Cortical Labs: the first working Synthetic Biological Intelligence

Far back in the last century, Arthur C Clarke drew attention to a slow but steady trend in human evolution: the gradual merging of the human body with artificial technology. Like all great things it started small, so small as to be almost unremarked. Firstly were primitive artificial legs and hands, all that could be done with the technology of the time. By the time Clarke made his prediction in the novel 2001; a Space Odyssey, the scientists of the day were experimenting with artificial hearts, lungs and kidneys. Fast forward to our own age. Not only have things like prosthetic limbs and eyes greatly improved. We are starting, tentatively, to modify the genes of living cells with early techniques like CRISPR Cas-9 (LSS passim). Elsewhere, the attempts to engineer interfaces between human tissue and silicon chips seem to be showing real possibilities of success.

But we think that the efforts of Cortical Labs to create Synthetic Biological Intelligence(SBI) takes the trend to a whole new level. [1] Their CL1 computer uses laboratory grown neurons interfacing with silicon chips to create an entity that defies old -style classifications of what is biology and what is technology. Rather than offer you 18 dreary paragraphs, we will urge you to visit their website. But if we cherry-picked that: The CL 1 far more energy-efficient than a conventional computer; that it is ideal for disease modelling. drug disorder research; that it dispenses with much of the need for animal experiments; that above all it will be available for shipment at a cost of $35000, you would see why we have chosen this item for your entertainment today. Because we honestly thought that this kind of thing was decades away. Forgive us: but we have no financial, professional, personal or any other kind of relationship with this company. We never endorse; but when we report, we mean it.

And we do indeed report developments which seem to be genuinely game changing, and truly the work of the most intelligent people at the very limits of human accomplishment. We believe that this is one of them. Which is where our doubts creep in. For Arthur C Clarke also pointed out how the very act of adopting technology (stone tools at the beginning) transformed the biology of creatures that used it. So much so that they changed into new species, quite unrecognisable to their ancestors. And absolutely dependent on the new technologies to survive, with no possibility of de-inventing them . We are not the first to suggest that some engineered organism will replace us. But we do think that possibility is now very real and very near.

thanks to G Herbert

[1]https://corticallabs.com/cl1.html

#synthetic biological intelligence #cortical labs #artificial intelligence #computers #biology #evolution

Yes, the brain can erase unpleasant memories-but what does that say about who we are?

An old friend once told us about his experiences as a child evacuee during the Second World War. Or rather, he didn’t: because those memories did not exist. Like those of millions of others, his experiences were agonisingly traumatic. And he had blotted them out altogether. News of how the brain achieves this erasure of painful memories comes in this story from the inimitable Nature Briefing called Dopamine hit overwrites memories of fear

In mice, dopamine acts on neurons in a brain region called the basolateral amygdala (BLA) to kick-start fear extinction — the overwriting of fearful memories when danger has passed. Researchers found that this dopamine is produced in a separate part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area. Humans have “the same evolutionarily conserved parts of the brain that regulate these fear responses” as mice, says neuroscientist Larry Zweifel, which hints that neurons in the BLA could be a target for drugs to help to treat fear-related conditions such as post traumatic stress disorder.Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper

Normally we would riff enthusiastically on the hopes of a cure for PTSD, or admire the ingenuity of the scientists who have made these discoveries. But today, if you’ll forgive us, we want to go in a different direction.

For if unconscious and automatic healing processes of the brain can so affect our memories, what does that say about our consciousness? Are you really in charge of the way you remember, feel, and think? At first glance this may seem to be the abstract playground of a lot of philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists. The trouble for us is that many religious and economic systems depend on the assumption that each of us is an autonomous individual. Who freely chooses between good and evil or cheap and expensive. And these doctrines affect the real lives of millions. As Keynes observed, every politician who prides himself on being an entirely pragmatic individual is always the intellectual slave of some long dead economist. The writers of many religious books are much older still: but millions still kill and die for their words. We freely admit to being utterly baffled by all this, and are unlikely to return to anything quite so intricate again any time soon. But next time we hear anyone declaiming confidently on things like politics or religion, we will wonder deeply about what is happening in their mind,

As promised above we will endeavour to keep away from all this philosophical stuff. But if you want to know more, the works of Timothy O’Connor, Ben G Yacobi, Benjamin Libet, Daniel Dennet and Sigmund Freud provide useful starting points.

