Is this legit? This is the first time I’ve heard of human neurons used for such a purpose. Kind of surprised that’s legal. Instinctively, I feel like a “human brain organoid” is close enough to a human that you cannot wave away the potential for consciousness so easily. At what point does something like this deserve human rights?
I notice that the paper is published in Frontiers, the same journal that let the notorious AI-generated giant-rat-testicles image get published. They are not highly regarded in general.
They don’t really go into the size of the organoid, but it’s extremely doubtful that it’s large and complex enough to get anywhere close to consciousness.
There’s also no guarantee that a lump of brain tissue could ever achieve consciousness, especially if the architecture is drastically different from an actual brain.
Well, we haven’t solved the hard problem of consciousness, so we don’t know if size of brain or similarity to human brain are factors for developing consciousness. But perhaps a more important question is, if it did develop consciousness, how much pain would it experience?
Believe it or not, I studied this in school. There’s some niche applications for alternative computers like this. My favorite is the way you can use DNA to solve the traveling salesman problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_computing?wprov=sfla1)
Seems like it’s an ethical gray area. Some brain organoid have responded to light stimulus and there are concerns they might be able to feel pain or develop consciousness. (Full disclosure, I had no idea what an organoid even was before reading this and then did some quick follow up reading)
Is this legit? This is the first time I’ve heard of human neurons used for such a purpose. Kind of surprised that’s legal. Instinctively, I feel like a “human brain organoid” is close enough to a human that you cannot wave away the potential for consciousness so easily. At what point does something like this deserve human rights?
I notice that the paper is published in Frontiers, the same journal that let the notorious AI-generated giant-rat-testicles image get published. They are not highly regarded in general.
They don’t really go into the size of the organoid, but it’s extremely doubtful that it’s large and complex enough to get anywhere close to consciousness.
There’s also no guarantee that a lump of brain tissue could ever achieve consciousness, especially if the architecture is drastically different from an actual brain.
Well, we haven’t solved the hard problem of consciousness, so we don’t know if size of brain or similarity to human brain are factors for developing consciousness. But perhaps a more important question is, if it did develop consciousness, how much pain would it experience?
Believe it or not, I studied this in school. There’s some niche applications for alternative computers like this. My favorite is the way you can use DNA to solve the traveling salesman problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_computing?wprov=sfla1)
There have been other “bioprocessors” before this one, some of which have used neurons for simple image detection, e.g https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1396377?casa_token=-gOCNaYaKZIAAAAA:Z0pSQkyDBjv6ITghDSt5YnbvrkA88fAfQV_ISknUF_5XURVI5N995YNaTVLUtacS7cTsOs7o. But this seems to be the first commercial application. Yes, it’ll use less energy, but the applications will probably be equally as niche. Artificial neural networks can do most of the important parts (like “learn” and “rememeber”) and are less finicky to work with.
Careful. Get too deep into that and people will have to admit lesser animals have forms of consciousness.
Seems like it’s an ethical gray area. Some brain organoid have responded to light stimulus and there are concerns they might be able to feel pain or develop consciousness. (Full disclosure, I had no idea what an organoid even was before reading this and then did some quick follow up reading)
How complex does a neural net have to be before you can call any of its outputs ‘pain’?
Start with a lightswitch with ‘pain’ written on a post-it note stuck to the on position, end with a toddler. Where’s the line?
I think that’s why it’s a gray area. No one knows