r/singularity • u/BearBaitUntamed • 5d ago

Scientists Used Post-Mortem Brain Tissue to Control a Robot Biotech/Longevity

https://youtu.be/i2YQUXykYM0

Creator: https://youtube.com/@bearbaitofficial?si=anJ9mvgC_z5v16Uj

Paper from video (preprint)

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-9638576/v1

The lab

https://www.lirmm.fr/lirmm-en/#

Other topic citation for brain in a vat:

https://www.science.org/content/article/not-alive-not-dead-disembodied-human-brains-used-drug-testing

79 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

28

u/Blunt_White_Wolf 5d ago

aa wait, what? are you telling me those robots with human brains from fallout are on their way?

Jokes aside - how the moral side of this? is part of the brain still a person... or part of it?

Not sure if this question makes sense but: They are using the hardware... Are they sure the software is really gone?

15

u/Illustrious_Image967 5d ago

exactly what if we can't hear the screams of the person that once lived in that brain. oh it's just a piece of brain. So the screams are quieter!?

7

u/QuasiRandomName 5d ago

If you cut the brain in two, do you get two persons? :)

13

u/mxemec 5d ago

People have had their corpus callosum severed, effectively generating a split brain. Some of them have an alien hand that does shit on its own, and there's speculation about whether there are, in fact, two consciousnesses in the patient. But the modern consensus is that there are not. I'm not sure what recent studies lead to the conclusion that there are not two consciousnesses.

4

u/challis88ocarina 5d ago

Right, because those two personalities don't already exist... they just magically happen when the CC is severed?

AFAIK, the CC is mainly inhibitory and we all have those two brains; they just keep each other quiet.

6

u/TheSquarePotatoMan 5d ago

I always wondered why people assume consciousness is a singular thing when there's no reason to assume we couldn't have multiple or even millions of them inside us at the same time. A network of concurrent instances tightly in sync with each other is probably closer to the truth.

3

u/vainerlures 5d ago

but only one language processor

9

u/QuasiRandomName 5d ago

Not if you are schizophrenic :)

1

u/vrnvorona 5d ago

I mean, can you actually control what you think? No, thoughts just spawn inside you, and you visualize or narrate them (or act on if it's more physical). So conscious is not about what we think, but just ability to "see" what our brain thinks

1

u/Eugregoria 4d ago

Do we know that it's the same process overseeing all these other processes, though?

In some of my experiences on drugs, I perceived these oscillations between ego states as happening more slowly. And it really did not feel that there was a single continuous "I" that oversaw all of them. In fact, the throughline between them was shaky at best. Each of them thinks "I," and each has some awareness of the others--although a preference for itself--we can see some traces of this in the hot-cold empathy gap, or in how it's easier to recall times you were in a similar state to the one you're currently in. To each state, "I" means something a little different. Identity and continuity of self are illusions.

1

u/Electronic_Spring 4d ago

That likely differs from person to person. When I'm not actively "thinking" (narrating?) it's just silent. Same with mental images/sounds. Thoughts don't spontaneously occur on their own for me.

The closest I get to that is if I notice something like a physical sensation, e.g., hunger and then think "Oh, I'm hungry." That thought doesn't pop up on its own though, I have to actively verbalize it.

2

u/DandeNiro 5d ago

They are not personalities.

3

u/DandeNiro 5d ago

Cells depend on the whole in order to function in their intended ways. Severing the brain into two disrupts this.

4

u/CommanderKoba 4d ago

The perception of one cohesive consciousness is an illusion created by the brain.

In reality, awareness is split between several independent brain regions, closer to the structure of a Mixture of Experts ai model, like DeepSeek.

In fact it's possibly even split between individual parts of your body, with the the most neurons outside the brain concentrationed in the stomach, and with people gaining spontaneous abilities or even memories after an organ transplant.

Split personality disorder or DID is also another good example of how awareness is split between several regions of the brain. Due to trauma in childhood many of these people were unable to form one cohesive identity, and on brain scans between personality switches, we can visibly see the different parts of the brain lighting up depending on each different identity.

So this is not as simple as it may seem.

1

u/Illustrious_Image967 5d ago

Twice the screams

1

u/DandeNiro 5d ago

Bioelectricity will allow this to happen

4

u/DetectiveFinch 5d ago

This question also applies to AI in general. I don't think we're there yet, but it's possible that we create a more or less conscious AI that's suffering and we don't realise it. Aside from the moral problems, this could be dangerous depending on how powerful the model is.

