Last night an AI agent performed brain surgery on a mouse
twitter.com
twitter.com
> Watching our surgeon do the craniotomy, which the agent is not allowed to do yet for safety reasons
I think the only action it took was sending commands to lower a needle to a certain location, inject, and then remove it. But then it sounds like it couldn't actually choose a valid location and this guy had to manually override it? Maybe I'm misunderstanding, talking about this post: https://x.com/OcanaSantero/status/2115442968874139867 (https://xxcancel.com/OcanaSantero/status/2115442968874139867).
I know there is always endless goalpost-moving in these kind of discussions but I really do think there's an important difference between "performed brain surgery" and "observed brain surgery and ran inject(3.9, 4, 4.3) at one point". And there's also no discussion here of whether this decision made any medical sense and what impact it had on the mouse besides not killing it.
this has been all of computers since day one, pick a better argument.
imagine this same response but towards a linker/assembler/compiler that was complaining that it couldn't compile your plain speech into exactly the thing you wanted.
I guess the presumption is this : "This thing responds and outputs to plain language decently well, that must be what it's for!" , you then decide to disregard all of computer science, programming paradigms, boilerplate, and any attached rigor that one would normally have in the crafting a computer program and get validated by garbage output : "See honey! I told you these LLMs are useless, it couldn't one shot "Make me a perfect compliant browser no mistakes." "
YES , it goes without saying that with regard to computers -- those things in which we have little choice but to interact with textually most of the time -- that the things you put into them, and the order of those things, and the tool in which you use to do the inputting matter
what a surprise .
Strange how geeks have been making magic-word incantation/wizard jokes about the practice since the 50s, huh?
Is this an impossibly high bar? Yes! But that's literally the product pitch. If it can't act as a responsible colleage how is it supposed to replace you all?
It does seem like there is minimal "surgery" involved but it's not much of a stretch. If a surgeon took the same steps but someone else opened the skull, it would still be considered 'brain surgery', I think.
Obviously an AI agent can perform a simple surgical procedure. The question is how to get it to perform reliably.
The reason AI agents work as well as they do with code is because they get feedback and retry in a loop. Surgery is inherently inflicting “harm” on a patient, so there’s no bright line guardrail to apply to the agent loop.
Agents performing surgery won’t be possible until models get much much more reliable or we develop a simulation that matches reality close enough that we can use that in realtime for their feedback loop. I think we’re likely very far off from either solution.
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So I don’t agree that it had any measurable chance at all of helping anyone other than the author.
And if you’re being purely utilitarian, you need to weigh the opportunity cost of what else the money spent on this could have been used for. What else the researchers and peer reviewers could have done with their time, and what they else the mice could have been used for.
>eating meet
I agree this is probably not as bad as you punching babies though.
It’s just a way to show one’s virtue
Also don’t go outside your house because you may stamp on ants smh
The way you act here makes the world just a little bit worse.
I get that telling you this isn’t likely to be constructive, but if there’s only a 0.000001% chance you reconsider acting in such an unpleasant manner in your next interaction, it was worth it.
That’s a non sequitur because any action whatsoever has that property - you going outside your house may also result in a meteorite falling, would I ask you not to do it?
The mouse experiment is different because it was done for the intention of saving future lives. Not that intention matters but the everything around it implies that this mouse dying will have epsilon chance of helping humanity unlike other tasks which all else equal will not help anyone in surgery.
I’ll let it for anyone reading this to decide how to interpret this thread. And also how to judge a persons virtue if they care this much about a single mouse and not billions of chickens, pigs, cows dead every year for just purely hedonistic reasons.
I wish fewer animals were killed for meat and I wish fewer people took a * single * mouse’s death as an opportunity to show their “virtue”
1. You clearly aren't reading thoroughly before replying. Please go back and reread what I said, and find where you think I said anything about someone getting killed.
2. You are arguing with your perception of the collective consciousness of Hacker News, not discussing something with an individual.
