by Jon James
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The title of this piece was inspired by this satirical tweet by Alex Blechman, former staff writer at The Onion.
From evil AI rising up and enslaving humanity to nanomachines covering the planet in gray goo, science fiction has led the way in warning us of ethical and existential threats before the technology to produce them is even in its infancy. But with the ever-increasing pace of technological advancement (and perhaps the erosion of universal ethical standards), science is starting to push the boundaries faster than science fiction can scare us about it.
Queue the latest news in man-made horrors beyond comprehension: using human brain tissue harvested from aborted fetuses, scientists have created the artificial bioprocessor. This is one of many advancements in human brain organoid research, a relatively new area of study that explores brain development, structure, and health.
Brain organoids are tiny balls of neural tissue grown in vitro from stem cells. The technology used to develop them is only about a decade old and allows the organoid to mimic some aspects of the brain — particularly the neural connections that come from three-dimensional organization — that previous stem cell techniques could not. Research using brain organoids is fast paced and sweeping — they’ve already been given spider-like robot bodies.
Unlike, say, human cloning, which was anticipated and litigated against long before the technology to attempt it ever arrived, there is very little oversight on the ethics of human brain organoids. True, there’s the political ebb and flow of access to fetal tissue (in the United States, at least), but organoids can also be produced using stem cells harvested from adults. And when it comes to human brain organoids, it often seems that the ethical questions aren’t even being raised until after the research is published. The ethical limitations that do exist often end at international borders — or are merely suggestions in the first place. Few works of science fiction have really delved into the ethics of using human brain material to create AI computers, with Our Lady of the Artilects and especially its sequel A Cloud of Unknowing by Andrew Gillsmith being notable exceptions.
It’s not all doom and gloom, of course. “Technology is neither good nor bad” begins historian Melvin Kranzberg’s first law of technology, before concluding “nor is it neutral.” Much of the research utilizing human brain organoids holds significant promise in reducing human suffering. For example, one area of study involves brain development differences, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), where the structure of the organoids allows research into cellular diversity and the mechanisms therein to a degree that was not possible with previous in vitro studies. Brain organoids are also being used to study cancer, stroke rehabilitation, and disease progression.
On the other hand, brain organoid research seems all too willing to run headfirst into ethical gray areas that have hardly been conceived. One study in Japan implanted human brain organoids into three-year-old monkeys, creating what is known as a neural chimera, though the research notes that consciousness is not yet well enough understood to know the risk of humanization. All this in the midst of a reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise where intellectually enhanced simians overtake the planet.
Indeed, while science fiction hasn’t been overly vocal on artificial bioprocessors specifically, disembodied consciousness is an area that is not alien to the genre — several episodes of the Netflix anthology series Black Mirror deal with the issue directly. “Black Museum” and “White Christmas” both explore the horrors of a human mind trapped inside a computer made to perform menial tasks, much like the situation organoids may find themselves in, if they were to become conscious without the knowledge of researchers.
Such a situation is a valid concern. While brain organoids haven’t been shown to be conscious, there is not yet a consensus on how to even define consciousness, and organoids have already been found to exhibit brain wave patterns similar to those of human fetuses — although other reports claim that consciousness in organoids is all but impossible.
The ethical oversight of such research is in constant flux — in 2015 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) refused to fund, on ethical grounds, any research that involved human and non-human chimerization; in 2016 they ended this moratorium (though as noted above, such research continues regardless, either overseas or by seeking alternative funding).
The window on what is deemed unethical seems to be ever-shrinking, and there are but a few (nearly) universally-agreed-upon uncrossable lines, yet we seem set upon toeing the lines as closely as possible without technically crossing them. Consistent ethical frameworks are needed to evaluate developing technologies before those technologies are developed. And although it may feel at times like we’re living in a cyberpunk dystopia already, science fiction is needed now more than ever to imagine the horrible things we might create, and warn us to get our ducks in a row before the Torment Nexus shows up on shelves in your local Best Buy.
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