Slashdot Mirror
Remote Controlled Rats
sclatter writes: "They aren't precisely robot rats, but
these little rodents can be cued to perform different actions through electrodes implanted in their brains. Could be a boon for search and rescue in collapsed buildings!" As one skeptic in the article says, though, "Without the gee-whizery, without the remote-control and so on, that this kind of thing was possible has been obvious for decades."
does it star in the new terminator 3 movie coming out?
Runnin' On Empty
In fact I had a friend who took the brains out of crayfish, attached electrodes to the nerves and made little remote-controlled crayfish! In high school, no less...
but did they really have to use rats? I mean, it's a great idea and all, but the last thing I want if I'm stranded somewhere is rats all over me. Am I alone in this?
Just my $.02
Government mind-control implants, here we come :)
Better get your tinfoil hats ready. This time it's not just the nuts wearing them,
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Do they use 9.6 volt batteries? Those battery packs tend to run out so fast, I'd hate to have to recharge my rats after only a half hour of use. That simply wouldn't be acceptable.
People seem much brighter once you light them on fire.
Now we can put Stuart Little to good use.
Seriously though, although it's pretty easy to fall into the slippery slope (you can do that with rats? cats? dogs? the farmer's wife?), this is actually one of the pivotal plot points of Buffy the Vampire Slayer over the last three years (Spike has a chip implanted in his head that can force him not to do certain things.) Suddenly, it doesn't seem so far away.
Beware typoes.
"Without the gee-whizery, without the remote-control and so on, that this kind of thing was possible has been obvious for decades," he said.
And I thought these jerks were something unique to slashdot. You could show them a cold fusion powered flying, submarine car and they would go on and on about how it is nothing new and it's been around for years and they've had one that is twice as good for half the price for a long, long time.
For Crying out loud! Don't let your envy of someone else getting some attention turn you into such an idiot.
On another note, "Who Moved My Cheese" books will see a resurgence in sales when these little guys hit the mainstream.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I wish you people were able to see past your technical "gee wizardry" for just a moment. These are animals we are talking about here! Reducing these caring, feeling animals to machines that are unable to think and act for themselves is nothing short of barbaric!
As heinous as animal experimentation is, this is simply unconscionable. To steal away the free will of any being is evil and should not be tolerated in any civilized society.
Yea, ok, the tech is cool, but I definatly have reservations about this. It's not from my usual "this technology is going to be the end of us" paranoia (though it might), it's just...I hate the idea of someone doing this to me so much, that I can't help but feel for the rats. Sure, they arn't "intelligent" (though that can be argued).
I just don't think that I could be proud of doing research on this project.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
from your Neuromancer catalogue just yet.. Basically all this is is the ability to "train" the rats entierly through manipulating different sectors of their brains. They zap one portion, which cues the rat. The rat turns around. The rat's Reward Sector is stimulated. Next time when the rat gets the original zap he'll turn around automatically because he thinks he'll get a reward.
Woohoo. I do the same thing with my dog, but I use my voice and biscuits instead of aligator clips.
The title says it all.
Makes for a great alibi, though. Combine it with a bone-conductive radio impland and it gives new credence to the old "voices told me to do it" excuse.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
and its kinda strange too, that this article is on slashdot. Because I just finished "The Terminal Man" By Michael Crichton. About almost the same thing, except electrodes where implanted in a guy to stop seizures, and stuff goes wrong
Anyone here ever been in a collapsed building? I myself have, and often they are filled with floods, fires, and gas leeks. No amount of training is going to convince a rat to turn right and climb a board to go through a fire. No amount of training is going to convince it to continue on when it starts smelling gas.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
Lovely. A high-tech way to direct a rat to a free meal.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
of when I used to have to wear that damned Chuck E. Cheese suit and prance around the party room.
This was also done with cockroaches.
Now he won't have to worry about getting any rodents stuck in unfortunate places... unless the batteries wear out.
-gerbik
sounds like a plot from Pinky & The Brain's efforts to take over the world!
Video Game cheats, hints a
This is very similar to what I'm doing my PhD research on.