I don't have a problem with experimenting on a mouse if there's a reasonable chance the end result will save lives or meaningfully help people, and precautions are taken to prevent suffering.
I just happen to think this experiment was stupid and unlikely to provide useful data, and the only reason the researcher used a live mouse was for publicity.
>That’s a non sequitur
The it might somehow kill someone is a non sequitur because you just made that up. My actual argument is that if you say that if you are going to make a utilitarian argument that something provides more benefit than harm overall, you need to weigh the possible benefit against the possible harm.
Your argument was that we can't say for sure there will be a benefit, so lets assume some minute expected benefit.
My argument is that you can't do that without assuming some minute expected harm also exists.
Sure you can essentially ignore the minute expected harm if you believe the expected benefit dwarfs it. But that wasn't your argument, your argument was "let's agree on this minute expected benefit". I believe the expected benefit to be so small as to be immeasurable. And my belief is that it is more likely that the publicity from this result leads other people to perform similar experiments also without any measurable benefit, than that anyone benefits from it.
> so lets assume some minute expected benefit.
Crucial part: all of humanity enjoys the benefit so you must multiply it by the population. So lets assume the expected benefit after adjusting for uncertainty is around 10^-6. And assume the benefit of eating a chicken is around 10 units.
Lets assume the pain felt by the mouse is around 2 pain units and the chicken's pain is around 2 as well.
Assume the benefit you get for generating 2 pain units after eating a chicken is 10 units.
Whereas the benefit from the mouse experiment after generating 2 pain units is 10^-6 * 10^9 = 1000.
Lets also put a subjective factor: eating meat is mostly hedonistic and testing on animals doesn't really have alternatives. I'm being honest here, if AI can eventually do surgery by itself then I'd like it to be tested on animals first and I'd prefer people don't protest against this especially those people who already eat meat.
Also lets not forget the extent of animals being killed for meat: its around 100 billion animals a year for mostly hedonistic reasons that can be fully avoided. Compared to that, animals being killed for medical research is around 100million. That's around 3 OOM less than for meat.
So yes, I think it is a complete non issue that a single mouse is killed for non hedonistic reasons and for benefit of science and I think a person has lost sight of reality if they think it is comparable to eating meat.
I'm preempting a reply like "haha you just made those numbers up so I won't respond". Ok you can do that. But this has been my point from the start - the benefits of animal research diffuse to all of humanity whereas eating meat is a purely selfish and hedonistic experience.
My father-in-law had an eye accident when he was young, and the doctor at the time said "unfortunately I don't recommend you try surgery, there's a really high risk you go blind".
Fast forward to today, and 40 years later such doctor called him and said "hey, turns out we could do a cornea transplant and surgery today and you have really high chances of success!"
He then went to do the surgery and now has restored his vision fully. He said the surgery was very "robotic" as in there's this super high precision device that does incredible work.
"ast forward to today, and 40 years later such doctor called him and said"
This is an unfortunately true and insightful comment.
There's the old joke:
What's the difference between a doctor and God?
God doesn't think He's a doctor.I can't see any of the ones I've known not stepping aside on discovering they're spontaneously, unpredictably losing the memory of how to do surgical procedures.
I wouldn't go so far as to day no doctor would ever keep going on the face of that happening, but I will say to do that would be utterly inhumane.
> If your feet are wet, and you're looking at pyramids, you're in de Nile (or a fountain in Vegas).
Also it isn't mounted on a panel. You'll go to slap it and it will just tip over instead of being pressed.
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Of course I trust engineering, I know planes are safe: but when there is turbulance and I see a flight attendant just casually walking and not even reacting to it, I feel better.
Humans are still humans.
Of course, culture changes. Colective ideas and institutions adapt. But extremely slowly compared to advances in tech.
It's indirectly related to health insurance cost, as we have a GP shortage and they (I presume?) realized a lot of people are making appointments and wasting a GP's time for trivialties like a cough or cold.
