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A brain grown in a petri dish

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and nobody dares say it has no consciousness

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March 2025

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at a product launch in Barcelona

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an Australian company put a computer on the shelf

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thirty five thousand dollars each

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the biggest difference from the one on your desk

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is that this computer

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needs to be fed

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inside it is not a silicon chip

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but a few hundred thousand living human brain cells

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soaking in nutrient fluid

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kept alive by a whole system of pumps gases and temperature control

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like a tiny body packed in a box

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the company gave it a name

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Synthetic Biological Intelligence

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and casually launched a business on the side

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hooking this machine up to the cloud

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and renting it out

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they call it

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Wetware as a Service

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hello

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hi everyone

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I am Wang Lijie

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today we are not talking about distant science fiction

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we are talking about something already on the shelf and already running

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that has the entire scientific community on edge

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a clump of human brain tissue grown in a lab

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it has a formal name

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the brain organoid

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the question is simple

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and very sharp

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does it

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does it feel anything

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first where this thing comes from

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scientists take a few skin cells from an adult

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or a few blood cells

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use one specific set of signals

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to reprogram them

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back into that embryonic stem cell state where they can become anything

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then give them another set of signals

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to push them to grow toward neurons

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and then something amazing happens

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these cells need no blueprint at all

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they organize themselves

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and grow into a three dimensional little ball

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inside this ball there are neurons

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there are connections

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there are layers

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and what its structure imitates

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is exactly the early developing human brain

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so early on it had a more popular nickname

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the mini brain

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but let me pour some cold water on you first

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before you think scientists really built a brain in a vat

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this thing is tiny

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just a few millimeters

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not much bigger than a pea

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and it has one fatal flaw

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it has no blood vessels

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your brain can grow this large

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because dense blood vessels carry oxygen and nutrients into every corner

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the organoid has no such plumbing

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nutrients can only seep in slowly from the surface

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so once it grows past a certain size

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the cells at the center starve and die

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that is why it cannot get big

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and cannot become a real brain

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hearing this you may feel relieved

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so it is still far from consciousness

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but please remember one thing

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technology does move forward

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even in these few years while I am speaking

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scientists are already working on wiring artificial blood vessels into organoids

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its structure is getting more complex

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its electrical activity is getting richer

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in other words

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today we think it is still far off

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but this curve

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keeps going up

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the question we cannot answer today

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will only get sharper tomorrow

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not disappear

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if it were just a still lump of tissue

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that would be the end of it

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but it does not sit quietly

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in 2019

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a team in California

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grew cortical organoids for nearly ten months

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then attached electrodes

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and recorded their brain activity

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the result stunned everyone

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this tissue spontaneously produced complex rhythmic brain waves

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what is even more striking

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the researchers took these brain waves

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and compared them with EEGs of premature babies

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and found the two highly similar

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note this

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this is not a few neurons flickering now and then

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but tens of thousands of cells

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firing together in a coordinated synchronized way

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the kind of electrical rhythm a developing human brain should have

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it

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grew that on its own

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up to here

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it is still just surprising

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what really keeps scientists awake

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is another experiment

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the same Australian company again

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did something even bolder

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they grew brain cells on a microelectrode array

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then plugged them into a video game

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that oldest game of all ping pong

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a ball flying back and forth on the screen

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and you use a paddle to catch it

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they used electrodes to tell these cells

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whether the ball was left or right

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and how far it was from the paddle

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and then

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a miracle happened

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in under five minutes

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this clump of cells learned it

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they began coordinating their own firing

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moving that paddle to the right position

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to catch the ball

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nobody wrote code for it

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nobody taught it the rules

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it just

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learned

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the researchers named the system DishBrain

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and in the title of the paper

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they used a word that made every ethicist tense up

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they said

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these in vitro neurons

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after being embedded in a simulated world

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displayed

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sentience

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alright

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so now we have a thing in our hands

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it fires spontaneously

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its rhythm resembles a premature baby

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and it can learn a game in five minutes

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the question we cannot dodge

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has finally landed in front of everyone

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does it have consciousness

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can it

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feel pain

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you might think

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how hard can that be

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scientists just measure it and we will know

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and that is exactly the part that sends chills down your spine

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all of modern science

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to this day

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cannot produce a single ruler that measures consciousness

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not only is there no ruler

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even what consciousness actually is

