Well why not? Most other things in America are artificial,
and if such a device could be used to replace existing brains, then the country
could certainly use it. The fact that this brain is about equivalent to that of
an embryo just before birth should not in most cases matter.
‘Seriously though’ (as they used to say) this is probably an
interesting development. I say ‘probably’ because, unsurprisingly, the BBC
report was at its usual infantile level, and failed for instance to make it
clear whether this is an organic item, or made of electrical hardware. Does it
look, that is to say, like the inside of a computer, or is it white and gooey
like the inside of a head?
An early candidate for having an artificial brain fitted
might be the BBC announcer who told us about it. He asked one of the
researchers ‘Does it think?’, thus revealing his own failure to do so. Of
course it doesn’t think; no brain does. People
think, using their minds. There is probably some connection — expert
opinion varies on this — between the mind and the brain. A brain no more thinks
than a pair of shoes goes for a walk.
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