More on Cyborgs

One of my first posts was Cyborgs and Hybrots and Borg, Oh My!". Here's the latest from the BBC :

Meet the latest spaced out modern artist - a picture-drawing robot arm in Australia whose brain sits in a petri dish in the US.

Working from their university labs in two different corners of the world, American and Australian researchers have created what they call a new class of creative beings: "the semi-living artist".

Gripping three coloured markers positioned above a white canvas, a robotic arm churns out drawings akin to that of a three- year-old. Its guidance comes from around 50,000 rat neurons in a petri dish 19,000 kilometres away.

The "brain" lives at Dr Steve Potter's lab at Georgia's Institute of Technology, Atlanta, while the "body" is located at Guy Ben-Ary's lab at the University of Western Australia, Perth.

The two ends communicate with each other in real-time through the internet.

The project represents the team's effort to create a semi-living entity that learns like the living brains in people and animals do, adapting and expressing itself through art.
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The latest initiative is a development of the SymbioticA Fish And Chips project, in which the artist-scientists grew fish neurons over silicon chips to control a robotic arm that produced drawings and music.

I for one would like to see some strict ethical oversight in this area. The possible pay-offs are huge, almost infinite. But the risks of causing untold suffering are equally large.

Fortunately, we're not quite at that stage yet. Also from the story :

"I would not classify [the cells] as 'an intelligence', though we hope to find ways to allow them to learn and become at least a little intelligent." said Dr Potter.

But enough about the Democrats.

UPDATE : For an example of the benefits - and ethical risks - see an earlier BBC article :

At first, the monkeys used a joystick to move the dots around. But after a while the joystick was disconnected, and the animals - who had not realised this - continued moving the dots around by thought alone.

The scientists said this was possible because an electrode - about the size of a small pea - had been implanted into the monkeys' brains.

This recorded signals from their motor cortex - an area of the brain that controls movement - as they moved the joystick.

The scientists then analysed the signals with a mathematical formula, "translated" them and fed the signals directly into the computer, where they were reconstructed into directions.
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Mijail Serruya, who led the Brown University scientists, said: "Our goal is to make sense of how brain [signals] move a hand through space and to use that information as a control signal for someone who is paralysed.

"We want to provide some freedom to these individuals."