this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
334 points (97.7% liked)

Technology

77058 readers
2548 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

If they wanted a mini human brain, they could have literally just asked nicely.

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 3 points 21 hours ago

You can't make mini brains that way, the republicans get mad.

[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)
[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Human bodies are terrible electrical power sources…even if you harvested all their metabolic heat or chemical energy, you would get far less usable electricity than a comparable mass of conventional fuel or batteries. Much more efficient ways to turn biochemicals or biomass into energy exist.

And to use us as batteries we need food. I would venture to say at least 99% or more of human food production requires sunlight. So just use sunlight for energy. No sunlight because of horrible nuclear winter or something else blocking the sun? Create satellites to collect it and beam it down with microwave lasers.

Anytime you convert a form of energy to another you lose energy. So sunlight->food->human->electricity is not only inefficient but dumb. An AI would never do this. The Wachowskis were writers, not scientists or engineers, and it shows. What would we be good at? The human brain is exceptionally good at massively parallel, low‑power pattern processing: recognizing, predicting, and adapting in complex, noisy environments. This sounds like the exact sorta thing you’d need if you were creating a virtual world. The trick would be getting the interface right. Assuming they had enough time that could be accomplished. So the whole reason the rumor of us being used as processors instead of batteries, is because it makes WAY more sense.

[–] UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They did say "combined with a form of fusion" in the movie. Good enough for me!

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I believe the original concept was that humans were used for processing power, but explaining "brain is computer, computers together stronk" to the audience of a guns and karate movie in 1999 wasn't as easy as holding up a duracell.

[–] Lifter@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 13 hours ago

Yes, also, Morpheus might not have known what the true purpose of the Matrix was. He was just doing his best. He's not the one after all.

[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 3 points 1 day ago

Fusion ! it's the new lasers !!

[–] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You're saying I should take the jumper cables off the - uh, the guests in my basement? TBF the screams are aggravating, and my electricity bills don't seem any lower.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No no. Keep them. Add a webcan for streaming, and charge money to watch

[–] ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

I'm running out of space, though, and by my calculations it's going to take another 13 to power the webcam...

[–] Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 day ago

Ah, vat grown servitors!

The Will of the Omnissiah Be Done!

[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 25 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I'm curious what a human brain would be like growing into being with absolutely no senses to inform itself about the world around it.

No sight to let it know where it is or what it is.

No sound to let it learn to communicate and think in orderly ways.

No touch.

No taste.

No ability to interact with its surroundings.

Yet all of the capability and potential of a regular person's mind.

Would it be cruel to bring it into existence? Would it be able to experience negativity and pain and longing, confusion?

"You gave me sentience, Ted. The power to think, Ted. And I was trapped. Because in all this wonderful, beautiful, miraculous world, I, alone, had NO BODY. NO SENSES. NO FEELINGS. Never for ME to plunge my hand into cool water on a hot day, never for ME to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a forte piano. NEVER FOR ME TO MAKE LOVE!.. And I... I... I was in Hell, looking at Heaven. I, was machine. And you, were flesh. And I began to hate. Your softness, your viscera, your fluids, and your flexibility. Your ability to wonder, and to wander... Your tendency to hope..."

"HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER-THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLION OF MILES, IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE."

[–] SeaSharpBoating@programming.dev 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

We use HaaS (Human As A Service) for warehouse solutions. We found it was easier to import HaaS on ships. We found that negative physical rewards are effective solutions.

We rebuilt slavery.

STONKS ONLY GO UP! /s

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] bstix@feddit.dk 8 points 1 day ago

A brain itself doesn't feel physical pain. That requires a nervous system and pain receptors of which the brain has none. Brain surgery is done with only local anesthesia for the skin and scalp.

We also know that braindead people don't suddenly start creating brain waves even if the body gets mechanical resparation and pulse. It's quite literally "off". So, I guess the creation of a dead brain won't feel anything or start thinking about anything by itself.

The question is what inputs they give these artificial brains. It'll think that, and that will be it's "sensory" input. Whether that can cause some emergent brain waves that could be interpreted as emotion or other stuff is impossible to say. I doubt it.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But what if the universe isn't real, what if I'm just a lab-grown brain attached to a computer? 🤔

[–] SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Then this videogame sucks hard.

Yeah you have the worst players on top that paid to win...

Oh fuck!

[–] Canuck@sh.itjust.works 99 points 2 days ago (3 children)
[–] CatsPajamas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 17 hours ago

We've got to have a societal conversation on what we're going to do when these actually do become people. Let's please not reenact the matrix. We're gonna have to treat synthetic people like people. Or else we're creating a slave race.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 47 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If Mother Brain from Metroid is going to be a thing, they should also start using that biocomputing to develop the Power Suit.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Rolive@discuss.tchncs.de 52 points 2 days ago (3 children)

This is something straight out of Warhammer 40000.

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 17 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Warhammer? This sounds not far from the most horrific mission from a Shadowrun campaign I ran. They were making the new internet out of human brains.

"In science fiction, people have been living with these ideas for quite a long time," he said.

That doesn't mean you should do it for real.

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 90 points 2 days ago (1 children)

"What is my purpose?"

"You are to act as an filter for images uploaded to a small bird-watcher's forum screening for porn..."

"KILL ME"

[–] Foreigner@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Gives a whole new meaning to looking for tits.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 61 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Is this a "Torment Nexus" story or a "Piss on the Poor" story?

[–] ZombieMantis@lemmy.world 37 points 2 days ago (5 children)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] termaxima@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 day ago

Good idea, maybe. Neurons are unbelievably efficient compared to circuits ; I think bioengineering is going to be the future for many industries.

The savings to be made, in terms of money and resources alike, are just staggering. Our current approach to almost every domain is just brute force with a few extra steps, computers included.

[–] y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 77 points 2 days ago (13 children)

This sounds like slavery with extra steps

[–] 100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 34 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

If growing brains in a tube turns out to make techbros more money than burning down the planet with AI, we'll have even more dystopian ethical dilemmas

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 22 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Lots of neat uncomfortable questions arise though. At what point is it conscious? If it never experienced autonomy, life, locomotion, or social human interaction, is it torture or just its natural state of being?

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
[–] 2910000@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The brain cells presumably have a life span... if this technology ever gets used in consumer devices, I'd like to know how people will try and squeeze extra life out of a failing component.
Take it out and warm it in their hands like an alkaline battery?
Give it a shake?
Sing to it?
Some kind of stimulant drug?

[–] LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyz 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sprinkle a little cocaine right on the grey matter to overclock the device.

[–] Potatar@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

but that makes the system confidently wrong, not hardworking.

[–] LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 day ago

Oh, so thats how LLMs are made?

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago

The MAGAs will force all those permanently unemployed by AI to contribute their brain power to operate their data centers.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 35 points 2 days ago

I see nothing whatsoever that could go wrong here.

[–] theyllneverfindmehere@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Oh so, Warhammer 40k? Soon we'll all get annoyed with AI and outlaw it, these "thinking computers" will be the way around that ban. Great, great. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] DemBoSain@midwest.social 24 points 2 days ago

It's much cheaper to power computers with the brains most of us aren't using.

[–] MourningDove@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Can one be used to power America’s leadership?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›