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is still being argued about

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let me show you how absurd this argument gets

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there are several mainstream theories of consciousness right now

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let us take this organoid

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and measure it under each ruler in turn

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and see what you get

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the first ruler

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Integrated Information Theory

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it says

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as long as a system integrates information above a certain value

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it has some degree of consciousness

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however faint

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by this ruler

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an organoid that fires in sync

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has integration greater than zero

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so it

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is conscious

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the second ruler

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Global Workspace Theory

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it says

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consciousness needs a global broadcast structure like a theater stage

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pushing information across the whole brain

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the organoid has no such structure

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so by this ruler

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it

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is not conscious

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the third ruler

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Higher Order Theory

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it demands that a system not only perceives

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but also perceives that it is perceiving

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it needs a re representation of its own thoughts

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the organoid almost certainly has none

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so it

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is even less conscious

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the fourth ruler

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Predictive Processing Theory

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it says

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consciousness must rest on a closed loop of sensing and acting

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a circuit that can predict act and correct

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the organoid floats in nutrient fluid

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with no eyes and no hands

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so it

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is not conscious either

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do you see it

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the same clump of tissue

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four rulers

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four different answers

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one says yes

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three say no

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but behind every one of these rulers

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stand the very best scientists in the field

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and none of them can convince the others

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that is the real truth

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it is not that scientists measured it and found no consciousness

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it is that the rulers in their hands

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simply do not add up

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someone will ask

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is there really no more objective method

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people have actually tried

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in hospitals

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there is a technique

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used to judge whether patients in vegetative states

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or comas still have any consciousness

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the method is rather clever

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you give the brain a magnetic pulse

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like tossing a stone into a pond

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then watch how complex the ripples are

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in a conscious brain

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the ripples spread wide and complex

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in a brain that has truly lost consciousness

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the ripples flatten out fast

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the thinking behind this method

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comes exactly from the first ruler I mentioned

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Integrated Information Theory

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so some ethicists proposed

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just take this method built for coma patients

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and move it onto organoids

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toss in a stone

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and look at the ripples

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sounds beautiful

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right

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but the problem comes right back

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how complex do the ripples have to be

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to count as consciousness

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that line dividing has from has not

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where do you draw it

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with coma patients

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we have plenty of awake people as a control

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we know what normal ripples look like

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but a clump of organoid

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has never been awake

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what do we use as a control

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you see

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the tool problem circles right back to the definition problem

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this circle

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does not close

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so why do we keep hearing

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that the scientific consensus is

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organoids are not conscious

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that consensus really does exist

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but you need to hear clearly what it rests on

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it rests on one sentence

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we cannot say what consciousness is

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but we feel that

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a clump of tissue this simple

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probably does not have it

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chew on that sentence for a moment

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it is not a measurement conclusion

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it is an

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assumption based on intuition

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in 2025

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a group of neuroscientists and philosophers wrote a paper

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issuing a warning

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they said

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treating no consciousness as the default assumption

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and using it to postpone every ethical discussion

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is dressing up our ignorance

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as a scientific conclusion

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to put it more bluntly

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we have not proven that it feels nothing

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we are only

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hoping it feels nothing

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because once it does

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we are in real trouble

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at this point

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I want to push this one layer deeper

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because if you stop at whether it is conscious

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you actually miss what makes this matter

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this organoid

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its greatest significance

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is not forcing us to answer whether it hurts

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but forcing us to answer

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what consciousness

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actually is

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we have talked about one view before

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a scientist named Anil Seth said something very hard edged

293
00:09:25,871 --> 00:09:26,862
only living things

294
00:09:27,270 --> 00:09:28,682
can possibly be conscious

295
00:09:29,030 --> 00:09:31,202
consciousness is not a byproduct of information processing

296
00:09:31,270 --> 00:09:32,589
it is a living system

297
00:09:32,591 --> 00:09:34,390
constantly regulating itself

298
00:09:34,391 --> 00:09:35,870
in order to maintain its own existence

299
00:09:35,871 --> 00:09:38,242
and consciousness emerges out of that process

300
00:09:38,950 --> 00:09:41,309
if you have no body that needs caring for

301
00:09:41,310 --> 00:09:43,666
you have no ground on which consciousness can arise

