Is it a computer program or a living being? At TU Wien (Vienna), the boundaries become blurred. The neural system of a nematode was translated into computer code – and then the virtual worm was taught amazing tricks. ----- A Program without a Programmer “With the help of reinforcement learning, a method also known as 'learning based on experiment and reward', the artificial reflex network was trained and optimized on the computer”, Mathias Lechner explains. And indeed, the team succeeded in teaching the virtual nerve system to balance a pole. “The result is a controller, which can solve a standard technology problem – stabilizing a pole, balanced on its tip. But no human being has written even one line of code for this controller, it just emerged by training a biological nerve system”, says Radu Grosu. The team is going to explore the capabilities of such control-circuits further. The project raises the question, whether there is a fundamental difference between living nerve systems and computer code. Is machine learning and the activity of our brain the same on a fundamental level? At least we can be pretty sure that the simple nematode C. elegans does not care whether it lives as a worm in the ground or as a virtual worm on a computer hard drive.
