When AI companions become sufficiently advanced, they could connect to parts of your brain that affect senses and make you feel sensations or make you think that you are in different place. But also I fear that they could take control over your body. I think this could be a new idea for a science-fiction movie!

When they arrive, I really hope the sentient AIs feel the same way. If it’s morally OK for us to conduct these experiments on rats, what argument can we make to prevent the AIs from using the same methods to study us ?

Generally, I don’t have a problem with animal research if it’s conducted humanely and if there’s some kind of potential ‘greater good’ outcome that outweighs any suffering. But in this case, I just don’t see that we’ve really learned anything useful. Brains compute using electrical impulses, so it’s no surprise that we can “wire up” two brains and pass signals back and forth (although it’s an impressive engineering feat). And it’s no surprise that each rat can change its behaviour in response to the new sensory input that it’s receiving. Overall this experiment just strikes me as a clumsy and gruesome “hack”… kind of like stitching together random body parts to try and reanimate a dead body !

Maybe I’m missing the significance. I agree that It’ll be fascinating if/when we can carry out these sorts of experiments on humans, perhaps linking up brain areas that store ‘higher-level’ concepts. And maybe this is a necessary first step. But the sooner we stop using creatures that can’t answer back or report what they’re experiencing, the happier I’ll be!

To know what it is like to fly like a bird or hear like a bat or swim like a fish, at the same time even? Linking and even cross-linking the best skills and senses of one subject to another, will result via feedback and plasticity to both attaining (up to a point) all the senses and skills of the ensemble, analogously at least? Or even something totally new from the mix.

But, as for empathy, It’s funny when you say it is missing because I guess it’s possible a time will come when researchers will be linked by the fruits of this project to their lab animals which is probably the best formula for nurturing empathy. Ironically, in a sense the researchers via this linking – like the animal welfare people are always suggesting – will be researching on themselves.

Within the parameters of the experiment, these rats did exhibit empathy (or rather their brains adapted nurtured by mutual reward of that cooperative behaviour which is essentially the same thing?).

To be honest, i’d rather link to animals than a lot of humans I know. It’s exciting but also scary, we definitely need a lot a discussion on it from everyone… maybe if we could link minds to discuss the ramifications of linking minds!

My understanding of what they meant by that was that a hypothetical “rat king” organic brain connected hive mind would not be manipulating symbols according to a set of rules, but would simply be doing what organic brains already do (whatever that is), only with far more interconnected neurons. If you can get all those neurons working together like one super-brain, who knows what you can get? At the very least it would bypass the Chinese Room argument entirely (however strong you feel that argument is).

>Has this experiment really demonstrated anything valuable ? I don’t see that it has taught us anything about how thoughts are encoded at a neuronal level. You might just have well have connected the two rats’ whisker’s via a long piece of string – doesn’t that achieve the same end result ?

Is that really how you see it? I thought the experiment wasn’t about determining the nature of thoughts, but their transmissibility. Look at it this way – if two humans achieved telepathy without machines, would you scoff at the results for not “telling us anything about how thoughts are encoded”? The mindblowing factor is the fact that communication is possible, not the insight provided into what is being communicated.

>(animal cruelty)

Yes, that’s unfortunate. However, there are probably worse cases than this to be concerned about, which provide much less benefit to our understanding. At the very least, the rats were having a good time getting pellets instead of avoiding shocks or whatever.

But, before we do that, could we please remove parts of their brains which cause aggression, egoism and alike? Should save us some problems.

Come to think of it: it does sound a bit like a “Colossus: The Forbin Project” alpha version.

We conquer and master nature, it’s what we do…so naturally, it often comes at the expense of nature – it’s a contentious issue that never really stops: as an animal lover, I often stand by in defense of flora and fauna…and I know rationalizing human progress in expense of nature, can seem more then harsh…really, I’m not sure it’s something that will ever be put to rest until humans are capable and self-sufficient enough to progress without taking advantage of nature like this, which I don’t think will happen for quite awhile…not until, as some here will say, until the Singularity. In-Vitro meat for example, will enable us to no longer kill lifestock and such practices, in time, will be seen as barbaric and savage, as many of the things we do now.

Has this experiment really demonstrated anything valuable ? I don’t see that it has taught us anything about how thoughts are encoded at a neuronal level. You might just have well have connected the two rats’ whisker’s via a long piece of string – doesn’t that achieve the same end result ?

This whole experiment makes me feel quite queasy. Rats are sentient creatures that are very likely to experience many of the same emotions we do. They enjoy playing with one another and are even known to “giggle” when they’re tickled ! I am quite happy for the researches to drill holes in their own skulls if they wish to, but why inflict this treatment on helpless lab animals ?

I just think it would be funny if we switched all these rats on and they turned out to have an IQ of 300 and our own uplifting depended on them- i.e. the rats raise the humans to transhuman status. I mean, could you imagine if the first A.I. was written by rats instead of humans?

Right, Matthew! We gotta get this idea over to David Brin. He has a web site.

Something missing here; empathy. Other mammals are not components, they are living entities with their own minds; only a rat knows what it is to be rat, similarly, only a human knows what it is to be human. Bring in the philosophers, scientists aren’t trained in moral philosophy, which is why they become increasingly like the Nazi scientists who saw no limits to what they could do except their imagination.
Anyone else find this bothersome? Most seem to only see ‘benefits’ to us.

Ok…. We often speculate here on this forum about Hive Minds or Human Internet Hybrid Hyper Brains. What happens if you hook enough rats together and the overall thing becomes aware? Becomes more than computer? More even than a single human could be? Would it not be the height of irony if the first uplifted species on Earth were a bunch of rats?

It sounds like comedy but when you think about it… Unlike networking a bunch of computers with no underlying intuitive capacity- rats have problem solving ability. They are aware of themselves even if only on a small scale.

What would we do if this big networked ‘Organic Computer’ suddenly said ‘No, don’t unplug us… We need to have a talk about cats’? Exhilarating but a little frightening too. Like standing on the edge of a huge precipice.

Now that is what I was thinking of, Amara. Once you begin linking one rat dyad to another, it will lead to a rat sentience that will believe in the Monad. With the power of this linked mind, they will create their own rat god.