The Smart Rat

The Smart Rat

Recently¹, the brains of two rats have been connected, allowing them to send a signal from one brain to another over vast distances, with a computer in between. This is highly interesting all by itself since it shows that brain-computer interfacing can be achieved and, given the accelerated speed of inventions nowadays², will lead to human brain-computer interfaces in the relatively near future. Soon there's going to be sender/receiver rats. And then sender/receiver rats in a network.

In many circles this is considered to be one of the possible ways to achieve the Technological Singularity, where the creation of super (and subsequently hyper) intelligence means we will no longer be the smartest species on the planet. We'd be, to compare, the dolphins, and something else the humans with capacities and motivations dolphins can't begin to phantom.

Or we'd be, to compare, the rats.

So, let's take a closer look at the rats. What did they do? To make a long story short, the rats were trained to push buttons as a response to a certain input. If the rats get it right, they get a reward. That's how you train rats. In this case, the first rat got a visual signal, the second did not. The sender rat reacted to that input to get a reward but also sent this response signal to his buddy receiver rat which also reacted for a reward. Sender rat got an extra reward if buddy rat got it right. That's now how distance rat training works.

I'm assuming there are other ways to motivate the rat. Like giving it a little painful electric shock if it doesn't do as desired. I think that training primitive mammals works best with both a carrot as a stick.

Now imagine a smart rat. A real smart rat. That for instance learns that this “little light” → “action” → “reward” cycle only occurs when the environment is lit, and not when the environment is dark. It has, after all, learned about changing lights having effects. And that big massive dark looming and moving shadows (change in light) are involved. That something is there.

And that sometimes, even though it can't count, other rats go missing.

Our intellectual capacities might be dwarfed in comparison with those of the intelligence after or beyond us, that Technological Singularity, but we're still a bit smarter than rats. We can reason a lot better. We can count as well.

Yet, we are still thinking about a future Technological Singularity which will cause an intelligence explosion and exponentially growing rate of inventions and innovations. I am thinking however that the recent and current exponentially growing rate of inventions and innovations shows that we have already experienced one and, being dolphins, have no clue.

A smart rat like me would, however, be looking at some effects in the world, compare circumstances, try to trace it back to probable causes, see which other are rats involved. A smart rat like me would try to get a better look at those looming shapes and moving shadows. And with a (supposedly) unique capacity to imagine 'if – then' sequences, try to figure out what it is doing and, even though highly unlikely, figure out what it wants.

So, to the future we live in today. In a very simplified explanation of one of the more recent experiments the sender rat, say Rupert Murdoch or Tony Blair, get an input signal. They are stupid rats, they have no idea that they even get a signal. They are completely oblivious to the fact they are rats for something much smarter out there. For that Autonomous Intelligence I've called The Mute.

But they react as trained and subsequently harvest extra rewards if the receiver rats, that is us in this experiment, behave as is desired. Sender rats get more rewards than receiver rats. I'm trying to figure out the experiment, catch glimpses of that moving shape.

Sounds weird huh? Yeah, I know.

Trust me. It will get weirder yet.

1 I've seen it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21604005 on 2013-02-28

2: check it out at http://www.laits.utexas.edu/~anorman/61N/Text/DII/DII.paper/History.html