Technology companies produce computer chips with human cells - is this ethical?

While silicon computers have changed the face of society, they are still dwarfed by the brains of most animals. For example, a cat's brain stores 1,000 times more data than an average iPad and can use that information a million times faster. The human brain, with its trillion neural connections, is capable of 15 quintillion operations per second

By Julian Savolescu Visiting Professor of Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Institute for Children's Research; Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, University of Melbourne; The Ohiro Chair of Practical Ethics, University of Oxford; Christopher Gyngell, Research Fellow in Biomedical Ethics, University of Melbourne andTsutomo Sawai Associate Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University

The year is 2030 and we are at the biggest technology conference in the world, CES in Las Vegas. A crowd gathers to watch a major tech company unveil its new smartphone. The CEO takes the stage and announces the Nyooro, which contains the most powerful processor ever seen in a phone. The Neuro can perform an astonishing quintillion operations per second, a thousand times faster than smartphone models in 2020. It's also ten times more energy efficient and has a battery that lasts ten days.

A journalist asks: "What technological advancement has enabled such huge gains in performance?" The CEO replies: "We created a new biological chip using human neurons grown in the laboratory. These biochips are better than silicon chips because they can change their internal structure, adapt to the user's usage pattern and lead to huge gains in efficiency."

Another journalist asks: "Are there no ethical concerns about computers using human brain matter?"

Although the name and scenario are fictional, this is a question we have to deal with now. in December 2021, Cortical Labs at their base In Melbourne, they grew groups of nerve cells (brain cells) that were integrated into a computer chip. The resulting hybrid chip works because both the brain and neurons share a common language: electricity.

In silicon computers, electrical signals travel along metal wires that connect different components to each other. In brains, neurons communicate with each other using electrical signals across synapses (junctions between nerve cells). In Cortical Labs' Dishbrain system, nerve cells are grown on silicon chips. These neurons act like the wires in the system, connecting different components. The main advantage of this approach is that the neurons can change their shape, grow, replicate or die in response to the demands of the system.

Dishbrain can learn to play the arcade pong game faster than conventional AI systems. The developers of Dishbrain They said: "Nothing like this has ever existed before... This is a completely new state of being. A fusion of silicon and neuron".

Cortical Labs believes its hybrid chips could be the key to the kinds of complex logic that today's computers and artificial intelligence can't produce. Another start-up that produces computers from neurons grown in the laboratory, Koniko, believes their technology will revolutionize several industries, including agriculture, healthcare, military technology and airport security. Other types of organic computers are also in the early stages of development.

While silicon computers have changed the face of society, they are still dwarfed by the brains of most animals. For example, a cat's brain stores 1,000 times more data than Average iPad And can use this information a million times faster. The human brain, with its trillion neural connections, is capable of 15 quintillion operations per second.

This can only be achieved today by Massive supercomputers which use huge amounts of energy. The human brain uses only about 20 watts of energy, or about as much as a small light bulb would require. 34 coal power plants producing 500 megawatt hours to store the same amount of data contained in one central human brain Modern data storage.

Companies do not need brain tissue samples from donors, but can simply grow the neurons they need in the lab from skin cells normal using stem cell technologies. Scientists can engineer cells from blood samples or skin biopsies into a type of stem cell that can become any type of cell in the human body.

However, this raises questions about donor consent. Do people who provide tissue samples for research and technological development know that it may be used to make neural computers? Do they need to know this for their consent to be valid?

People will undoubtedly be much more willing to donate skin cells to research than cells from their own brain tissue. one The barriers to brain donation is that the mind is seen as related to your identity. But in a world where we can grow mini-brains From almost any type of cell, does it make sense to draw this kind of distinction?

If neurocomputers become common, we will face other problems of tissue donation. In Cortical Lab's study with Dishbrain, they found that human neurons were faster in learning than neurons from mice. Could there also be differences in performance depending on whose neurons are being used? Will Apple and Google be able to produce lightning fast computers using neurons from our best and brightest today? Will someone be able to secure tissue from deceased geniuses like Albert Einstein to make special limited edition neural computers?

Such questions are highly speculative but touch on broader issues of exploitation and reparation. Take for example the concerning scandal to Henrietta Lax, 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 that generate huge amounts of revenue for pharmaceutical companies (including recently for the development of vaccines against corona). The Lacks family has not yet received any compensation. If the donor's neurons end up being used in products like the imaginary Nyooro, should they be entitled to a share of the profits made from those products?

Another key ethical consideration for neurocomputers is whether they can develop some form of consciousness and experience pain. Would neural computers be more likely to have experiences than silicon-based computers? In the pong experiment, Dysbrain is exposed to loud and unexpected stimuli when he gets a wrong response (the paddle misses the ball), and expected stimuli when he gets it right. At least it is possible that such a system will begin to experience the unexpected stimuli as pain, and the expected stimuli as pleasure.

Chief Science Officer Brett Kagan of Cortical Labs said:

Informed consent of a donor is of utmost importance. Each donor should have the opportunity to reach an agreement for compensation as part of this process and his bodily autonomy will be respected without coercion."

As discussed recently in research There is no evidence that neurons on a plate have any qualitative or conscious experience and therefore cannot be in distress and without pain receptors, cannot feel pain. Neurons have evolved to process information of all kinds - leaving them completely unstimulated, as is done today all over the world in laboratories, 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 perform physical labor for thousands of years, although often resulting in negative experiences for the animals. Would using organic computers for cognitive work be more ethically problematic than using an ox to pull a cart?

We are in the early stages of neural computing and we have time to think about these issues. We must do this before products like "Nyooro" move from science fiction to stores.

לThe scientific article

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