Take a peek at the video above to see what happens when the brain of a rat is hooked up to what is ostensibly a remote control car. It’s a bit like Robocop, only it’d probably cost you more than a dollar to buy.
In other cybernetic news, look at these:
Yup, they’re bionic hands that have a skin-like texture and can be matched to the skin tone of the user. Furthermore, the skin can be tanned. Hair optional!
Go here to take a look and order some for yourself
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WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!
WTF my cynical human brain thinks its impossible and deem it fake until further notice.
I note with dismay that it seems the principal author on the paper about that rat brain thing is Kevin bloody Warwick.
K.Warwick, S.Nasuto, V.Becerra and B.Whalley, “Experiments with an In-Vitro Robot Brain”, Chapter in “Instinctive Computing”, ed. Yang Cai, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Springer, Vol. 5987, 2010.
I don’t have any journal subscriptions so I can’t read the paper.
That cyborg hand looks awesome!
There’s something really disturbing about that rat-brained robot…
A friend has managed to get hold of the paper, and as suspected it’s incredibly lame. It seems they attached electrodes to the culture of neurons, mapped out what stimuli resulted in what responses, then wired up the connections to the robot such that those stimulus-response patterns would result in intelligent-looking behaviour. In other words, the deck was rigged from the start.
Very very creepy. What is truly awful is the realisation that the rat’s brain, on a very basic level, wants to eat or escape, neither of which is possible. I predict a very sticky end should they ever use human brains. Unless, of course, they use volunteers and not convicts like in all good sci-fi trash novels/movies
Is nobody else incredibly scared by this story? All I can think about is a cyborg uprising that will kill us all: http://sirandytaylor.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/the-end-is-nigh/
W..T..F..
eeuu! didnt dr. who do this years ago with the peking homunculus?
Gaz: That was my first thought as well, but looking into it a bit further, I found that it’s not so much a rat’s brain as it is neural cells from a rat foetus. I hope it’s not self-aware or in discomfort, but it seems like this is all the life it’s ever known (if it has the capacity to ‘know’).
What is this your saying?
…’inserts new eye”…”I’ll-B-Baack” …
Ah. I was all set to wax philosophical until Paul kindly dug out the provenance of the thing. Ho hum.
Still, the philosophical worry remains: most of what’s written about consciousness presumes that we won’t artificially create it until we understand it, which I think is an unfounded assumption. It might not be this rat (let’s hope!) but one day we may end up creating something conscious, long before we’ve worked out what consciousness is and how it’s created and destroyed. That could well detract from the sum of happiness, even if not of human happiness.
Indeed, with certain hacks around, we should perhaps be all the more worried about that. Creating a conscious cyborg could be the ultimate in laboratory clumsiness.
So humanity is going to end at the hands of a few rat brains…bummer.
Cyborgs will inherit the galaxy. If we made a race of robots that were incredibly resilient to weather and the like, virtually indestructible – self replicating – conscious beings….then they could inhabit every place in the solar system. Well almost any, Mecury, Pluto may be a problem. But on Earth they could survive for millions of years. By which time they would have evolved into super super machines capable of intergalactic travel. They would be become the supreme beings of the universe…and eventually create their own universe having mastered all scientific philosophies. Weeeee!!!!
I was somehow more creeped out by the artificial hand…
Wow, that’s seriously amazing, but I think i liked the artificial hands better!
Sounds like it should be put into SCRATCHbot!
http://www.brl.ac.uk/projects/neuro/index.html
Can’t get enough of that video… I kinda want a cyber-rat as a pet now… That is, once they figure out a way to keep it alive for more than 3 months.