When Artificial Intelligence Goes Organic

I’ve spent a lot of time discussing the economic and privacy aspects of the ever-widening scope of artificial intelligence (AI) and the resulting data analytics, self-teaching capacity and sophisticated automation in everything from manufacturing and resource extractions to robotic surgery. Massive job displacement, profound shift of wealth to those with AI systems that replace workers and a highly intrusive and manipulating invasion of privacy for all. And that’s a start. But today, I am going to take a look at a part of developing artificial intelligence that is ethically even more disturbing.

They call them “minibrains” or “cerebral organoids.” The research is heavily underway at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia involving some of the most sophisticated biologists on earth. Dr. XuYu Qian is growing clusters of brain cells in his laboratory, and while these clusters are anything but sophisticated, they raise profound questions that relate to a seeming inevitability of a much more fully developed brain equivalent. The potential for studying and solving genetic disorders, testing new drugs without human guinea pigs, developing cells that can be implanted in live human brains to cure disease... well the list of good stuff goes on and on. But then there are the questions.

“Today, organoids that resemble different regions of the human brain are routinely spun up from stem cells in large batches in laboratories around the world. Researchers have refined their recipes since the technique was first described five years ago, but the process is surprisingly hands-off: after a few nudges from scientists, stem cells grow into spheres with about a million neurons through a naturally occurring choreography that mirrors early brain development in the womb. At Day 100, Qian’s minibrains resemble a portion of the pre­natal brain in the second trimester of pregnancy.

“‘People are more worried about if they reach a certain level — if it’s really like a human brain. We’re not there; we’re very far from there,’ said Hongjun Song, who leads the laboratory at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, where Qian works. ‘But the question people ask is, ‘Do they have consciousness?’ The biggest problem I have so far is I think, as a field, we don’t know: What is consciousness? What is pain?’

“At the moment, minibrains are far from anything approaching moral personhood in a dish, and the technology may never come close. But the rapid pace of progress on organoids has led scientists and ethicists to call for a public ethical discussion that can move in tandem with the research...

“Organoids offer a powerful tool for scientists studying the mysteries of the brain, which by some estimates is the most complex object in the world. Unlike cancer, which researchers can study by growing cancer cells in a dish, the brain and its disorders have been largely off-limits, except through hard-to-get post-mortem tissue that offered only a snapshot or by trying to study much simpler animal brains.

"More than a decade ago, scientists discovered it was possible to create stem cells by reprogramming a person’s skin cells. They could use the procedure to create any cell type in the body and study the basic biology of specific diseases that afflict people, ranging from Down syndrome to diabetes.

“Sergiu Pasca, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, dreamed as a medical student of understanding the biological basis of autism and schizophrenia. Now, his lab uses stem cells from people who have those conditions to grow cerebral organoids... ‘This gives us aspects of human brain development that were previously inaccessible. Most of the work we’re doing right now is to study really the hidden biology of the human brain,’ Pasca said.

“By creating organoids from people with a genetic disease that causes autism and epilepsy, he was able to watch how brain cells migrate during early development... Pasca and his colleagues saw clear differences — one type of neurons jumped around in an abnormal and inefficient way in the organoids from the patients, giving the researchers a window into a critical part of development that could have long-term consequences.” Washington Post, September 2nd.

So where are the dividing lines? Are we creating sentient beings? What rights, if any, to they have? What will they be able to feel? How will we know that? How far can scientists go? What will stop their crossing into almost “impossible to limit or define” territory? How will relevant codes of conduct be created, implemented and enforced? And what exactly is the potential for that omnipresent “evil genius” to deploy such systems for unspeakable horrors?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the tsunami of change all around us provokes complex moral and legal choices... choices we are going to have to make and enforce... somehow.