Scientists unveil plan to create biocomputers powered by human brain cells

[LudwigPastorius]

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/980084

Scientists across multiple disciplines are working to create revolutionary biocomputers where three-dimensional cultures of brain cells, called brain organoids, serve as biological hardware. They describe their roadmap for realizing this vision in the journal Frontiers in Science.

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Brain organoids are a type of lab-grown cell-culture. Even though brain organoids aren’t ‘mini brains’, they share key aspects of brain function and structure such as neurons and other brain cells that are essential for cognitive functions like learning and memory. Also, whereas most cell cultures are flat, organoids have a three-dimensional structure. This increases the culture's cell density 1,000-fold, meaning that neurons can form many more connections.

-snip-

Creating human brain organoids that can learn, remember, and interact with their environment raises complex ethical questions. For example, could they develop consciousness, even in a rudimentary form? Could they experience pain or suffering? And what rights would people have concerning brain organoids made from their cells?

-snip-

Even though Organoid Intelligence is still in its infancy, a recently-published study by one of the article’s co-authors – Dr Brett Kagan of the Cortical Labs – provides proof of concept. His team showed that a normal, flat brain cell culture can learn to play the video game Pong.

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As far as the ethics of this go, we don't know what human consciousness is, how it arises, or what the biological threshold is for it to do so.

How do these scientists expect to know that what they are doing isn't heading down the road of creating some kind of horrible human/machine hybrid that 'has no mouth and must scream'?

[crickets]

1. Oh, this couldn't possibly go horribly wrong... could it? Yikes. nt

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. Skynet is only looking out for your best interests. Resistance is futile.

Heinlein's Friday is one novel which explored the concept of an artificial person.

When it became possible to detect brainwaves, it became inevitable that we would eventually be able to record thoughts, use thinking to control hardware, and control thought processes. (Once it's possible to directly record your thoughts, the next step is to determine how you, specifically, think, and then you are both recordable and clonable).

An aside, creepy thought:
"The last shall be first and the first shall be last" -- The first minds we will be able to restore are the last which 'died', for the signals will be strongest. Someday, even the very weak signals moving through space which are the brain waves of Eve will be distinguishable from the background noise of the universe, and we will be able to ask her what she thinks of Adam.

[electric_blue68]

2. Oh. Great... just "Great". We're not imho smart enough to try this kind of stuff...

idk... the nuances.. the ethics. Your comments on conciousness.

yikes. Just bc we can, should we?

[Silent3]

3. I asked ChatGPT what it thought of this plan. It was all for it.

At least that's how I interpret the way the response was just the word "BRAAAAIIINNNSS!!!!!" repeated thousands of times.

[Bayard]

4. Isn't this Musk's newest venture?

[DFW]

6. This is a re-hash of the plot of a 1967 film

It was called "The President's Analyst." Although some slick "critic" tried to put the film down (my dad and I laughed our asses off when it came out in 1967), here is a part of his 2021 review that explains a significant part of the plot:

"Dr Schaefer does a bunk, hiding out...............before winding up with Arlington Hewes (Pat Harrington), the Elon Musk-style visionary boss of the phone company with a plan to implant every human with a chip that will make phone calls redundant."

The review fails to include that the president of TPC (The Phone Company) is also a robot.