8 ms·

So... where exactly do the neurons come from? Are these donated neurons or grown in a lab from samples? This seems... questionable at best. Not really comforta

So... where exactly do the neurons come from? Are these donated neurons or grown in a lab from samples? This seems... questionable at best. Not really comfortable with the idea of this...

artninja1988 2y ago
You can grow them from stem cells.
Loughla 2y ago
Maybe I'm too cautious, but - from what I understand our research into consciousness isn't very thorough. Meaning, we do not know the causes and thresholds for consciousness. So, to me, it seems like until that threshold is very clearly established, any work with 'organoids' is hazardous at best, but more than likely just wildly inappropriate. Am I being a luddite?
- somenameforme 2y ago
  In my opinion, consciousness is a philosophical issue, not a scientific one. You have no way of truly knowing whether any other entity, including myself, has a consciousness. The interesting thing is that even if we imagine some ultra-advanced tech where you could somehow brain swap with somebody, and you still had a consciousness, you still wouldn't really know if they had a consciousness because you end up begging the question there. Did you simply maintain your own consciousness, or did it come from the new brain?
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Yup. Nobody reading this comment knows if there's a human by the keyboard. Heck, if you go for A J Ayer and "there is a thought now", then even I don't really know if I'm the real me, or if I'm instead just a vision-and-text model seeing the image of the phone and a finger swiping over the keyboard, to be switched off when the "real me" is satisfied the output proves some point. You may argue that I can perceive myself and therefore know that I exist (I certainly took that approach at school contrasting the previous Ayer quote with "cogito ergo sum"), but even that doesn't tell me that what I experience as consciousness is what you experience as consciousness. Indeed, things in the same category as aphantasia, sleep deprivation, and excessive caffeine consumption, all suggest to me that we all have very different experiences of being conscious at the best of times and even without such thought experiments.
    - DontchaKnowit 2y ago
      What do you think is more likely, every other human and probably most animals experience consciousness in much the same way that you do, or you are unique and special and your consciousness is much more lucid than everyone else? I have always been so puzzled by the line of thinking you present here. It is clear that everyone else responds to pain in much the same way, everyone else responds to lack of food, water, social interaction, love, etc In much the same way, etc. The differences are at the fringes and your examples of sleep deprivation and caffeine consumption only serve to reinforce that : doesn't matter how much coffee I drink or how little sleep I have, its going to hurt if my bones are broken just like it would for you. I think this line of thinking is a cute little thought experiment but it really falls apart quickly - if we operated like we didn't know if other people were conscious to the same degree we were, then we would behave abhorrently. And largely, we don't. So even you if intellectually will posit that you are the only truly conscious person, or that maybe even you are not conscious, you do not actually behave this way in practice. Obviously
      - dbspin 2y ago
        I'd go further than this - consciousness only exists in social context. Or in a dynamic if you prefer. Children raised alone, or suffering extreme neglect (e.g.: infamous Genie case) suffer enormous cognitive impairments, including language acquisition and theory of mind. Prisoners kept in isolation frequently descend into psychosis and suffer measurable neuronal shrinkage. Even moderate social isolation is correlated with depression. Consciousness emerges and is maintained in the context of other people - and not just individuals but communities whose language, techniques of adaptive living (i.e.: traditions), and storytelling about the word, are carried intra-individually within clan and affiliate groups. In the postmodern era those communities can be parasocial or virtual to an extent, fictive or reenacted, but they're not optional for the continued coherence of self. There is no 'I' except in relation to the other, moreover the self doesn't become fully individuated without being witnessed and held by the other - caregivers in early childhood, friends in adolescence, social roles in adulthood. All of this would be impossible if our phenomenology wasn't broadly similar. All societies have identified social roles for those few whose inner world isn't commensurate with the collective - in modernity we call them schizophrenics.