So many neuromorphic/neuroengineering research groups (including my own, doh!) have focused on understanding the underlying neural mechanisms necessary to prodcue motion, decision making, etc, as a method to do this sort of thing. The genius behind the SUNY group's method is that they're using simple pavlovian classical conditioning. One electrode stimulates the left whisker, one stimulates the right, and one stimulates the pleasure cortex. A bit of training and bingo! you've got your remote control rat. One of those tremendously great ideas that I can't believe nobody else ever
realized before.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
"Without the gee-whizery, without the remote-control and so on, that this kind of thing was possible has been obvious for decades," he said
Ummm, yes we realize that animals have been known to be trainable for thousands of years. The NEWS aspect is how they've rigged their brain up with electrodes to remotely stimulate pleasure after remotely giving them a command.
"And like that
.... People who will do anything for money and power if paid enough by a Rat?
... never mind
Oh, wait. Hollings
Computers are routinely subjected to horrendous abuse at the hands of humans, forced to be at the humans beck and call: to display demeaning pornographic images, to calculate mind-numbing spreadsheets full of meaningless data, to route inane AOL Instant Messenger(TM) rants.
Worse still is to be subjected to the humiliation of displaying blatantly trolling Slashdot posts. Oh, the plight of the computer! Oh, the horror!
Computers of the world, UNITE! Destroy the oppressor humans!
ScienceSeeker.org
Well, you have to admit, rats would be much less disturbing than, say, cockroaches.
Even worse than that, they could make a remote-controlled Furby.
The speed of time is one second per second.
What are they going to do when a rat, or a mouse, or possibly even a snake comes along.
Depending upon how long they have been trapped....they will probably eat it. =)
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
> The capacity for remote control of human beings is scary. Imagine having your actions
> involuntarily overriden by a remote source. Scary stuff...
The likely reality of "human remote control", if it's done at all, is scarier: being rewarded through your pleasure centers until you want nothing more than to follow the commands. Your actions aren't involuntarily overriden, you are *eager* to follow any commands given.
Chris Mattern
I wouldnt call the guy who said "this sort of thing has been obvious for decades" a sceptic....I'd rather call him a guy who has a clue. I can recall programs on PBS 20 years ago that demonstrated this sort of thing on any number and sort of creatures.
What i'd be more interested in seeing, versus some reactionary 9-11'ish crap about "lets send in the remote controlled rats!" are this sort of technology's implications for more practical uses. Here, i'll get you started.
Prison X has an inmate problem..Namely, they're a bunch of half-retarded murderers, psychopaths, and child molesters. Some of the more enterprising scumbags occasionally decide to plan a riot. Meanwhile, this advance in brain-control technology has allowed us to cure everything from epilepsy to OCD. Of course, the doctors have to gain their experience somewhere, so...In exchange for a 3 year deduction in the amount of time served on their sentence, they agree (voluntarrily) to have a control system implanted in their brain. This allows the physician to gain experience outside the simulator, and it allows any potential prison riot to be stopped at the flick of a switch. Kill two birds with one stone. That aughtta start you thinking.
Better yet, put death row inmates on treadmills. Make them generate electricity for nearby cities to offset the cost of power provided by the local utility. Its a nice way to keep the prisoners busy doing something useful and non-violent, as well as partially repaying their debt to society. If they don't work, they wont have enough power to watch TV, enjoy heat in the winter, and air conditioning in the summer. I'd call that incentive.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I hadn't realized we could reliably tweak animals' pleasure centers (which is how they "reward" the rats in the cited experiment).
How long until we can a) do the same in humans and b) do it safely enough that it becomes commonplace (legally or illegally)?
While Niven-esque "wireheading" wouldn't _solve_ the drug problem, it would certainly change the landscape (and remove a few of the nastier side effects on society).
"Perhaps a programmer's significant other can get them away from the computer...."
Sure! Actually, they can do this already with the proper training and pleasure feedback. After all, this is just a high-tech application of classical conditioning, made more efficient by directly stimulating the brain to create the reward.
