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How cool! But is the gel really learning, or does it just have some type of material elasticity such that it helps with playing the game? One way to find out is to change the game mid-play when the gel starts getting better at play. Organisms which actually learn will respond by changing their behavior to the new set of rules. The time it takes to adapt to the new set of rules should also be noted because learned responses, or muscle memory, is faster.
There's one aspect I don't understand of how the gel "learns" . What are the factors for positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement? How does the gel "know" what is a good result and what is a bad result?
It looks like the gel “learns” to get better at the game because if it correctly positions the Pong paddle over time then the dynamics of stimulation become predictable rather than random. since the system tries to naturally minimize its free energy, it will eventually start to model the ball dynamics enough to better control the paddle, all making the input dynamics more predictable and thus minimizing the energy of the system.
> making the input dynamics more predictable and thus minimizing the energy of the system.

How does this follow?

The traditional way that you train a biological network like this is that you give it stimulations based on what the game is doing and you give it an ability to control the game. But when something bad happens it's given a lot of random stimulation that it doesn't understand. So the biological network tries to minimize the amount of random stimulation it gets and it learns to play the game better because the stimulation is consistent and predictable.

I didn't go into the paper to see if that's exactly what they're doing, and I'm no expert. But from what I've read before, that's how this usually works, and I'm sure they're doing something similar to that.

Love this point. Willingness to spend less energy = need to find predictable patterns
I would encourage you to download the linked paper and run it thru Claude. I would post results of doing so but that is not allowed here.
I've never used Claude only ChatGPT. What does running a paper through Claude do?
It provides answers to your questions about the document.
So it can hallucinate some bullshit? No thanks.
People here hallucinate bullshit all the time. I just came from a thread with some dude saying microwaves all leak dangerous amounts of radiation. Either you read it and reason for yourself or you let jesus take the wheel. OP was not interested in reasoning.
So? What's your point? It doesn't change the fact that LLMs hallucinate bullshit all the time. It doesn't change the fact that I don't trust anything coming out of an LLM.
Then we agree, both LLMs and hackernews commenters hallucinate all the time. You can see my point in my original reply to OP. Not interested in arguing further.
Super cool, go biocomputers! I'm now reading a book called 'Networkologies', the author comes up with a theory that life and, later, consciousness emerge when network self-organise themselves in more and more complex structures under certain circumstances. Who knows, maybe this gel has these properties and evolves into some genius goo in the future.
Like the early days of semiconductor applications, now they're finding new substrates can do the primitive operations required for a neural network. Interesting it's called a "gel brain", as that syncs with a story from supposed "secret space program" insider who says they have banks of "gel packs" that neurally control advanced drones.
The “secret space program” conspiritainment genre is baked by basically putting all sci-fi from the past 100 years in a blender with a bunch of DARPA press releases and hitting puree. Then they probably binge watch Stargate SG-1 and riff on it in between bong hits.
Yeah pretty creative stuff, eh? I think it’s bullshit that we have those capabilities right now. Insiders are just disinformation agents or creative fiction writers extending to performance art haha. But, some of the things they’ve said have been proven out: extensive lava tubes on the moon, broad strokes about an NHI cosmology and Earth’s place in it, archaeology under the ice in Antarctica. And now this gel pack brain thing.

I’m aware of all their narratives, think they’re bullshit, but look out for places they align and where maybe I’m wrong. Open minded approach hahaha :)

I would love for that stuff to be true tho - limited version of a Star Trek future. But sadly, I highly doubt any of their SSP claims are, tho. Gets you wondering tho: could they’re really have been a jump gate elevator to Mars at 999 Sepulveda Blvd?

conspiritainment - ha! Btw nice coinage.

Inspired by Star Trek, no doubt.
Do they have that in there?
USS Voyager was running off bio-neural gel packs[1], with their organic-ness being a plot device in more than a few episodes.

[1] https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bio-neural_gel_pack

Nice! I'm glad you found that connection. Yeah I wonder how much these so-called "insiders" are just ripping off sci-fi. Ugh...I wanted to believe so hard for so long, but the more I listened to their narratives, the more holes appeared.
(Deleted my initial messages since I didn’t realize retelling Claude is not okay :-)

Thus I will just summarize my initial hunch based on watching the video which wasn’t refuted by the upload of paper and asking about it:

proximity of the sensing and actuating electrodes.

In a nutshell, a gooey and sludgy demonstration of Kirchhoff's circuit laws.

Calling that pong is a stretch. It's 2x3 pixels wide pong if you insist.