http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080813192458.ud84hj9h&show_article=1I suppose it is inevitable, but I find this quite disturbing. Scientists have made a robot that is controlled by signals from rat brain cells (not a whole brain, but bunches of cells from rat fetal tissue). Doesn't appear very effective at anything so far, and when I think about it, I can't think of a real reason to object to this, but it still disturbs me! I suppose the argument in favor is that we will learn a lot about consciousness and how learning takes place, by seeing what happens as the brain learns and develops and we figure out more effective ways to organize the brain and hook it up to its robot body. Or maybe that's an argument against doing it! Learning that stuff could lead to some scary scenarios.