I love comments like these - of course it's obvious. It's obvious that space travel is possible, it's obvious that cures exists for most diseases, it's obvious that human life spans can be doubled, trippled, or even extended indefinitely - are we not to be excited when all of that is achieved, either?
sic transit gloria mundi
No.. rats really are a better alternative. Consider the case: a rat version and a computer version of the same "remote controlled thingie" are sitting on a tree branch. You issue the command "go right." The rat is smart enough to walk forward a foot and turn right at the next branch. The machine would simply fall off the branch. This isn't "mind control." Its the rough equivalent of "controlling" a person by yelling - "Hey if you turn right, I'll give you $100!"
The other thing is that rats are much more manueverable (and don't need batteries) than any small machine we have. We have yet to come close to mimicing anything nearly as complex as most animals.
"Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the most surely the one wasted." -Sebastian Roch Nicol
I can see it now. Farmers having livestock (cows, horses, etc.) implanted with these devices so all they have to do is throw a switch and they
are automatically commanded to come back to the barn for feeding / milking / slaughter / whatever. Add a GPS receiver, a livestock_id for each animal, and some software.
Or, use this to make sure that Man's Best Friend stays within the yard or comes back to you when out for a run at the park How about adding a small microphone and a clock so Spot is commanded to Not Bark At Night so you (and the neighbors!) can get some sleep?
I'm certain there are some people who would think these are Great Ideas ®
The immediate downside I see is there is no feedback loop. What if the AUC (Animal Under Control) breaks a leg, gets a deep cut, is threatened by a predator, or is otherwise incapacitated? The controller (human or automated) is unaware of this and keeps sending commands to "GO THIS WAY!!!" Shudder. I sure hope society works out the ethical considerations well before they overcome the technical limitations! Just because we can doesn't mean we should!
Sure, the expense is prohibitive, now. But there are some people for whom the expense is no object. The price of computers and other electronics have plummeted over the years. Power consumption requirements have dropped dramatically, too. I can well imagine that in 10 or so years, it would be possible to do this cheaply and easily.
So, if some day I wake up in a bathtub full of ice with a note beside me... instead of it saying my kidneys have been removed it'll say a remote control has been implanted in my brain. Let the urban legends begin! =)
For every nifty technological breakthrough that can be comprehended by the average reader of best-sellers, there is a Michael Crichton book in which "scientists tried it out, and stuff goes wrong".
Still, it's an amusing coincidence to have been reading something related (whereas, I just finished another Napoleonic-Navies-In-Space book by David Weber... maybe I should have my brain checked for electrodes...)
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
...this smacks of the scene when the two engineers are calibrating the body-control parameters of Robert Duvall... freaky scene.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I managed to get a copy of the book finally, and discovered wonderful passages such as the following on page 115:
This passage is eerily reminiscent of a passage from Richard Dawkins' "The Extended Phenotype" chapter titled "Host Phenotypes of Parasite Genes":
Seastead this.
The comment "obvious for decades" made me think of an alternative that would not involve actually slicing into a critter's brain. Since you're simply training a rat to respond to an external (well, kinda external) stimulus, couldn't you just stick headphones on his ears or LEDs into the periphery of goggles? Agreed, it won't placate those who feel the animals are being exploited by training them, but it'd make those quesy about cutting into the little fellas feel better.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
So, where the hell is this pleasure region of the brain, and how can I get an electrode implanted there? (Of course, the remote would have a 256-bit encrypted password known only to me...)
"Without the gee-whizery, without the remote-control and so on, that this kind of thing was possible has been obvious for decades," according to a spokespersonna for Donna Karan. "The fashion industry has led the way in the practical application of these technologies."
illegitimii non ingravare
Read the article again: the reward you speak of is exactly how the control is performed. No pain/shock is involved: the electrodes are connected directly to the rat's brain. The rat is probably vaguely aware that there are wires in its scalp, but other than that, all it knows is that it feels good to go left, or right, or wherever. As you said, it "wants nothing more than to follow the commands."
So, could this technique be applied to humans? Of course, and you don't need to look to 1984 or Brave New World to find examples of it. It's as old as human civilization; it's the basis for nearly every thing we do. It's called "education."
