It’s almost certain, based on current research trends, that an artificial brain will replicate the organic pain experience in its entirety one day. So here’s a thought experiment: if a tree falls in the forest, and it lands on a robot with an artificial nervous system connected to an artificial brain running an optimized pain recognition algorithm, is the tree guilty of assault or vandalism? A team of scientists from Cornell University recently published research indicating they’d successfully replicated proprioception in a soft robot. Today, this means they’ve taught a piece of wriggly foam how to understand the position of…

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