These guided rats far surpass the hobbling capabilities of contemporary mobile robots. Within a few sessions they were easily directed through pipes and across ledges and could be instructed to climb trees or to methodically explore large, collapsed piles of concrete rubble. Like soldiers the rats turned instantly on cue and were marched through environments that normally they would have instinctively avoided, such as brightly lit open areas.
The aim of this commentary is not to criticize the rat experiment, which was respectful to the animals who were made neither to suffer nor forfeit their lives. Rather, the purpose is to initiate a discussion about what shape society would prefer this novel technology to take as it begins to explore further applications. Animal navigation technology is a notable scientific development that should proceed under ethical guidance, not only in the interest of minimizing misuse, but also of maintaining public confidence in its appropriate uses.
The researchers envision a number of commendable applications whereby remotely guided animals might be useful in saving human lives. Given the rate of computer chip miniaturization, within a few years electronically guided rodents might be conscripted as special forces, able to penetrate collapsed buildings in search of buried victims, sniff out landmines, or eavesdrop on clandestine conversations that endanger national security. Such possibilities excite the imagination.
Remote guidance technology, like any other technology, however, could also be abused. Flocks of birds outfitted with miniature video cameras, strapped with plastic explosives, and remotely navigated as suicide dive bombers would make Alfred Hitchcock's fictional avian aggressors seem tame by comparison.
Between these extremes of welcome good and terrifying evil lies a range of potential uses for which the ethical implications are more ambiguous. Consider, for example, a hypothetical videogame, "Roborat Race," that would permit consumers to "play" rats remotely through an internet connection, navigating mazes and scoring points racing against other rats. Suppose further refinements made it possible to engage these living "computer accessories" in games of gladiatorial combat without pain or injury. The computer chip could limit the strength of the rat's bite and compensate for any pain by a trickle of electric current to the brain's pleasure center. The idea of reducing even rats to objects of sport, however, provokes a sense of uneasiness that is not lessened by knowing that the animals would be spared physical suffering by being forced into an artificial state of happiness. Not all harms involve pain. A conditional dose of pleasure also can be a potent instrument of control.
The rat experiment has achieved foremost a new level of control over animal behavior. While some may regard the new technology as simply an enhancement in efficiency over the age-old training technique of conditioning animal behavior by providing cues and rewards, it is apparent even from a rat's eye view that the results came at the expense of an invasive procedure. Traditional animal training never involved drilling holes in the skull or sinking electrodes into the brain. A simple turn of the knob can now determine the difference between a virtual nudge and a virtual kick. More invasive and more powerful technologies call for more stringent ethical standards.
Experiments in rats, once proven successful, would likely be extended to more intelligent animals. What level of control by computer implant would be desirable, for example, to enhance animals' roles as human companions? Imagine wiring the family dog so that he could be taught electronically not only to stay within the yard but also, at the touch of a button, not to bark. Perhaps the television remote control could be programmed to summon the dog on command. Another button could make the dog go to sleep, another to awaken, another to behave playfully. The command to attack an intruder would require entering a parental code. Could electrical pulses replace the master's encouraging voice, the silicon chip improve upon the smiling human face, the spark to the cerebral gyrus render obsolete the approving pat on the head? Could affection be programmed? This illustration suggests that there is something unsettling about turning animals into marionettes to serve humans. Moreover, what kind of people would we become once we began to treat animals, and hence regard them, as if they were machines?
Human applications will inevitably arise, as they have for implanted identification chips, which were first developed for tracking pets and are now being marketed for use in people. Neural stimulators are already saving lives in the familiar technology of cardiac pacemakers and are increasingly finding useful applications in, for example, spinal cord stimulators for chronic pain and thalamic stimulators for some types of tremors. Computer-directed navigation technology differs from all of these in that it moves beyond the correction of disease, beyond information storage, beyond sensory enhancement, and into the realm of behavior modification. This, the most subtle of electrodes, can potentially slither alongside one's private thoughts, nudge at decision, and coil up around the will.
Potential abuses in people of this technology fully matured would be all too easy to imagine. Suppose, however, that a high ethical standard were maintained, prohibiting any applications involving pain, physical harm, coercion, or the gratification of addictive or even recreational behavior. The question still remains whether consenting use for noble purposes, through the redirecting and reshaping of the will, could enhance human nature without eroding other crucial features.
The possibilities are seemingly limitless. Perhaps finely tuned computer-directed stimulation of the brain could boost the discipline required for study or musical practice. Perhaps a trickle to another part of the brain could stimulate concentration or enable shift workers to achieve prolonged alertness. Perhaps electronic prompts to another brain region could, on cue, add passion to a speech or emotion to a stage performance. Could the flow of electric current intensify resolution, turn courage on or off, or delete emotions of hatred? Could software filter out irrational thoughts while assisting reasoned thinking? Who would decide its programming? Could a judiciously positioned brain stimulator cure pedophilia, rehabilitate a compulsive gambler or a serial killer? Could such electronic yokes serve as "prosthetic consciences" or as "virtual prisons," enabling repentant criminals to return to normal, electronically-supervised lives and saving society the cost of incarceration? These are difficult questions.
The ethical dilemmas that emerge once science threads wires into the human brain demand as never before an answer to the question: what is the mind? For in the joining of microchip to neuron, the distinction blurs which one is the extension of the other. What boundaries society will place on the use of electronic technology that directly touches the brain will depend on how it understands the relationships between brain and computer and between the animal mind and the human mind.
One perspective recognizes a continuity from machines to brains varying only by degrees of complexity. By this view the human mind is a computer that mediates input stimuli and outputs behavior, and consciousness is simply its software. If direct comparisons between functional abilities of computers and minds are legitimate, to the exclusion of any other relevant moral scale, then ethical judgments need only balance benefits to one versus harms to the other. This view would seem to permit the conclusion that a rat whose brain was joined to a sufficiently intelligent computer would possess greater moral worth than some humans either disabled or relatively lacking in intelligence. A rat attached to a supercomputer might even be entitled to greater moral respect than a Princeton philosopher. This view, however, is ultimately unsatisfying because it is an incomplete explanation of the world.
A second perspective appreciates deeper layers to reality than materialism admits and more to consciousness than the processing of information. This view recognizes not only a continuity but also discontinuities in which fundamental distinctions separate machines from animals and animals from human beings. Accordingly, animals are not merely bundles of chemical reactions, and humans are much more than intelligent organic machines. They differ functionally in ways not necessarily subject to precise measurement. Whereas computers process algorithms, brains reason non-computationally by use of analogies. Whereas computers are deterministic, humans possess a moral conscience and exercise free moral agency. They also differ ontologically. Whereas machines are made, beings are begotten. Whereas electronic artifacts are the products of human design, creatures are of divine design, and humans uniquely bear the image of their Creator. By implication, they differ also in purpose. Accepting these distinctions to be valid, then computers should not be treated as if they were living beings, nor animals as if they were just organic machines, nor humans as if they were just animals.
1 Talwar, S.K. et al. "Behavioural Neuroscience: Rat Navigation Guided by Remote Control". Nature, 2002, vol. 417, pp. 37-38.
2 Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944, reprinted 1996, p. 69.
About the Author
William P. Cheshire, M.D., M.A., F.A.A.N., is a fellow of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, an Associate Professor of Neurology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, and serves as a consultant in the Department of Neurology at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.
