Rat brain flies jet

Daz

a big leap in the concept of biological computer perhaps. Kinda spooky tho:

http://www.theregister.com/2004/12/07/rat_brain_flies_jet/

mr.toast

really interesting, i wish they showed a pic of the brain

Mishra

combine that with the mech thing in the other thread and you have robocop 2.

FatAssasin

Next step, brains in your computer. Couple that with the mech unit we saw early and you've got full on self-sufficient battle droids.

jzero

you've got full on self-sufficient battle droids.

... that shoot themselves in the head, like RoboCop 2. I LOVE that.

Of course, what I read in that article is that the brain itself isn't doing any real 'thinking', it's just a wetware neural network. If they grew the cells from scratch, then there's no way they could form a real 'rat brain unit', I think it's just a biological substitute for silicon. It's probably misleading to say they 'taught' it to fly the simulator. Spooky, still.

Really scary thought: if you hooked a real active rat brain to that same rig, you would have to teach it to fly. But the rat brain wouldn't have a reason to fly, so you'd have to use some sort of conditioning. Electrical shocks, perhaps? Holographic cheese?

/jzero

Mishra

i think it's a really bad idea though, if we gave robots brains, then they become self aware, sentient creatures that could chose to disobey us, and us controlling them would be immoral, because they would be living things. they're no longer our little playthings that dont have emotions or opinions, they're partially living half creatures.

jzero

Mishra: On that note, I direct you to the thoughtful, funky, sexy, drug-soaked works of Rudy Rucker. Software , Wetware , Freeware , Realware .

/jzero

Thegodzero

yeah man makes his first cyborg, let the party comence!

Scott Ruggels

SO how long until we have wiggly flying weasels, like that "Gunship" HL2?

Scott

KDR_11k

Mishra: Considering that any form of real AI merely emulates a brain there's really no difference between a robot driven by a chip and a robot driven by a brain... Well, except for their intelligence. Besides, AFAIK rats aren't self aware so if that was an inherent ability of the brain (which it isn't) the robot wouldn't be self aware, either. Self awareness and obedience are determined by the unit's intelligence and bvasic programming (instincts). If its first instinct was to serve it wouldn't disobey.
Oh, and Douglas Adams was right, AIs are programmed by giving them some logic that determines their happyness based on how well they do their task and telling the unit to be as happy as possible.