#free will #neurology #unconscious #conscious mind #economics #religion #politics #philosophy

When a culture turns away from science, its decline begins

Fans of the old Jacob Bronowski TV series The Ascent of Man will recall a key episode. In the early seventeenth century the Catholic Church decided to persecute aspiring scientist Galileo Galilei. In 1633 the Inquisition even put him on trial for having discovered that the Earth goes round the Sun. Using the threat of torture, they forced him to deny this simple reality. Bronowski’s take on all this was to assert that this was the key step which sent the Catholic part of Europe (hitherto the dominant bit) into decline. Scientists and scholars fled to the more tolerant environment of Protestant Europe, whose economies benefitted accordingly. The few Catholic thinkers of note remaining (Descartes and Pascal spring to mind) But they were like the last rays of a setting sun, before darkness and superstition suffocated all.

A one off? Special pleading? History suggests otherwise. From about the 8th Century to the 13th of the Christian Calendar (apologies to Islamic readers, but let it do for now) the Islamic world was dominant not only in trade and war, it was supreme in all the skills of learning and science. Thinkers such as Al Khwarizmi, Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna in western lands) and Al Birani made contributions to human learning which will last forever. Yet, starting about the middle of the twelfth century CE there was a slow but steady trend away from reason and science towards deeper religious orthodoxy as Hilel Ofek explains in his essay Why the Arab World rejected Science [1] Slowly the northern nations began to close the gap and eventually move ahead. Nearer our own time Corelli Barnett showed how Britains decline began as abstract studies of things like Latin and Greek came to dominate the Universities, while subjects like science and engineering were accorded second rate status. [2] [3] The values of a well entrenched landed aristocracy won out over the more plebian instincts of the middle class . With long term disastrous consequences for Britain’s place in the world

And the relevance of all this? Across the western world, there is now a strong, growing and incredibly well-funded movement against science and objective evidence. [4]It’s felt in policy debates on economic questions, university funding, on vaccines, and above all in the swirling brawls around climate science and global warming. The temptation is to put all this down to the ebbs and flows of political debate. But that is to miss the point. Questions of science are not political. They are not open to understanding by the mental tools developed for political and religious debate. A nation, a whole culture is being continually weighed in the balance, and can fall at any time. Is this now happening in the so called “advanced ” western nations.

[1]https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science

[2]Corelli Barnett The Collapse of British Power 1972

[3[ Corelli Barnett The Audit of War 1986

[4]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/20/kemi-badenoch-net-zero-brexit-right-clima

#science #global warming #climate change #reason #history #christianity #islaam #british empire

Weekly Round Up: Eternal Life, China takes over, Russian Problems and a dialogue of the deaf. What a lot to think about!

We couldn’t help noticing these thought provoking tropes!

The Brain that Lived for Ever According to The Guardian, eternal life may be just around the corner. Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnson is hoping to extract our brains and preserve them, in order that future generations will revive them and help us to live forever. Assuming that is, that they can bothered-who needs a clapped-out 21st century brain when you have quantum computing wired into your own? Perhaps John Agar and the Brain from Planet Arous were on to something after all. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/01/with-brain-preservation-nobody-has-to-die-meet-the-neuroscientist-who-believes-life-could-be-eternal

If America Stumbles, will China take over? If America really does pull out of the Climate change agreements, any claim to moral leadership and soft power will have been vitiated. Forever. It will give the Peoples Republic of China the right to step up to the plate and lead the world to safety. Who can blame the rest of us if we follow? Here’s Justin Rowlatt for the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3rx2drd8x8o

Russia’s best week turns sour Election of Donald Trump, more advances on the battlefield, free nations losing heart: what’s not to like for Russia’s Vladimir Putin? Except that his Syrian outpost is cracking and his economy is slowly going down the tubes, as this article from The Conversation makes clear. Like Britain in the 1940s he has sold out hope of future growth for the sake of victory here and now. In effect, his empire is really just a satellite of China. But maybe that’s a good thing for the rest of us-see above . https://theconversation.com/russian-rouble-collapse-exposes-deep-problems-in-the-countrys-economy-244869?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversati

Why don’t they listen to scientists? A running theme of this blog is that the world never seems to notice the work and methods of science(except when it needs vaccines in a hurry) There’s no easy answer, if the popular mind deals in emotion and stories, and the scientific one in reason and evidence. Nature Briefings offers this thoughtful discourse Why we’re not solving more with Science

