Brain Cells in a Dish Fly Fighter Plane"> Brain Cells in a Dish Fly Fighter Plane

Friday’s Guest Rant from Cyrus, Our Intern: Yesterday it was genetically modified cats, and today rats are flying planes. Researchers at the University of Florida extracted neurons from rat embryos then placed them on a grid of gold electrodes. The cells grew, creating a “live computation device”. The completed grid of over 25000 neurons was then attached to a flight simulator, where algorithms written by the researchers were used by the cells to determine the status of the plane in different conditions, issuing corrections if the brain “felt” they were needed.

I like this in one way, as anything that can save a human life or save us time or money is a great advancement in technology. However, I am repelled by the fact that we are close to entrusting things to “rat brains” that were previously handled by humans. It seems that we are just making our own species obsolete, making it so that we are never needed, never required. Also, how effective can any algorithm written by a human truly be? I would hate to be the person with my life on the line, when the “rat brain” makes the wrong decision. Our brain is not perfect, but I would rather lose my life to a real human mistake, rather than spending my time in the afterlife wondering if my life would have been saved if the rat had been running Linux instead of Windows Rat.

While advancements such as this are welcome, we need to take the time to really think out the consequences and decide if we truly want to trust something important to a rat´s brain controlled by algorithms written by fault-prone humans.

What do you think?