I'm pretty sure they already have, or are experimenting with having people go through an AI chatbot first. This is already very much a thing with any kind of customer support. It's not a new development though, the preceding generation was conversational interfaces.
Need an ambulance? Let me escalate to the department that will escalate you to a department that will dispatch the ambulance in 5-10 business days.
It's never about "ambulances". The bureaucracy will happily call an ambulance for you, as it ends their involvement and absolves them of liability. And the ambulance company is happy to show up, as it's a large billable event. In fact when seeking/obtaining complex medical care, this is one of the failure modes you have to constantly swat away!
As for interacting with the bureaucracy to obtain real care, it's gotten to the point where it's easier to get something done calling a large bank. Navigating the medical bureaucracy is probably on the level of calling Comcast-Warner (although I haven't had the misfortune of having to deal with them for a decade, so I'm sure they've gotten worse as well).
Even before "AI", my standard experience is a multi-level phone tree, multiple mandatory announcements before you can even proceed, then waiting on hold. That merely gets you to an answering service who types a ticket into the computer system. Then you wait a ~day for a nurse to call you back (if you miss answering this call, return to step 1). Then the only urgent appointments are invariably with "nurse practitioners" who throw pre-canned advice at you, as they don't really know what they're doing. That's four layers running interference to keep you away from an actual doctor, who you will finally get to see in a month for a fifteen minute appointment, if you are lucky.
That is a different kind of scary. Because it’s justified. Why limit the ai when human lives are at stake?
And this is on VERY expensive state helath insurance!!!
With a veterinarian conducting part of the procedure and overseeing the rest of it, and the mouse reportedly making a decent recovery, I fail to see a lapse in ethics.
And presumably you are going to keep failing, because you're not trying. You're handwaving the subject away looking for some bright red "lapse" rather than seeing the everpresent contours.
I've come to see this type of indignant/defiant language as a tell that someone is refusing to consider an issue (ie ignorance).
Starting on epileptic mice versus humans seems like a reasonable starting point.
You're failing to identify any actual ethical issue beside a blanket problem with animal testing. Which I can partially agree with as there's plenty of needless abuse and inhumane treatment.
This specific case does not seem like that.
Second, you're not really addressing my comment, rather just responding with a more polished version of your previous comment deny any issue.
My point is where are your own ethical boundaries here? For each aspect of the situation, what would have to be different to run aground of your own ethical concerns? In order to say that something is on a specific side of a line, you must know where the line actually is, right?
Third, and this doesn't apply to you as an uninvolved commenter per se, but it definitely applies to the original "experiment" - the onus is on the person performing it to demonstrate how it is ethical. A xit that reads like a kid buying some fancy equipment and playing around to see what might happen, "18hrs in front of my laptop coding and coordinating this", and a "licensed vet" as an accountability crumple zone does not inspire confidence!
> potential harm versus the realities of medical science and study
> needless abuse and inhumane treatment.
> This specific case does not seem like that
> At least the human has the mouse’s wellbeing at heart.
You don’t know this to be true
It helps to understand how snakes detect and catch prey.
The amount of cruelty humans inflict on other animals has very little bounds, this is fairly benign in the big picture honestly.
It's a deep subject.
(/s)
Here's a Wired link: https://www.wired.com/story/an-ai-agent-did-brain-surgery-on...
I noticed that the first tweet made no mention if the mouse survived. Seemed a little...sus.
Without more context, I’m not sure if that’s better or worse
While I have no moral conundrum about eating meat or doing scientific studies on animals, this seems like a bit unethical.
Was it really necessary to use a living mouse?
Will we just throw LLMs at most problems in the future instead of smaller, custom models? Like Sonnet 5.5 in this case.
If only we had accurate models they could train on.
Why would we limit the autonomy and power of ai when human lives are at stake?
This truly feels like a meme rather than a genuine study or something... If I hook up claude to my car it will probably will be able to drive it, same way it can program a simulated car in a game engine, or even Jev could do it...
This has be some sort of a weird marketing stunt for so called x-bros that I can't understand.