked his idea to make neurons compute instead of just pharmacology testing.
Neurons Learn With Rewards Of Predictability
- Hon Weng Chong trained human neurons to play Pong using reward and punishment rather than binary code.
- He rewarded predictable stimulation (sine waves) and punished with white noise or silence, and the neurons learned Pong within minutes.
Neurons Prefer Predictability Over Stimulation Variety
- Cultured neurons seek predictability and minimize 'prediction error', so consistent sine-wave stimulation acts as a reward.
- Unpredictable white noise or total silence serves as punishment and can push cultures into a comatose firing state.
