I don't find this report noticeably bad. The paper did call the brain a "computational device." It was a "simple" experiment and simple paper. There is also nontrivial effort going into the numerous little steps, crammed into the methods section, that brought about this experiment.
palish's comment is informative but not absolute: depending on your interpretation, the headline may not be sensationalist at all. The software was, as described, an "F-22 flight simulator." Confusing to the general public? Yes. Shameful? Not really.
I also disagree that it's a high-tech Rube Goldberg machine. The analogous term for EECS folks would be "hack." It's like saying a wiimote mod for an FPS is a Rube Goldberg machine... which isn't false, but misses the point, don't you think? As a hack, I think it's very interesting. Not surprising, not epochal, but cool nonetheless. A plane can be flown by software, or by bioware, neither approach is perfect at the moment, so "hacks" like these serve their purpose.
But the fact remains, they weren't really using the neurons as a "brain", which is what the article/headline claims, they were just using sophisticated software to find an ewualibrium point and self-correct.
They were hacking the neurons, yes, but only at the most basic level of neuron function. The author misrepresented the facts by suggesting it was "learned" behavior, and that is, I think, shameful.
If the neuron cluster actually learned something, then it would be pretty amazing.
palish's comment is informative but not absolute: depending on your interpretation, the headline may not be sensationalist at all. The software was, as described, an "F-22 flight simulator." Confusing to the general public? Yes. Shameful? Not really.
I also disagree that it's a high-tech Rube Goldberg machine. The analogous term for EECS folks would be "hack." It's like saying a wiimote mod for an FPS is a Rube Goldberg machine... which isn't false, but misses the point, don't you think? As a hack, I think it's very interesting. Not surprising, not epochal, but cool nonetheless. A plane can be flown by software, or by bioware, neither approach is perfect at the moment, so "hacks" like these serve their purpose.