Robot Powered by Rat Neurons

[Jeff Gerke]

Yikes.

www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,403744,00.html

A brain-in-a-dish is learning that its body (the robot) does better when it avoids obstacles and is learning to tell it to avoid them.

In other words, a manufactured brain is learning to control an artificial and remote controlled body.

If the ramifications of this don't scare the bejeebers out of you, you may not have bejeebers to begin with.

Double yikes.

Jeff

[rwley]

I have bejeebers and after reading that they all went and hid under the bed

Seriously, though, yes the ramifications are very frightening. The science is over my head, but the possibilities are clear even for me. Great fiction fodder, but scary real life implications. Cybord soldiers controlled by remote control dish brains? Electrical impulse only, no emotion, no moral compass, no humanity whatsoever.

Oops, there go the bejeebers again, back under the bed.

Robi

[torainfor]

And all linked by Blue Tooth? Aside from the fact it's just a bowl of cells, that's what gets me.

'Scuse me. Gotta go throw away my cell phone.

[J Jack]

I interject a quick thought on cyborg soldiers.

It depends how they are used non? If a fantastically benevolent dictator used them to create stability and peace in a nation wouldn't that just be fantastic? Of course the flip side is an evil ruler (see Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Benito Mussolini, etc etc) uses said cyborgs to crush and enslave mankind.

Tis odd this arises, cause that is actually the premise for the manuscript I am in the progress of writing with a colleague. This actually may make our work easier with some realism added.

Second note, that didn't scare the bejeebers out of me. Maybe I don't have them, but the positives of this could be enormous. What if iron workers were artificial robots, and other dangerous jobs. No needless deaths, no accidents causing human loss. We could tap into reserves if coal long left alone for safety reasons. We could create safety dummys that could think and act more human creating safer environments. If governments could stabilize their economy and create more safe jobs imagine the possibilities.

Third note, what concerns me is the possibility of world war three being humanity vs these moral compass lacking and kitten eating brain bots. Would we survive such an encounter and learn from it? There is so much to work with as authors, and so much to contemplate as people.

[Jeff Gerke]

And so much fun to be had by speculative novelists!

[Spokane Flyboy]

One aspect of this that scares me is that it has the potential to phase out the need for us to really exist. Unemployment is already a concern, will this only exacerbate it? Will we find ourselves needing to depopulate, enacting laws like China has?

Another is the potential to create something that we can't really control that happens also to be hard to defeat. If you create an army of intelligent, self-sustaining killing machines that are near impossible for man to destroy (that is the goal in any war technology after all), what do you do when they start devising their own plans? Maybe I've just watch too the Matrix Trilogy one too many times?

Though with living tissue involved in this technology, maybe we can at least still starve them out. *grin*

[mongoose]

I'm reminded of the line in iRobot, something like: "I suppose you also would have shut down the Internet in order to save the libraries."

[Teskas]

Care for a stomach-churning future?

Harvest the neurons of foreign language speakers, astrophysicists, or indeed any expert who has the knowledge and technical skill you want. Or why not preborn infants to make learning quicker?

Interface them with the pedestrian neurons of an elite class to give them exceptional abilities.

If that isn't nauseating, I don't know what would be.

[Jeff Gerke]

Ooh, that's an awesome idea. Select the best genetic material from the brightest minds. Dump them all into a huge Petri dish and custom-create the ultimate mind.

Jeff

[torainfor]

An organic internet wirelessed into your mind. Before long, you have problems figuring out which of your thoughts and motivations are your own. It starts to control you in order to fulfill its own goals. When thought manipulation ceases to work, it turns on your autonomic functions.

[myrthman]

First of all, Jeff, you have seen Twins, right? Still a cool idea.

And torainfor, I have trouble figuring out which thoughts are mind now...without said technology being available.

Would this brain-bot be capable of feats most rats are not? Say, playing chess with Bobby Fisher? Or would it just be really good at solving mazes, assuming of course that it had the sensory input device to smell cheese?

[mongoose]

or to smell peanut butter. I hear that's even better at attracting rats than is cheese.

Sorry. Back on topic

The idea of multiple minds sharing one body isn't new. witness whatsername in Star Trek DS 9. The cute one with the spots up the side of her neck and face. Or the Tokra in Stargate SG1. You do sometimes, in speculative fiction and perhaps real life, run into problems with multiple personality disorders and insanity from the two or more minds not being able to share very well, but I don't think it would necessarily be a problem. We, after all, have the Holy Spirit within talking at and through us every so often, and we handle that well enough, right?

[Therin]

Hmmm... what if you mix advanced computer processers with advanced organic mindpower into a computer? Wouldn't it have the ability to think faster than humans and more creatively than computers?
And would it develop emotions? And if so, could we justify using it in the way we use the unfeeling computers of today?

Pretty wild stuff. And that's why we're all here, is it not?

[Jeff Gerke]

What...are these...thoughts coming into my mind? Are they...mine or from somewhere...else?

And why...do I have an insatiable hunger for cheese?

[rwley]

As fodder for great spec fiction, all this genetic engineering and gene manipulation stuff is great. The crossing of hardwired computers and hardwired humans makes great story material. In real life? It bothers me. It scares me. I can cook up enough trouble all by myself with my own errant thoughts and wild ideas; I don't need any help from anybody else, benevolent or not. And any "being" that operates on thought process alone with no capacity to "feel" is a great antagonist on paper but not something I want to see out running the streets.

Too bad so many of our benevolent scientists and researchers really think they know how to create better than the true Creator. I kind of like my flaws.

Robi