Last year, Monash University's research yielded the 'DishBrain', a partly biological computer chip that incorporated around 800,000 human and mouse brain cells. Impressively, it learned to play the vintage video game 'Pong' in just five minutes. The 'DishBrain' was not only able to monitor activity in the brain cells but also to stimulate them using electrical impulses. Researchers established a version of video game 'Pong' in which the brain cells were tasked with controlling the paddle's movement. The brain cells were given a simple reward system to make this possible. As clusters of brain cells naturally aim to minimize instability in their environment, a steady stimulus is given when the paddle successfully hits the ball. In contrast, missing the ball results in four seconds of unpredictable stimulation. Never before had lab-grown brain cells been used in such a way where they could both sense the world and react to it. The results were striking enough to secure a commendable grant of US$407,000 from Australia's National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Grants program. The project lead, Associate Professor Adeel Razi, suggested that such chips could possibly surpass the performance of today's purely silicon-based versions. He outlined that the results of the project could have critical implications across various fields, including but not limited to, planning, robotics, advanced automation, brain-machine interfaces, and drug discovery. Future applications could involve autonomous vehicles, drones, and robots benefitting from the advanced learning capabilities of the 'DishBrain'. Excitingly, the grant received will be used to develop improved AI machines, replicating the learning capacity of the biological neural networks.