Epi 82: How a video game Pong pits itself against an artificial brain

Full Episode description

If you have pondered ways of testing your smarts against a computer, a game of chess will likely pop into your head. But some scientists decided to make things fun. They decided to use a 1970s video game called Pong, to test some real smarts. Think black and white screen, a paddle moving up and down, and a ball that bounces off the sides of the screen. Sounds odd? I mean, in this day and age, why not use an Xbox right?

Here's the real clincher. The scientists did NOT test a real person's brain, while playing this. But they used a brain that has been grown in a petri dish. Vedanshi, a 10-year old from Bunts Sangha's S.M. Shetty International School & Junior College, Mumbai, explains this piece of science-fiction in simple and easy terms. Listen to the full episode to understand how this brain (a little less smart than that of a cockroach) has mastered the art of playing Pong – all by itself. 

Vedanshi does a real cool job of explaining artificial intelligence of an artificial brain. 

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