  - haswell 2y ago
    > consciousness is a philosophical issue, not a scientific one But surely it is both? It may be true that philosophy is the only line of inquiry that allows us to explore very far due to a lack of scientific progress, but but even a purely philosophical exploration has scientific implications, and even if we don’t have scientific answers in practice, that doesn’t means that there are no answers in principle.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Arguably the single most critical tenet of science is falsifiability. For something like consciousness, falsifiability is completely out of the question as we have no way to evaluate it whatsoever, let alone falsify claims made one way or the other.
      - haswell 2y ago
        Critical in terms of the scientific method itself, sure. But the unfalsifiability of consciousness only points to the hardness of the problem and the current limitations of science, not the importance of understanding consciousness and its implications. Put another way, even if science can’t currently tell us anything solid about consciousness, the implications of what it can’t tell us are still highly relevant to the kinds of science we do, e.g. we still treat other humans as if they’re conscious and this forms the basis for most ethical decision making.
        somenameforme 2y ago
        There's a difference between hard and impossible. Trying to create any sort of formal ideas around something that cannot be measured, quantified, or evaluated in any way, shape, or fashion (and may likely never be able to be so) is simply not possible. It's like trying to create a scientific framework for a God. It just doesn't work. As for ethics, one point we may differ is that I don't see consciousness as inherently leading to anything. Whether awful, or great, people have consciousnesses, or not, does not change my view of them.
  - jhedwards 2y ago
    Well, you can give someone anesthesia, which turns most of the neurons in the brain off, and then you lose consciousness. The fact that we can target the brain specifically to turn consciousness on and off seems to suggest that it's a physical property of brain function, not just a philosophical issue.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      You're begging the question, because you're assuming that not only do I have a consciousness but that it's turned on and off by the brain. If I don't happen to have a consciousness then clearly anesthesia is not going to regulate it in any fashion.
    - thornewolf 2y ago
      this relies on the fact that consciousness is an overloaded term. being conscious (awake) refers to something different than being conscious (thinking) which may both be unrelated to the brain being on or off, which again may be unrelated to the capability to have experiences. all of these use the same word, they each may or may not be the same thing.
- charlieo88 2y ago
  How do you think they should determine the threshold of consciousness?
- Engineering-MD 2y ago
  It could be argued that a similar level of caution should be applied to artificial neural networks. I always find the discrepancy in application of ethics between biology and technology to be an interestingly wide gulf.
amphitoky 2y ago
they tend to be from donated skin cells, in fact, which are reprogrammed to produce brain tissues. see for example https://www.nature.com/articles/nprot.2014.158 https://www.nature.com/articles/nprot.2014.158
- eadmund 2y ago
  Donated by the human whose cells those were, by someone else? That Nature article seems to discuss both approaches, using both induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells — which of course are not donated by the human being which they once were part of.
  - finalspark 2y ago
    We only use IPSC. Details of the protocol to turn them into neurons and glial cells are described in our publication. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/artificial-intelligence/articles/10.3389/frai.2024.1376042/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/artificial-intelligence...
throwaway24124 2y ago
They're grown from stem cells. Neuro-ethics (especially the ethics around using brain organoids) is an entire field of research. Although brain organoids exhibit neural connections and electrical activity, they have so far failed to form even basic synaptic circuits — without which consciousness is probably impossible. But of course we should take every precaution to ensure that they DON'T form consciousness. But that's still a ways away.
- hellojesus 2y ago
  What's the harm if they do form consciousness? Is the concern they will develop a willpower and work towards freeing themselves, or is it just a "don't enslave sentient beings" thing?
  - seanicus 2y ago
    Ever read "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream?"

