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Monday, March 4, 2013

Tech Robot Apocalypse Update: Rat Brain Edition

Posted by Alex Falcone on Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 10:14 AM

Poor little fella, getting contextual ads in his dreams.
  • Poor little fella, getting contextual ads in his dreams.
Normally the thing that scares me most in science is robots, with their beady little eyes that hide sinisters "thoughts." But now scientists are working on something even scarier than a bunch of servos and actuators bent on world domination, they're connecting rat brains to the Internet.

Okay, that might not sound scary but hang in there. Scientists trained a rat in Brazil to pull one of two levers in exchange for a treat. They connected some wires to his brain and then sent the signals over the Internet and into the brain of another rat in North Carolina. The NC rat had two levers but no information on which one was correct except what the other rat was brain-Skyping to him. He managed to get the right lever about 70% of the time which, sure, is a C-, but hey, he's a rat.

This becomes especially scary when you add it to the news last week about Google Glasses. Google is getting ready to send search results directly to a tiny screen hanging out near your eyebrow, but if these Brazil/North Carolina rats have their way, that may be only a stepping stone to their real goal: beaming search results directly into your thoughts and making you do stuff for small treats. We are Google's future lever pullers, and it's all happening faster than I expected.

I'm so terrified I can hardly eat these food pellets without feeling a bit nauseous.

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