RESEARCHERS ANNOUNCE THE CREATION OF A “SEMI-LIVING ARTIST”

Working from their university labs in two different corners of the world, US and Australian researchers have created what they call a new class of creative being, the “semi-living artist”—a picture-drawing robot in Perth, Australia, whose movements are controlled by the brain signals of cultured rat cells in Atlanta. Science Daily reports that the robot uses colored markers to create drawings based on the neural activity of a few thousand rat neurons placed in a special petri dish that keeps the cells alive.