100 YEARS OLD AND STILL WORRIED ABOUT ROBORATS...

INTELLIGENCE is all very well but I cannot help worrying about recent research in China showing what happens when you enhance a rat’s intelligence by implanting into its brain electrodes connected to a computer.

The results are recorded in a recent paper, Intelligence-augmented Rat Cyborgs In Maze Solving, in the online science journal Plos One. Basically what they did was to implant the electrodes surgically into specific sites of the rats’ brains then send impulses to their brains to help them find the best routes through mazes. The results showed that a rat cyborg (their term for a rat helped by computer input) was better at finding its way through a maze than either a rat without such help or the computer on its own.

Their promise that future work will involve more complex mazes and tiny cameras and ultrasonic and infrared sensors mounted on the rats leaves me a little worried about where this Roborat project may be going. I envisage something on the following lines:

Method: Enhanced with cameras and other gizmos, the Roborat was put in a megamaze to compete with other rats at cheese finding. The trials produced the following results:

Trial one: Roborat won the race by a mile and scoffed all the cheese.

Trial two: Before the start, Roborat was set upon by the other rats who chewed its sensors and cameras off and ripped its brain out. Before dying Roborat said: “I’ll be back”.

Trial three: the start of this trial was delayed until devices had been implanted into another rat including a flamethrower and missile defence system to help it counter aggressive acts by the other rats. It promptly killed, cooked and ate the other rats then sauntered through to maze to finish its meal with a cheese course.

Trial four: Just as this trial was scheduled to start, an even more heavily armed Roborat arrived in the laboratory. Unable to ascertain where it had come from, the researchers provisionally concluded that it must have come from the future. On seeing it, the original Roborat squeaked, ran out of the experimental set-up and scurried into a hole in the skirting to hide. The new futuristic Roborat, which we shall refer to as Roborat II, fired its flamethrower at the hole through which its rival had disappeared and burnt the whole building down.

Trial five: The experimenters then waited until a sufficiently long period of time had passed and the psychology department had been rebuilt, then was able to send Roborat III back to the time of Roborat II to destroy it. Roborats II and III, however, talked it over and proceeded to race each other through the maze in order to get at the cheese and share it.

Suddenly, the original Roborat appeared on the scene, pointed out that he’d said he would be back, and explained that Roborat IV, also known as the Verminator, had travelled even further back in time than Roborats II and III to save him before the rats in trial 2 had killed him. All three Roborats then got together and killed the experimenters.

Conclusion: less research is needed.