Last year, Monash University scientists created the "DishBrain" – a semi-biological computer chip with some 800,000 human and mouse brain cells lab-grown into its electrodes. Demonstrating something like sentience, it learned to play Pong within five minutes.
Great, but concerning…
I’m aware that we’re currently capable of reading the mind to some limited extent, using MRI-like machines and machine learning models trained on certain brain signals, but being able to literally utilise a brain for ‘arbitrary’ processing is on another level entirely 😳
I wonder what else this is capable of doing or running, and the expected shelf life in particular, seeing as it’s basically biological matter that I’m assuming can age.
Let’s hope these researchers keep things responsible and don’t try to run a text generation model on it 😅 /s
I don’t know if you understand what military funded means… It’s basically the military paying these guys to make something they can use in the military.
There is no doubt in my mind at least that all cute robots, useful AI, and other new things are just the public tip of the iceberg kind of a thing, to make people think it’s something positive and not be afraid.
The most advanced things will be used by law enforcement and military to control and monitor the populations in secret.
So while I like tech, I’m also convinced that humans are going to use it to make the planet horrible to live on, to the degree that “don’t get children” is the best advice ever.