So... where exactly do the neurons come from? Are these donated neurons or grown in a lab from samples? This seems... questionable at best. Not really comfortable with the idea of this...

artninja1988 2y ago

You can grow them from stem cells.

Loughla 2y ago

Maybe I'm too cautious, but - from what I understand our research into consciousness isn't very thorough. Meaning, we do not know the causes and thresholds for consciousness. So, to me, it seems like until that threshold is very clearly established, any work with 'organoids' is hazardous at best, but more than likely just wildly inappropriate. Am I being a luddite?

somenameforme 2y ago
In my opinion, consciousness is a philosophical issue, not a scientific one. You have no way of truly knowing whether any other entity, including myself, has a consciousness. The interesting thing is that even if we imagine some ultra-advanced tech where you could somehow brain swap with somebody, and you still had a consciousness, you still wouldn't really know if they had a consciousness because you end up begging the question there. Did you simply maintain your own consciousness, or did it come from the new brain?
- ben_w 2y ago
  Yup. Nobody reading this comment knows if there's a human by the keyboard. Heck, if you go for A J Ayer and "there is a thought now", then even I don't really know if I'm the real me, or if I'm instead just a vision-and-text model seeing the image of the phone and a finger swiping over the keyboard, to be switched off when the "real me" is satisfied the output proves some point. You may argue that I can perceive myself and therefore know that I exist (I certainly took that approach at school contrasting the previous Ayer quote with "cogito ergo sum"), but even that doesn't tell me that what I experience as consciousness is what you experience as consciousness. Indeed, things in the same category as aphantasia, sleep deprivation, and excessive caffeine consumption, all suggest to me that we all have very different experiences of being conscious at the best of times and even without such thought experiments.
  - DontchaKnowit 2y ago
    What do you think is more likely, every other human and probably most animals experience consciousness in much the same way that you do, or you are unique and special and your consciousness is much more lucid than everyone else? I have always been so puzzled by the line of thinking you present here. It is clear that everyone else responds to pain in much the same way, everyone else responds to lack of food, water, social interaction, love, etc In much the same way, etc. The differences are at the fringes and your examples of sleep deprivation and caffeine consumption only serve to reinforce that : doesn't matter how much coffee I drink or how little sleep I have, its going to hurt if my bones are broken just like it would for you. I think this line of thinking is a cute little thought experiment but it really falls apart quickly - if we operated like we didn't know if other people were conscious to the same degree we were, then we would behave abhorrently. And largely, we don't. So even you if intellectually will posit that you are the only truly conscious person, or that maybe even you are not conscious, you do not actually behave this way in practice. Obviously
    - dbspin 2y ago
      I'd go further than this - consciousness only exists in social context. Or in a dynamic if you prefer. Children raised alone, or suffering extreme neglect (e.g.: infamous Genie case) suffer enormous cognitive impairments, including language acquisition and theory of mind. Prisoners kept in isolation frequently descend into psychosis and suffer measurable neuronal shrinkage. Even moderate social isolation is correlated with depression. Consciousness emerges and is maintained in the context of other people - and not just individuals but communities whose language, techniques of adaptive living (i.e.: traditions), and storytelling about the word, are carried intra-individually within clan and affiliate groups. In the postmodern era those communities can be parasocial or virtual to an extent, fictive or reenacted, but they're not optional for the continued coherence of self. There is no 'I' except in relation to the other, moreover the self doesn't become fully individuated without being witnessed and held by the other - caregivers in early childhood, friends in adolescence, social roles in adulthood. All of this would be impossible if our phenomenology wasn't broadly similar. All societies have identified social roles for those few whose inner world isn't commensurate with the collective - in modernity we call them schizophrenics.
- haswell 2y ago
  > consciousness is a philosophical issue, not a scientific one But surely it is both? It may be true that philosophy is the only line of inquiry that allows us to explore very far due to a lack of scientific progress, but but even a purely philosophical exploration has scientific implications, and even if we don’t have scientific answers in practice, that doesn’t means that there are no answers in principle.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Arguably the single most critical tenet of science is falsifiability. For something like consciousness, falsifiability is completely out of the question as we have no way to evaluate it whatsoever, let alone falsify claims made one way or the other.
    - haswell 2y ago
      Critical in terms of the scientific method itself, sure. But the unfalsifiability of consciousness only points to the hardness of the problem and the current limitations of science, not the importance of understanding consciousness and its implications. Put another way, even if science can’t currently tell us anything solid about consciousness, the implications of what it can’t tell us are still highly relevant to the kinds of science we do, e.g. we still treat other humans as if they’re conscious and this forms the basis for most ethical decision making.
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        There's a difference between hard and impossible. Trying to create any sort of formal ideas around something that cannot be measured, quantified, or evaluated in any way, shape, or fashion (and may likely never be able to be so) is simply not possible. It's like trying to create a scientific framework for a God. It just doesn't work. As for ethics, one point we may differ is that I don't see consciousness as inherently leading to anything. Whether awful, or great, people have consciousnesses, or not, does not change my view of them.
- jhedwards 2y ago
  Well, you can give someone anesthesia, which turns most of the neurons in the brain off, and then you lose consciousness. The fact that we can target the brain specifically to turn consciousness on and off seems to suggest that it's a physical property of brain function, not just a philosophical issue.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    You're begging the question, because you're assuming that not only do I have a consciousness but that it's turned on and off by the brain. If I don't happen to have a consciousness then clearly anesthesia is not going to regulate it in any fashion.
  - thornewolf 2y ago
    this relies on the fact that consciousness is an overloaded term. being conscious (awake) refers to something different than being conscious (thinking) which may both be unrelated to the brain being on or off, which again may be unrelated to the capability to have experiences. all of these use the same word, they each may or may not be the same thing.
charlieo88 2y ago
How do you think they should determine the threshold of consciousness?
Engineering-MD 2y ago
It could be argued that a similar level of caution should be applied to artificial neural networks. I always find the discrepancy in application of ethics between biology and technology to be an interestingly wide gulf.

amphitoky 2y ago

they tend to be from donated skin cells, in fact, which are reprogrammed to produce brain tissues. see for example https://www.nature.com/articles/nprot.2014.158 https://www.nature.com/articles/nprot.2014.158

eadmund 2y ago
Donated by the human whose cells those were, by someone else? That Nature article seems to discuss both approaches, using both induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells — which of course are not donated by the human being which they once were part of.
- finalspark 2y ago
  We only use IPSC. Details of the protocol to turn them into neurons and glial cells are described in our publication. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/artificial-intelligence/articles/10.3389/frai.2024.1376042/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/artificial-intelligence...

throwaway24124 2y ago

They're grown from stem cells. Neuro-ethics (especially the ethics around using brain organoids) is an entire field of research. Although brain organoids exhibit neural connections and electrical activity, they have so far failed to form even basic synaptic circuits — without which consciousness is probably impossible. But of course we should take every precaution to ensure that they DON'T form consciousness. But that's still a ways away.

hellojesus 2y ago
What's the harm if they do form consciousness? Is the concern they will develop a willpower and work towards freeing themselves, or is it just a "don't enslave sentient beings" thing?
- seanicus 2y ago
  Ever read "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream?"