Hello Friends,
I've written here before about brain organoids—the little blobs of human stem cells that get coaxed into becoming a functioning part of the brain.
These allow researchers to gain an understanding of various aspects of our mind and to do important physical brain research. They even got one of these to play video games. But the scientists involved in this work always maintained that these were dumb (not sentient) cells, just performing simple actions, like recognizing external stimuli and responding to it.
Well, now, apparently, someone got the idea to put a bunch of these organoids together and construct an approximation of a complete brain:
According to their paper published in the journal Advanced Science, these neuronal cell masses display activity similar to what’s seen in a 40-day-old human fetus
A team at Johns Hopkins University
Well, ain't that special?
Now, the stated purpose of doing something like this is to aid in the research of a whole lot of diseases, like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. So, that's an enormously good thing for sure.
A 40-day-old fetus brain?
Truthfully, I haven't decided where I stand on the moral side of this argument. I mean, it's clear we should do everything we can to address these diseases that cause people and their families so much pain. Yet, give humans a toy, like a drone, and they will turn it into a bomb.
So, perhaps the ethics are clear—help as many people as possible. It's people who make things messy.
A recent article I read in New Scientist magazine had a small passage about animal consciousness. The story cited Herbet Feigl who considers consciousness as having 3 layers:
Sentience (raw sensations of the present moment—pleasure, pain, boredom)
Sapience (the ability to reflect on the sensation—this pain sucks)
Selfhood (I am and I endure the pain)
This is only one guy's thoughts on consciousness. In truth, no one can agree on how to define it.
The security camera I have pointed at my patio can respond to a stimulus such as my cat walking into its defined zone. It sends me a notification. Is it conscious? I don't think anyone would argue that it is.
The brain organoid that was attached to a computer chip responded to a blip moving across a screen and moved a paddle to intercept it (playing the video game Pong). Is that consciousness?
Just because it's biological, do we give it more significance?
Brain organoids are created out of stem cells that would have basically been discarded if they weren't recycled for research.
A group of people at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering is attempting to build biological computers for artificially intelligent systems. If you consider how much electrical energy the current silicon-based AI systems waste to respond to your goofy ChatGPT query, a biological alternative starts to make sense from a global resources standpoint.
Why spend all this time and money on trying to recreate an artificial brain, when you can just build a brain?
I'm not advocating for it either way. The 1982 film, Blade Runner (based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), explores the idea of manufactured biological lifeforms and their personhood.
Looking deeper, I think a more interesting question is not, what does it mean to be conscious?, but rather, what does it mean to be human?
Lots of research today suggests that most lifeforms on Earth are conscious. Only we get to be human, a concept that is often up for discussion, too.
And speaking of Blade Runner, if you have 10 minutes to chill, watch this. It's worth it to see all the way to the end—crumpled paper as a symphonic instrument.
Happy reading, happy writing, happy braining,
David