Biocomputing has become a reality, and experts are calling for its responsible application. DishBrain's creators collaborated with bioethicists to explore the ethical implications, potential medical benefits and environmental advantages of biocomputing in a recent paper.
The inventor of a brain cell-based computer collaborates with a global team of ethicists to study ethical applications of biocomputing. Once a concept in science fiction, biocomputing is now a reality. Therefore, it is crucial to start considering its ethical research and applications based on the opinions of global experts.
DishBrain's creators collaborated with bioethicists and medical scientists to outline a comprehensive framework. In a recent article published in the journal Biotechnology Advances, they provide their insights and suggestions on how to deal with this emerging field.
"Combining biological nervous systems with silicon substrates to generate intelligence-like behavior is promising, but we need to think about the big picture to ensure sustainable progress," said lead author Dr. Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer of biotech startup CorticalLab. The group became famous for developing DishBrain, a collection of 800,000 living brain cells in a petri dish that learned to play table tennis.
philosophical and ethical issues
Philosophers have pondered the concept of what makes us human or conscious beings for centuries, and study co-author Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, warns that there is an urgent need to establish practical answers to these questions.
"We have not yet adequately addressed the ethics of 'consciousness' in today's technological context," he said. "For now, there are still many ways to describe consciousness or intelligence, each of which has a different impact on how we think about biologically based intelligent systems."
The paper quotes the views of the early British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who believed that regarding the moral status of animals, "the question is not 'can they reason', nor 'can they speak', but 'can they suffer'".
cortical laboratory
Co-author Dr. Tamra Lysaght, director of research at the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore, said: "From this perspective, even if new computers based on biotechnology show human-like intelligence, it does not necessarily mean that they have moral status. Our paper does not attempt to definitively answer all the ethical questions raised by biocomputers, but it provides a starting framework to ensure that this technology can continue to be researched and applied responsibly."
The paper further highlights the ethical challenges and opportunities of DishBrain, which has the potential to significantly accelerate our understanding of diseases such as epilepsy and dementia.
Dr Christopher Gyngell, co-author of the paper and a biomedical ethics researcher at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the University of Melbourne, said: "Cell lines currently used in medical research mainly have European-type genetic ancestry, which may increase the difficulty of identifying genetically related side effects."
"In future drug screening models, we have the opportunity to make them more representative of real-world patients by using more diverse cell lines, which means potentially faster and better drug development."
The researchers note that it's worth grappling with these ethical questions because the potential impact of biocomputing is huge. "Silicon-based computing is very energy-intensive, with a supercomputer using millions of watts. By comparison, the human brain consumes only 20 watts - biological intelligence will show similar energy efficiency," said Dr. Kagan. "As things stand, the IT industry is a major contributor to carbon emissions. If even relatively small processing tasks can be performed using biocomputers, then we have good environmental reasons to explore these alternatives."