Comments on: Worlds First Cyborg has Brain of Rat

By: chris

chris — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 05:52:14 +0000

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.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 08:04:48 +0000

Sounds like it should be put into SCRATCHbot!

http://www.brl.ac.uk/projects/neuro/index.html

By: Alex Guy

Alex Guy — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:33:39 +0000

Wow, that’s seriously amazing, but I think i liked the artificial hands better!

By: Aaron Feyd

Aaron Feyd — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:38:31 +0000

I was somehow more creeped out by the artificial hand…

By: JibJib

JibJib — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:19:45 +0000

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!!!!

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:23:45 +0000

So humanity is going to end at the hands of a few rat brains…bummer.

By: MikeHypercube

MikeHypercube — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:48:36 +0000

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.

By: ReliegiousMarie

ReliegiousMarie — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:15:50 +0000

What is this your saying?

…’inserts new eye”…”I’ll-B-Baack” …

By: Berber Anna

Berber Anna — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:11:00 +0000

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’).

By: roz

roz — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:20:55 +0000

eeuu! didnt dr. who do this years ago with the peking homunculus?