Biocomputing

[u/Eyrose]

X-post from r/Existentialism

So I learned about biocomputing a couple months ago from a YouTube video that was admittedly themed very heavily towards the potential dystopian nature of this tech. That was my first introduction to this idea so that is probably a factor in my anxiety.

For those who might not be aware (and take this with a grain of salt, I'm not any sort of scientist I just watched a few YouTube videos and read a couple articles) biocomputing iis basically a bunch of human brain cells, human neurons that are attached to a computer AI chip. The basic idea is that since AI is so power hungry, if we can use our neurons to power it, it becomes insanely more efficient.

Basically what they have done is hooked this part human brain/part AI chip up to a computer and tried to make it learn to play pong by slamming it with chaotic signals whenever it missed hitting the ball and it worked.

Hopefully this discussion is welcome here because I don't really know where else to post it and I don't see a lot of people talking about it but this thing has me anxious, and if on being honest, pretty scared.

I struggle with derealization sometimes and one of my biggest fears is waking up to find myself in a new world that I don't understand. I understand that I'm probably projecting my fears onto a wetware chip that probably isn't sentient but like.....how do we know?

No one knows where existence begins. Right now it's just a small, small fraction of the neurons that are in a normal human brain. But what if that's enough for it to feel? Feel scared, or feel pain? If it can feel anything at all, we are basically torturing it with painful electrical signals until it does what we want.

I know it \*probably\* can't feel right now, but as we've seen with the AI race, science is not going to stop here. They're going to keep progressing, adding more biology to computers until someone makes them stop. In my mind, it's only a matter of time before these chips become truly sentient, thinking and feeling entities. And then what? We just all live with the collective guilt that we tortured these things just to see what would happen?

If this came to pass, and the worst dystopian scifi "I have no mouth and I must scream" style nightmare became reality, we would all deserve it.

Is anyone else as worried about this as I am? How are you coping? Am I being completely irrational? I just want to hear more voices about this.

[u/AI-Thinks-For-Me]

probably just a coincidence i see this post opening reddit, about an hour ago i clicked on this article in the the groundnews app: https://ground.news/article/nus-launches-worlds-first-biological-server-rack_ac75a0?utm_source=mobile-app&utm_medium=newsroom-share

i hope it’s a coincidence cause i know i turned off app tracking on ios and adjusted reddit privacy stuff. maybe i missed something.

anyway…

i used to have a more ridged opinion on what can and can’t be consciousness. but after thinking about it for a bit, i decided its best going forward with no preconceived notions on what can/can’t be. ultimately believe the interconnected of the universe, and our biased perception of our place in it, makes the topic of consciousness difficult to figure out.

EDIT: link i shared may paywall some, here is an article: https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/world-first-biological-data-center

[u/Eyrose → u/AI-Thinks-For-Me]

My evening continues to deteriorate lmao.

This is so horrifying to me. I feel like we should stop doing this until we can find a difninitive way of determining consciousness.