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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1481697
human neurons were faster at learning than neurons from mice. Might there also be differences in performance depending on whose neurons are used? Might Apple and Google be able to make lightning-fast computers using neurons from our best and brightest today? Would someone be able to secure tissues from deceased genius’s like Albert Einstein to make specialised limited-edition neural computers? Such questions are highly speculative but touch on broader themes of exploitation and compensation. Consider the scandal regarding Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cells were used extensively in medical and commercial research without her knowledge and consent. Henrietta’s cells are still used in applications which generate huge amounts of revenue for pharmaceutical companies (including recently to develop COVID vaccines. The Lacks family still has not received any compensation. If a donor’s neurons end up being used in products like the imaginary Nyooro, should they be entitled to some of the profit made from those products? Another key ethical consideration for neural computers is whether they could develop some form of consciousness and experience pain. Would neural computers be more likely to have experiences than silicon-based ones? In the Pong experiment, Dishbrain is exposed to noisy and unpredictable stimuli when it gets a response wrong (the paddle misses the ball), and predictable stimuli when it gets it right. It is at least possible that a system like this might start to experience the unpredictable stimuli as pain, and the predictable stimuli as pleasure. Chief scientific officer Brett Kagan for Cortical Labs said: Fully informed donor consent is of paramount importance. Any donor should have the opportunity to reach an agreement for compensation as part of this process and their bodily autonomy respected without coercion.“ As recently discussed in a study there is no evidence neurons on a dish have any qualitative or conscious experience so cannot be distressed and without pain receptors, cannot feel pain. Neurons have evolved to process information of all kinds – being left completely unstimulated, as currently done all over the world in labs, is not a natural state for a neuron. All this work does is allow neurons to behave as nature intended at their most basic level. Humans have used animals to do physical labour for thousands of years, despite often leading to negative experiences for the animals. Would using organic computers for cognitive labour be any more ethically problematic than using an ox to pull a cart? We are in the early stages of neural computing and have time to think through these issues. We must do so before products like the "Nyooro” move from science fiction to the shops.