302
00:09:44,014 --> 00:09:45,825
now take that perspective

303
00:09:45,895 --> 00:09:47,865
and look back at this organoid

304
00:09:47,974 --> 00:09:49,906
you will find it is missing three things

305
00:09:50,094 --> 00:09:51,266
and these three things

306
00:09:51,494 --> 00:09:54,185
may be exactly the necessary conditions for consciousness

307
00:09:54,494 --> 00:09:54,845
first

308
00:09:55,134 --> 00:09:56,266
it has no body

309
00:09:56,295 --> 00:09:58,465
it does not have to struggle to stay alive

310
00:09:58,535 --> 00:10:00,266
nutrient fluid is fed straight to it

311
00:10:00,494 --> 00:10:00,806
second

312
00:10:01,134 --> 00:10:02,705
it has no sensory closed loop

313
00:10:02,775 --> 00:10:04,854
it cannot feel the real world

314
00:10:04,854 --> 00:10:07,266
and cannot change the world through action

315
00:10:07,374 --> 00:10:08,906
it just floats there

316
00:10:08,979 --> 00:10:09,780
third

317
00:10:09,815 --> 00:10:14,585
it has no continuously running self narrative network telling it who it is

318
00:10:15,603 --> 00:10:16,814
and here it gets interesting

319
00:10:17,203 --> 00:10:18,074
some research has found

320
00:10:18,402 --> 00:10:19,934
that certain roots of consciousness

321
00:10:20,002 --> 00:10:21,694
may not be in the cortex

322
00:10:21,723 --> 00:10:25,094
but hidden in older structures beneath it

323
00:10:25,282 --> 00:10:26,294
such as the brainstem

324
00:10:26,843 --> 00:10:28,233
if this direction is right

325
00:10:28,603 --> 00:10:29,893
the unity of consciousness

326
00:10:30,002 --> 00:10:33,253
that ability to squeeze every feeling into one self

327
00:10:33,363 --> 00:10:35,414
has its ignition in the brainstem

328
00:10:36,002 --> 00:10:38,533
then the fate of these organoids is very clear

329
00:10:38,642 --> 00:10:40,074
because what scientists grow

330
00:10:40,282 --> 00:10:41,853
is mostly cortical tissue

331
00:10:41,963 --> 00:10:44,653
they basically never touch that brainstem

332
00:10:45,042 --> 00:10:46,013
in other words

333
00:10:46,042 --> 00:10:49,214
from the moment it leaves the factory

334
00:10:49,323 --> 00:10:51,694
this thing may already be missing the most crucial ignition switch

335
00:10:52,042 --> 00:10:52,794
it has the parts

336
00:10:53,363 --> 00:10:54,314
but it may never

337
00:10:54,682 --> 00:10:55,816
start up

338
00:10:55,845 --> 00:10:56,276
but

339
00:10:56,685 --> 00:10:58,896
pay attention to what I am about to say

340
00:10:59,406 --> 00:11:02,936
even with all these reasons to believe it is not conscious

341
00:11:03,246 --> 00:11:04,536
not a single one of those reasons

342
00:11:04,646 --> 00:11:05,776
is certain

343
00:11:06,126 --> 00:11:07,396
all of them are only

344
00:11:07,766 --> 00:11:08,776
most likely

345
00:11:09,085 --> 00:11:11,816
the most awkward thing about consciousness science is

346
00:11:11,925 --> 00:11:14,816
it can tell you something probably is not conscious

347
00:11:14,965 --> 00:11:17,296
but it cannot give you a clear lower bound

348
00:11:17,606 --> 00:11:18,436
below which

349
00:11:18,845 --> 00:11:19,977
there is definitely nothing

350
00:11:20,325 --> 00:11:20,877
that line

351
00:11:21,366 --> 00:11:22,696
nobody can draw

352
00:11:23,686 --> 00:11:25,057
facing this dead end

353
00:11:25,125 --> 00:11:27,856
some philosophers proposed a very smart pivot

354
00:11:28,171 --> 00:11:28,971
they said

355
00:11:29,005 --> 00:11:32,136
let us stop wrestling with the yes or no question

356
00:11:32,206 --> 00:11:33,116
that question is too big

357
00:11:33,405 --> 00:11:34,976
and may never have an answer

358
00:11:35,166 --> 00:11:36,136
ask it differently

359
00:11:36,166 --> 00:11:38,284
if it really did have a tiny bit of feeling

360
00:11:38,285 --> 00:11:39,777
what kind of feeling would that be

361
00:11:39,966 --> 00:11:40,836
it has no eyes

362
00:11:41,166 --> 00:11:42,937
so probably no vision

363
00:11:43,086 --> 00:11:45,897
it has no nociceptors wired into neural circuits