A Nature global survey finds that most specialists are unhappy with systems that provide science advice to policymakers. Eighty per cent said their country’s science-advice system was either poor or patchy, and 70% said that governments are not routinely using such advice. Nature’s survey — which took place before the US election in November — together with more than 20 interviews, reveals where some of the biggest obstacles to science advice lie. Eighty per cent of respondents thought policymakers lack sufficient understanding of science — but 73% said that researchers don’t understand how policy works. “It’s a constant tension between the scientifically illiterate and the politically clueless,” says policy specialist Paul Dufour.Nature | 15 min read

Well that’s it for this week. We don’t profess any religion here, but we are fans of 17th century English, brought up on the resonances of Shakespeare and Milton and the King James Bible. Which is why we have chosen this cadent little homily from their version of Proverbs 12 3 to send you away

Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding/ for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold/she is more precious than rubies and the the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her

(it applies to women, too)

#china #america #climate change #neurology #the brain from planet arous #russia #vladimir putin #reason #emotion #evidence

Drugs: Is moral corruption our best hope of freedom?

Russia and its dominions are now plagued by an entirely new wave of drug crime. It’s a fascinating subculture, based on the dark Web and full of its own new argot with terms like kladmen, seagulls and dead drops, all designed to get around the old models of illegal buying and selling.[1] This superb article by Max Daly of the Guardian explains all. First, a confession. We freely confess that not only do we have the greatest intellectual difficulty in understanding how all this works, but also in grasping how it can possibly exist in a totalitarian, utterly regulated society like Russia, where absolute obedience is prized above all.

The answer is that an outward show of absolute loyalty buys many freedoms. A totalitarian state can brook no challenge to its legitimacy. Yet those who cheerfully profess unswerving fidelity can go about their daily business virtually untouched, It’s a truth that western admirers of the old Soviet Union found hard to grasp: how could there be so many gangs and so much corruption in a Socialist Society? But there was: outfits like the Tambov Mafia gave more than one aspiring dictator their start. The biggest threat to a totalitarian system is not the dissidents, who can be quickly arrested and crushed. It is the loyalists whose activities slowly creep up, deviating the purpose of the State until it is rotten from within. It is the same everywhere: who can be more loyal than a policeman, dedicating his life to maintaining social order? Well, read this {2] about the alleged misdemeanours of a certain Oscar Sanchez Gil who was until recently head of the economic crimes unit of the Spanish National Police, and who allegedly had about 20 million euros in cash stuck inside the walls of his house. (of course, we stress that at this stage these are allegations. The Courts may yet prove Snr. Gil to be a fine upstanding citizen of impeccable character and honesty) But it’s the sort of case that illustrates our point.

Corruption may indeed be a bit naughty. But what is it really except the classic operation of a free market rushing to supply an immediate need? One thwarted by acres of state regulation and red tape? Back in the 1990s, we always laughed at card carrying Conservatives who grew hysterical about immigration and illegal drugs. Surely, we reasoned, this was just their free market operating to the laws of supply and demand? Of course one may make a judgement about what are real human needs. But that is a moral issue, not an economic one. If free market theory is correct, then it must be one of the best descriptors of human nature yet found. And ultimately, it will bring down every system, however cruel.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/14/russia-rise-of-powerful-darknet-drug-industry-dead-drops-punishment-beatings

[2]https://uk.news.yahoo.com/spain-arrests-anti-fraud-police-113717604.html

#russia #dark web #drugs #spain #corruption #free market #immigration #soviet union

From American Decline to World Government: fasten your seatbelts for a bumpy ride

When did America’s Decline end, and the Fall begin? Although future historians will debate, Tuesday November 5th 2024 will be as good as any other point to start from. For it was on this date that a concatenation of forces-economic, political, social-produced the re-election of Donald Trump, and all that was to follow. These forces included an irresolvable racial rancour dating back to slavery; a deep pollution of information in the public sphere; a chronic failing in public education and the ethos to support it. But above all it was the worship of money, and the catastrophic, merciless social and economic inequalities that this engendered, that brought everything low. Writing for The Nation, Tom McCoy details these rather well in the first part of his article [1] (Don’t read the second bit until we say you can) To cut a long story short, we could call this obsession with cash NeoLiberalism.