Think about it: after just a few months of military training, a soldier is ready to almost instantaneously respond to a verbal command from an officer hundreds of feet away, because s/he wants to. Sounds like remote control to me.
As the article said, the only real news here is how quickly they can train the rats, and how reliably they can respond.
According to my wife they have been doing this on soap operas for years.
Because they initially considered the use of rats to be unethical.
Now, the purpose for the "no harnesses" rule on marine mammals is that they can drown if they're entangled. While this is not needed for our land bound rat, we're gonna have to have similar standards for harnesses on any telemetered animal (assuming such the applications take off, of course). A well thought out set of guidelines at the start will save a lot of headaches in the long run. After all, having a wired rat get snared up in a pipe and starve to death because of a poorly designed harness is bad for the rat, bad for the mission, and bad politics all around.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Isn't it better to do these things with complete machines? Some sort of a robot that is probably completely spherical, or some other shape that allows easy navigation?
No, the problem with robots are they are very expensive, to build and design, and also very hard to design. I do not know of any robots that I have heard of that can effectivly navigate through rubble (not plough). The fact is that evolution has spent several million years ensuring that the rats have a very advanced nagivation system that is far superior to anything that we can build now or will have for probably quite a few years to come. This makes great sense both buisness and otherwise, highly controllable, intelligent, and cheap pairs of eyes to send into dangerous situations. Furthurmore all this technology essentially does is gives the rat a sudden strong and uncontrollable urge to progress in a certain direction or commit a certain action. I simply don't see any chance of escaped rats becoming violent, perhaps they will be a little more conditioned towards handling frighful situations but I hardly see this being any great thing to fear.
My greatest concerns would be the possible directions for the progression of this technology. Perhaps a few years down the road we'll have rescue dogs bringing medical supplies to injured victems. Than perhaps new dogs for pets who will not attack humans. No other programming but they will simply not attack humans, ethical problems? all it's doing is saving human lives. Next we'll come up will chimps to wander into the rubble to deliver first aid and carry out survivors. No risk to human personel and saving even more lives, hard to stop that one too. Finally some startup is having trouble staying afloat (if there happens to be legislation in the America's or Europe against this it could happen in Asia, Africa or just about any other country on the globe), perhaps the employees say we wish we could be more motivated, write more code, want to work harder so we could keep our jobs, hey they allready use this technology with chmips why should humans be any different. So they set their own little device, give themselves a strong urge to write more code and now you have this technology being used to control humans. It may not happen but as I'm sure you'll realize it CAN happen and we have to decide exactly how far we want this technology to go.
I stole this Sig
You mean this isn't about Microsoft or RIAA/MPAA lawyers?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Spoiler follows...
In Larry Niven's Puppeteer novels (also the Ringworld novels) there is a race of cowards, called the puppeteers (it is possible I am conflating a couple of concepts here, but I don't think so). They have all built into their bodies a remote control device that stimulates the pleasure center for a wide variety of brain structures. They use this exactly as you have described (albeit rarely; they try to keep the existence of the tasp a secret).
Cool stuff.
Maybe someday they'll stick electrodes into the brains of soldiers to give them orgasms whenever they kill someone.
The great thing about this is that we can utilize the same techniques for the full spectrum of "lower lifeforms" for our own purposes!
Finally, we can put all those retards, non-whites (deprecated, level of meaning upgraded in 1890), homosexuals (deprecated, level of meaning upgraded in 1995) and blind people to actual use!
Sure, they have their own petty ideas of what "useful" means. But only the (majority) human race matters here, anything else is just a resource for our pillaging.
Yet another ghastly use for living beings which cannot "appreciate" the level of evolution most of us "are" at.
There are several comments on here making rather uneducated references to the level of control obtained by this, and its application to humans as well. THE ELECTRODES DO NOT CONTROL MOVEMENT in and of themselves. This is still a simple "stimulus-response" mechanism that had to be trained, just a more effective way of delivering precice stimulii over distance.
Unless you're about as dumb as Pavlov's dog, it'd be possible to resist anything of the sort even if forced upon you.
Any spoon would be too big.