364
00:11:46,046 --> 00:11:48,365
so maybe the pain we understand

365
00:11:48,365 --> 00:11:49,777
is something it simply cannot produce

366
00:11:50,046 --> 00:11:53,456
but might it have something more primitive and more blurry

367
00:11:53,686 --> 00:11:55,336
some indescribable discomfort

368
00:11:55,446 --> 00:11:57,077
or a most minimal

369
00:11:57,285 --> 00:11:58,177
sense of existing

370
00:11:58,798 --> 00:12:00,808
turning that unanswerable big question

371
00:12:01,078 --> 00:12:04,049
into a string of small questions you can close in on step by step

372
00:12:04,438 --> 00:12:06,728
that is what they call the precautionary principle

373
00:12:06,997 --> 00:12:08,448
its core spirit is

374
00:12:08,477 --> 00:12:10,848
when you are not sure whether something can feel pain

375
00:12:10,957 --> 00:12:13,088
and the cost of treating it as unable to feel

376
00:12:13,117 --> 00:12:15,077
is letting it suffer for nothing

377
00:12:15,078 --> 00:12:17,409
then you assume first that it can feel pain

378
00:12:17,477 --> 00:12:19,208
and treat it as if it can

379
00:12:19,438 --> 00:12:20,557
this is not being precious

380
00:12:20,558 --> 00:12:23,208
this is the humility a civilization should have

381
00:12:23,237 --> 00:12:24,769
when facing an unknown form of life

382
00:12:25,371 --> 00:12:28,582
so we end up standing in a very strange place

383
00:12:28,810 --> 00:12:30,861
we have built something that can learn

384
00:12:31,050 --> 00:12:32,250
but we cannot build a ruler

385
00:12:32,251 --> 00:12:34,582
that measures its suffering

386
00:12:34,890 --> 00:12:35,850
and this is no longer

387
00:12:35,851 --> 00:12:38,501
a thought experiment in a lab

388
00:12:38,770 --> 00:12:41,890
that thirty five thousand dollar machine I mentioned at the start

389
00:12:41,890 --> 00:12:43,089
is already shipping

390
00:12:43,091 --> 00:12:44,661
already rented out on the cloud

391
00:12:45,251 --> 00:12:45,962
biological computing

392
00:12:46,290 --> 00:12:47,449
is going from papers

393
00:12:47,451 --> 00:12:48,781
to being a business

394
00:12:49,358 --> 00:12:50,268
as an investor

395
00:12:50,517 --> 00:12:51,796
let me tell you

396
00:12:51,797 --> 00:12:54,049
why capital has its eyes on this

397
00:12:54,277 --> 00:12:57,848
because behind it sits a physics temptation that could not be harder

398
00:12:58,277 --> 00:13:00,888
do you know how much power AI burns today

399
00:13:01,037 --> 00:13:02,316
training a large model

400
00:13:02,318 --> 00:13:04,409
takes an entire data center behind it

401
00:13:04,558 --> 00:13:06,689
with an electricity bill high enough to drag down a power grid

402
00:13:07,037 --> 00:13:08,036
but your brain

403
00:13:08,037 --> 00:13:11,436
the one that writes poems does arithmetic and falls in love

404
00:13:11,438 --> 00:13:12,556
running at full power

405
00:13:12,558 --> 00:13:14,689
consumes only about twenty watts

406
00:13:14,757 --> 00:13:16,248
about the same as a light bulb

407
00:13:16,478 --> 00:13:17,757
the computing efficiency of biology

408
00:13:17,757 --> 00:13:20,368
leaves silicon chips completely in the dust

409
00:13:20,997 --> 00:13:22,809
so someone had this idea

410
00:13:22,877 --> 00:13:24,768
if carbon is this energy efficient

411
00:13:24,917 --> 00:13:27,648
could we compute directly with living brain cells

412
00:13:28,078 --> 00:13:30,728
that is the whole temptation of biological computing

413
00:13:30,997 --> 00:13:33,169
it is not a toy for science fiction fans

414
00:13:33,358 --> 00:13:38,407
it is a real money technology path that might get around the energy wall