Let’s just jump across the Atlantic for a moment to say goodbye to Larry Elliott who quits his post at the Guardian after 36 years {2] He too is eloquent on the many things he has witnessed. Among them is this observation on this same cocky, self-satisfied NeoLiberalism

…… the free-market experiment has failed, as some of us said it would all along. Wealth did not trickle down, and instead the gap between the haves and the have-nots widened. The workers laid off when the factories closed in northern England and the US midwest did not find new well-paid jobs but were either thrown on the scrapheap or found low-paid insecure work …………

Financial speculation ran rife once controls on capital were removed, but growth rates in the west were slower than in the postwar heyday of social democracy. Warnings of trouble ahead were ignored until the world’s banking system came close to collapse in the global financial crisis of 2008. [2]

Producing an alienated and impoverished group of vast voting power) which was impervious to the imploring of reason, fact and education. And who could blame them? The exalted free markets have produced such insecurity that a nationalist backlash was inevitable. It is now tearing down every shibboleth that the neoliberals held dear. Low tariffs, free movements of capital and labour, cultural and intellectual exchange are going to the wall, and we can see nowhere that this process can now stop..

Except one. Because while Larry’s article closes with a final nod to the re-emergence of the Nation State, Tom’s goes further and look to the future.(OK, click on his article again) The problem with the Nation State is Pride. It is national Pride which will cause Donald Trump and his friends to start drilling for oil again. By which means all combined attempts to prevent global warming will collapse, as each nation looks to its own interest. Runaway global warming will produce such desolation that any economy and any body politic will become unsustainable, probably as early as the next decade. The resulting chaos will make a world Government essential for human survival. And tom details how this may come about, perhaps in the sixties or seventies.

The American hegemony is now certainly over, How ironic that this was hastened by an arch nationalist such as Trump!

[1]https://www.thenation.com/article/world/american-hegemony-climate/

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/10/from-thatcher-to-trump-and-brexit-my-seven-lessons-learned-after-28-years-as-guardian-economics-editor

#global warming #economics #climate change #donald trump #neoliberalism #free trade #protectionism

Six insoluble mysteries which may end us all

Occasionally we come across websites with lurid titles like “10 UNSOLVED MYSTERIES TO GIVE YOU THE HEEBIE JEEBIES!” And it’s all to do with odd bits of old stone or dodgy claims about flying crockery. Which made us think of a few everyday mysteries about Homo sapiens which are enough to give anyone the aforesaid Heebies, with a few jeebies thrown in for good measure. Because if we do not develop the cognitive capacity to solve them, we could well be heading for the biological equivalent of the junkyard,

(1) Where is the line between the individual and society? Countries that go too far towards prizing the State end up economically stagnant, as the society is captured by a small self-serving elite who grab all the resources. (Think USSR or Venezuela) On the other hand societies with no idea of the common good, where untaxed individuals run around doing what they like, not only end up without worthwhile armies or roads. They also get captured by an elite, this time billionaires, with almost identical outcome to the deluded Commies. No one has resolved this tension in any stable way.

(2) Emotion utterly dominates reason. All the technological and scientific advances that make life worth living (you really wanna give up soap, huh?) are formed in the reasoning part of the brain. Yet most people are driven by deep tides of emotion welling up from the subconscious. These rarely lead to anything profitable, and are the principal causes of most of the obsessions, addictions and generational hatreds which form such an immense drag on progress. Why is logic so weak and blind passion so strong?

(3) The drive to divide into hostile groups We often allude to this one; think football supporters and the Robbers Cave experiment. The American writer James Baldwin saw identity as a serious trap, denying us our own better nature. It may take all the AI in the world to solve this one

(4) The constant need for persecution of others, particularly the weak or disabled. Anyone still deluded about “the moral superiority of the oppressed” could learn from what happens to disabled neighbours in cheap housing estates, and how the noble proletarians make their lives utter hell. Why does everyone want justice, but only for themselves?

(5) The local and the trivial Why do so many people spend so much time learning about the lives of celebrities in tacky media outlets, when they would profit much more from reading magazines like The Economist or Science?

(6) An utter inability to change minds Most people are really rather deft and clever about what is around them; the hierarchies around their neighbours, families, jobs, and so on. But most of what they learned about bigger things like science or society was laid down decades ago. And the habits of mind formed in youth seem impossible to change, even when the survival need to do so becomes clear. This may ultimately be the most dangerous mystery of them all.

No species, however successful it seems at its peak, can long survive the competition from a better-adapted one. Our predecessor Homo erectus had evolved into top predator, and colonised three continents. Before it was utterly outclassed by the more intelligent Homo sapiens in its various subspecies. A newer, more intelligent form of human, perhaps incorporating elements from artificial intelligence and genetic engineering should be able to solve the above cognitive problems with ease. If that happens, there will be little enough space for the predecessor, and no motive to preserve us either.

#climate change #learning #cognition #human evolution #unsolved mysteries