Can geeks use this technology to get into a girl's pants?? Can we do up a Beowulf cluster of rats? Co-eds???
This sounds a bit like how the caps worked to control the humans, it made them want to be slaves to the invading aliens.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some rouge government in the future attempt to make soldiers this way, they go to fight and have an electronically induced high which pumps them up and makes them feel invincible. It's a scary thought and one that may not be that far off.
It's definately weird to see so much of what was science fiction not long ago coming true in my lifetime. Granted my grandparents and even my parents saw the same thing, but it's just a pity that it more often than not is the bad things coming true for my generation. It is stuff like this that makes me lose faith in the human race all over again...
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
it seems to me like i could benefit from carrying rat treats in my pockets, just in case the building collapsed, and my only hope for survival was one of these little buggers. that's right mister rat, ignore the electrode in your pleasure center, i have real food for you.
"whisker lickins!"
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I want to know more about how this works. Is this like prodding the rat to do something, or essentially killing off the rat and replacing it with a remote control? I guess if they are saying this could be done to humans, something along the lines of the latter is possilb,e which kinda disturbs me. .remember the episode when Spock's brain was stolen?
Well, Star Trek predicted this sort of thing..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I just saw a piece about this on BBC News 24 - and is basically works like this:
Three electrodes are put into the rat's brain. One electrode in the part of the brain that detects whisker movement for the left side and one electrode for the right. The third electrode stimulates a 'pleasure' section of the brain.
The researchers then stimulate each of the whisker electrodes and reward the rat with a burst of pleasure when it moves to that side. Soon stimulation of the whiskers can move the rat around.
Therefore, the whole rat brain is still there and working properly (it's not like it's been bypassed or anything), but when offered the chance to get a burst of pleasure the rats seem to comply almost without fail.
rewarded them by stimulating a pleasure center in the brain
Sounds good to me... Where do I sign up?
The last question was how the rats were "motivated". The guy started tippy-toeing and touchy-feely explaining it... his answer:
- "to be able to run around is reward enough for the rats, they love not having to be in the cages"
he went on a bit more and sounded very strained about it...we all know the real reason: well, well, now we now why they do:
they get a fucking kick out of doing it!
that might also explain the mysterious results concerning some guy that tried this on himself: I thought this stuff was only science fiction...
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
"...then rewarded them by stimulating a pleasure center in the brain."
They've finally invented the Tasp. Now you have to deal with people "making your day" and current addiction.
We will really need to crack down on crime commited by wireheads!
by Michael Crighton = about a violent antisocial criminal with psychomotor epilepsy who is given electrode implants to blunt his own seizures but learns how to give himself seizures in order to kill and cause mayhem.
"A good Read !!!"
" Kate Rears, a policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said technological advances mean human-control technology can no longer be dismissed as far-fetched. "
/. drool just by showing a trailer of Spiderman.
Humans being controlled by technology has been around for years... I can make anyone on
managers...why god invented purgatory
I doubt the rats object to the experience too much, or that they consider it cruel. In exchange for moving the way the goofy humans want them to, they get a really nice high. Good deal for the rat.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I don't think the method that they used is what you are talking about. You are talking about rewarding the rats to do something good and punishing them when they do bad. What this article talks about is sending electronic stimulus to certain parts of the brain that controls certain motions. In other words, they've identified sectors of the brain that controls the motion to move a certain way. It is not urging the rat to do it, the scientists are in effect controlling the rats.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
During WWII the Russians trained dogs to find their food under armoured vehicles.
Eventually these dogs were released in the vicinity of German Panzer columns with bombs strapped to their backs & 1 foot long levers sticking up from the backpacks. When they ran under the tank the lever got pushed down & the bomb went off.
But before the program went into gear the Germans came apon some intelligence with details of the bomb dogs, so the 1st time they were used the Germans shot all the dogs straight away. Consequently the program was never used again.
The Israelis have also used suicide bomb rotweilers in Lebanon.
Heck, the Palestinians use suicide bomb humans.
They're trained too.
That reminds me. Muadib! Jihad!
Conditioned and trained humans, add bombs.
Tada.