415
00:13:38,676 --> 00:13:39,147
but look

416
00:13:39,475 --> 00:13:41,446
the trouble sits right here too

417
00:13:41,676 --> 00:13:42,946
you can use a silicon chip however you like

418
00:13:43,316 --> 00:13:44,527
break it and throw it away

419
00:13:44,595 --> 00:13:46,206
with zero moral burden

420
00:13:46,556 --> 00:13:48,446
but once your computing unit

421
00:13:48,516 --> 00:13:51,247
is a clump of living tissue that might feel pain

422
00:13:51,355 --> 00:13:52,806
the foundation of this business

423
00:13:52,875 --> 00:13:56,407
is built on an ethical question we have not answered

424
00:13:56,715 --> 00:14:00,874
that means in the future there will be thousands of these human brain tissues

425
00:14:00,875 --> 00:14:02,247
mass cultured

426
00:14:02,276 --> 00:14:03,267
wired to electrodes

427
00:14:03,556 --> 00:14:04,887
trained over and over

428
00:14:04,955 --> 00:14:05,387
and then

429
00:14:05,756 --> 00:14:06,907
after the experiment ends

430
00:14:07,235 --> 00:14:08,247
disposed of

431
00:14:08,676 --> 00:14:09,586
if among them

432
00:14:09,916 --> 00:14:11,127
even one single clump

433
00:14:11,276 --> 00:14:14,206
really does have the faintest most primitive feeling

434
00:14:14,316 --> 00:14:15,426
then what we are doing

435
00:14:15,796 --> 00:14:16,607
is what exactly

436
00:14:17,194 --> 00:14:18,525
I do not know the answer

437
00:14:18,993 --> 00:14:20,165
nobody does

438
00:14:20,513 --> 00:14:21,445
but I do know

439
00:14:21,633 --> 00:14:24,925
hidden in here is a question our era must answer

440
00:14:25,034 --> 00:14:27,124
and especially does not want to answer

441
00:14:27,554 --> 00:14:29,925
when whether a thing deserves kind treatment

442
00:14:30,074 --> 00:14:32,084
depends on whether it is conscious

443
00:14:32,194 --> 00:14:33,724
and when consciousness as a concept

444
00:14:33,753 --> 00:14:36,124
is something even we cannot define clearly

445
00:14:36,353 --> 00:14:37,925
what on earth are we supposed to do

446
00:14:38,273 --> 00:14:40,525
do we take the caution of assuming it might be real

447
00:14:40,714 --> 00:14:44,124
and treat it as a life that could feel pain

448
00:14:44,393 --> 00:14:46,065
even if that slows research down

449
00:14:46,434 --> 00:14:47,525
and raises costs

450
00:14:47,714 --> 00:14:51,124
or do we take the efficiency of no evidence means no

451
00:14:51,233 --> 00:14:52,724
and keep charging boldly ahead

452
00:14:52,834 --> 00:14:54,685
and deal with problems when they actually show up

453
00:14:55,188 --> 00:14:56,498
this is not a science question

454
00:14:56,948 --> 00:14:57,799
this is a question

455
00:14:57,867 --> 00:14:59,358
that holds a mirror up to us

456
00:14:59,828 --> 00:15:03,467
how we treat an existence whose inner life we cannot confirm

457
00:15:03,467 --> 00:15:04,786
actually exposes

458
00:15:04,788 --> 00:15:07,118
what kind of people we really are

459
00:15:07,507 --> 00:15:08,059
which would you choose

460
00:15:08,428 --> 00:15:09,059
caution

461
00:15:09,428 --> 00:15:10,439
or efficiency

462
00:15:10,708 --> 00:15:11,498
if one day

463
00:15:11,828 --> 00:15:13,307
the evidence really does point

464
00:15:13,308 --> 00:15:15,159
to it having a tiny bit of feeling

465
00:15:15,188 --> 00:15:16,818
do you think our civilization

466
00:15:17,188 --> 00:15:18,318
is ready

467
00:15:18,668 --> 00:15:19,218
these questions

468
00:15:19,747 --> 00:15:21,198
I have no standard answer

469
00:15:21,227 --> 00:15:24,159
and I would really like to hear what you think in the comments

470
00:15:24,731 --> 00:15:25,442
I am Wang Lijie

471
00:15:25,811 --> 00:15:26,902
see you next time