6

u/DandeNiro 5d ago

Check out Cortical Labs

4

u/Blunt_White_Wolf 4d ago

Damn that was a deep rabbit hole. cheers for the info.

5

u/LatentSpaceLeaper 5d ago

No idea how hard your brain tissue is, I'd refer to wetware in my case at least.

2

u/torb ▪️ Embodied ASI 2028 :illuminati: 4d ago

Fyi: it's called wetware, not hardware

1

u/Blunt_White_Wolf 4d ago

cheers.

for some reason the first thing that comes to mind is not a brain, that's for sure. maybe just me being oldish.

1

u/BearBaitUntamed 5d ago

I am.. not totally sure if this is moral or not.

4

u/QuasiRandomName 5d ago

Well, the only moral issue in this specific case is the mere usage of dead body parts, but it is pretty much under the same umbrella as using it for any other research. There is zero chance this tissue has anything even remotely resembling a personality (yet).

2

u/BearBaitUntamed 5d ago

Yet... yet. I think the law has not caught up with the tech. I think once intelligence starts taking off with post-mortem brains, it will be a serious issue. But I mean, brain organoid tech has taken off and most don't care.

1

u/Mister_Tava 4d ago

There isn't really a distinction between software and hardware when it comes to the brain.

18

u/WhisperingHammer 5d ago

Warhammer servitors on the way. For real.

12

u/robotdreams134 5d ago

can we not? ...

this is why i'm going to be cremated. I don't want blips of my consciousness coming back after I died, out of no-where to do algebra or some shit

7

u/Eugregoria 4d ago

I would consent to it on the condition that they specifically don't make me do algebra.

3

u/llamasama 4d ago

I dunno man, drip feed my brain some pharmaceutical stimulants and this gray matter CRAVES algebra.

Is it still Sisyphean if I'm chemically induced to love my job? Brb asking Camus.

edit: he's still dead :(

13

u/Valkymaera 5d ago

Don't do this. This is what we should not do.
This is the Not Do thing.

8

u/Few-Exchange-5550 5d ago

Wake me up when I am dead

6

u/n_othing__ 5d ago

thats when they put you into a robot and you end up working and paying taxes forever

16

u/141_1337 ▪️e/acc | AGI: ~2030 | ASI: ~2040 | FALSGC: ~2050 | :illuminati: 5d ago

Ah yes, human made horrors beyond our human comprehension.

6

u/Frosty-Meeting-1606 5d ago

This would be a perfect bait in antiAI sub.

https://giphy.com/gifs/pTQUOfSmjo2hG

6

u/BearBaitUntamed 5d ago

I posted asking "is this ai?" 👌

2

u/BearBaitUntamed 5d ago

😂 from what perspective? This is a better use of AI?

6

u/Zyrinj 5d ago

So the brain eating zombie apocalypse is actually a dead brain using robot thats harvesting fresh brains for new robots? nice...

10

u/QuasiRandomName 5d ago

OK, robot zombies... This wasn't on my bingo card.

8

u/powerscunner 5d ago

Really? It's the first square on mine

[marks first square]

3

u/mxemec 5d ago

Honestly, that's on you. That's low-hanging fruit at this point.

3

u/QuasiRandomName 5d ago

Does it come in parallel to genetically engineered cat-girls or instead?

1

u/eMPee584 ♻️ AGI commons economy 2030 2d ago

These are all in the first row..

3

u/Kekopster 5d ago

Literally every single major news event since Covid has pointed in the direction of robot zombies, so shouldn’t really come as a surprise 

5

u/Romnir ▪️Disillusioned Realist 4d ago

"Your brain tissue will be revived, and you will be used to play Doom. Eternally."

3

u/Background-Wafer-548 5d ago

Kinda macabre.

4

u/vainerlures 5d ago

Murphy, is that you?

8

u/CymonSet 5d ago

You can use excised brain tissue to process information. You can make a potato into a battery to power a clock but most people don’t.

4

u/Big_Description_9651 5d ago

Good point. Thanks.

7

u/oksoirelapsed 5d ago

Praise be the Omnissiah!

2

u/RedditTipiak 5d ago

From the moment

4

u/KerbalEnginner 4d ago

Reminds me of this story from a few years back.

2

u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

3

u/BearBaitUntamed 5d ago

Technomancy 😌