[rl3]

2015 (my words):

>Obviously the aforementioned experiment would be completely unethical, but it's interesting to ponder it as a hypothetical - that today we may have the capability to bootstrap a superintelligent machine using biology as a computational shortcut. But we can't, because ethics. [0]

2020 (article):

>Chong said the pair were interested in the idea of artificial general intelligence (AGI for short)—A.I. that has the flexibility to perform almost any kind of task as well or better than humans. “Everyone is racing to build AGI, but the only true AGI we know of is biological intelligence, human intelligence,” Chong said. He noted the pair figured the only way to get human-level intelligence was to use human neurons.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9973122

[jimmaswell]

The human neurons are sourced entirely ethically, from skin cells to stem cells that make neurons somehow.

[Balgair]

Neuron creation is in the same pathway of the epithelium (skin). Meaning that neurons are more closely related to skin cells than to your liver cells. By bathing the cells in select biochemicals, you can make their daughter cells 'regress' back into earlier forms. Basically, walking the daughter cells back along the development path. These are called stem cells. Your bone marrow is chock full of blood-stem cells that turn into platelets and blood cells and other stuff. Currently, we can walk these cells back a long ways, like from blood cell to blood-stem cell. We're still working on how to go all the way back to cells that can turn into any cell that is chosen (pluripotent stem cells). All this lab is doing is taking skin cells and 'regressing' them back into stem cells that have neurons in their future path. They take biochemicals, apply them to the skin cells, and then apply other biochemicals to these stem cells to make them into neurons. We've been doing this for a few decades now in various species.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis

[mandelken]

If you can recreate (part of) a human brain through stem cells or any other way , then why would this not be a human? People with half a brain (after an accident, say) are still people. Cloned people (twins) are still people. Babies born from artificial insemination are still people. It's not up to these researcher to determine what is allowed to do with human brain tissue. Very troubling and unethical

[golergka]

Aborted fetuses have 1/1000th of a human brain, but we (as in, the mainstream political opinion on HN) don't consider them human. And being in OP would have much less than that.

[andai]

I wonder if that logic goes the other way. If we succeed in creating a being with intelligence equivalent to 100 humans, would experimenting on it be 100x as unethical as experimenting on humans?

[snakeboy]

As far as I am aware, intelligence is not the variable we care about with respect to ethical experimentation. Rather, consciousness. All humans are assumed equally conscious, while clearly not equally intelligent.

Similarly, we understand (at least mammalian) brain structure well enough to identify animals like cows to probably have relatively minimal conscious lived experience, even if they have ample processing power, i.e. "intelligence".

So at least in examples from nature, there is no reason to believe that intelligence and conscious lived experience need be correlated meaningfully.

So in your example, we would need some way to quantify the degree to which it's conscious, rather than intelligent.

[h0l0cube]

> Similarly, we understand (at least mammalian) brain structure well enough to identify animals like cows to probably have relatively minimal conscious lived experience, even if they have ample processing power, i.e. "intelligence".

Do you have any sources to back that up? As far as I'm aware, the 'hard problem of consciousness' is still 'hard'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

[rl3]

>The human neurons are sourced entirely ethically, from skin cells to stem cells that make neurons somehow.

Yes, and I'd wager the scale at which their experiment is currently operating is very likely ethical too. In fact, I'm not saying anything they're doing right now is unethical. My use of the term unethical was in context of hypothetical experiments on a scale that would make Dr. Frankenstein's stomach churn.

That said, my only point was that it's disconcerting to see these people—who are currently growing tiny brains in a vat—state that they're very interested in AGI come to fruition via way of using human neurons.

[meowface]

As long as they treat the brains in vats with the same ethics as we treat human newborns, as soon as they believe there's any possibility it could be conscious, what's the problem?

(The problem of course is the possibility of it becoming conscious before we realize it, but it's very up in the air to what degree that's actually a risk. My intuition is that we'll see clear signs of it before it even fully forms.)

[rl3]

>My intuition is that we'll see clear signs of it before it even fully forms.

Probably, though I wouldn't be so sure we'll know what to make of more complex computer-brain hybrids:

"These neurons are then embedded in a nourishing liquid medium on top of a specialized metal-oxide chip containing a grid of 22,000 tiny electrodes that enable programmers to provide electrical inputs to the neurons and also sense their outputs."

[buzzkillington]

If it makes you feel any better I'll introduce you to the brain vat basilisk. It tortures anyone who doesn't contribute to it's creation for an eternity, and as the name suggests it's a brain in a vat. So now the only ethical thing to do is to work on creating it and telling everyone else about it.

[battery_cowboy]

Do we know enough about consciousness to ethically put a "brain in a vat" yet?

[SuoDuanDao]

I think the time to have that discussion is when the volume of neural tissue we're talking about is similar to a mouse's brain, until then it seems too detached from the realities on the ground to be much use.

[battery_cowboy]

I think that's too late, because by then we might make great leaps and show this technology is feasible, and you know as well as I that it's hard to put the genie back into the bottle at that point. Well all just ignore it and pretend we know there's no one inside.