Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Rat-o-pilot

Grace sent me a an article onDiscovery about using rat neural cells to fly an F-22 flight simulator. Over time this tissue network learned to fly the plane straight and level through a variety of weather conditions.

This is fascinating research, leading into man-machine interfaces, smarter neural networks, and all sorts of other fun stuff. The big ethical question, however, is at what point do we consider these devices "alive"? At some point, do we need to talk about what ethical treatment of your computer is?

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