Dreams of wealth turn to dust for Qatar migrant workers



Drawn by the prospect of making more money than they could ever hope to at home, migrants make up nearly 90 percent of Qatar's population of 2.8 million.

Hundreds of thousands of people have flocked to Qatar in recent years to work on giant construction schemes as it boosted its infrastructure ahead of the World Cup.

Drawn by the prospect of making more money than they could ever hope to at home, migrants make up nearly 90 percent of Qatar's population of 2.8 million.

Most come from the Indian subcontinent and the Philippines. Others hail from African nations including Kenya and Uganda.

The Gulf state has faced harsh criticism over deaths, injuries, and unpaid wages of foreign labourers.

Qatar has introduced major reforms to improve workers' safety and punish employers who violate the rules.

It has also paid hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for lost wages and injuries.

Rights groups have said the changes were too little, too late.

Ahead of the world's biggest single-sport tournament, AFP spoke to migrant workers in India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines, as well as their families, about their experiences.

Here are their stories:


The bereaved son

Migrant work is often a family affair, and Sravan Kalladi and his father Ramesh both worked for the same company building roads leading to the World Cup stadiums.

But only Sravan returned home to India. After yet another long shift, his 50-year-old father collapsed and died at the camp where they lived.

"The day my father died, his chest pain started when he was working," Kalladi said.

"We took him to the hospital... I told the doctors to try again and again to revive him," the 29-year-old said, his voice breaking.

The working conditions were "not good at all," he said, describing long working hours and underpaid overtime.

His father, a driver, "used to go to work at 3:00 am and come back at 11:00 pm," he said.

They were among six to eight people living in a room at the camp where "even four people could not sit properly if they wanted to," he added.

"We had to work in extreme weather conditions and the food we got was not good."

The duo went to the Gulf state hoping to build a better life for themselves.

But after taking his father's body back home to the southern Indian state of Telangana, Kalladi never returned to Qatar.

With only a month's salary as compensation from the company, an unfinished house now lies as a stark reminder of the family's unfulfilled dreams and crippled finances.

In the six years since, Kalladi has helped other families bring back the remains of relatives who have died in Gulf countries — but he is now looking to return to make enough money to finish the house.

"We are the company's when we are alive but not when we are dead," he said. "We trusted them and that's why we left our homes and went to work for them, and they let us down."

The debtor

The gleaming marble in Doha's Khalifa International Stadium, which will host eight World Cup matches, was in part installed by Bangladeshi mason Aupon Mir.

But he returned home from four years in Qatar with nothing to show for his efforts after being fleeced of his pay, he told AFP.

"What a beautiful stadium it is! It is unbelievably beautiful," he said.

"But the sad part is, even being a part of this gigantic beautiful construction, we did not get paid. My foreman took away our time sheets and withdrew all our money and fled."

Mir left his home in Sreepur in rural western Bangladesh and went to Qatar in 2016, hoping to make enough money to transform his life.

He paid for his trip with his savings and loans from his father and other relatives.

He worked for an Indian construction company in seven of the World Cup stadiums, but because he did not have a valid work permit, he was arrested in 2020 and deported.

"I spent nearly 700,000 taka ($7,000) to go to Qatar to change my fate," the 33-year-old said.

"I returned home with 25 rials ($8). This is how much Qatar has contributed in my life," the father of two said in front of his home and tea shop.

"I dreamt of building a better house, living a better life, sending my children to better schools. But none of those hopes came true. I only gathered a pile of debts and now carry the burden around."

Mir said he would wake in the early hours to take the bus to his construction site, then work for 10 hours in scorching heat.

He would go for days without food when he had no money, and at times slept on the beach when he could not pay his rent.

"We sweated from top-to-toe every day at work," he said.

"Blood has turned into sweat in our bodies to construct the stadiums. But only for us to be kicked out without money and honour."


The builder

The labourers who flock to Qatar and other Gulf countries do so in hope of earning far more money than they could ever aspire to in their home countries. For some, those dreams come true.

Abu Yusuf — who asked for his real name not to be used as he plans to return to the World Cup host next month — paid 680,000 Bangladeshi taka for his trip to Qatar.

There, he worked as a driver, construction worker and welder, including several months on a fire station within a stadium.

He made around $700 a month and was "more than happy" with his pay, he said.

"They are good people. Many Qataris helped me."

One contractor stole some of his wages but the 32-year-old still praised Qatari authorities.

He returned last month to the central Bangladesh town of Sadarpur, where he was raised by a single mother in extreme poverty.

Now he is building a two-storey home and has bought a sleek new motorbike with his Qatari earnings, while covering the expenses of seven people including his mother and the family of his blind brother.

A die-hard Argentina supporter, he wishes he could watch a match at the Al-Bayt stadium, where he worked as a welder.

"It is a beautiful stadium. I felt proud I was among the workers who built the stadium. I wish I could watch a match there," he said, adding that he hopes to work for another 10 years in Qatar.

"I was treated well," he said.

The blind man

On a construction site near Doha, Bangladeshi worker Babu Sheikh fell four metres (14 feet) to the ground and fractured his skull.

He spent four months in a coma in hospital. When he came to, he was blind.

"When I regained consciousness, I could not see anything," he said. "I asked my brother whether the place was dark. He told me it was well-lit. I could not believe that I lost my sight.

"I had no idea of how four months passed by and how it all happened."

It took 18 months before he could leave hospital, with the bills paid by his family.

Qatari authorities prosecuted his employer but the case was dismissed and he never received any compensation, he said.

Most of the time, Sheikh sits quietly in the front yard of his home. On some days, his son leads him to the nearby bazaar or to the tea stall in the late afternoon where he chats with his childhood friends.

"I don't want to live like this," he said. "I want to work. I can't sleep throughout the night being worried about the future of my family, my son and my wife."

The boy, now five, was born while he was in Qatar, and Sheikh has never seen him.

"All I want is my eyesight back. I want to see my son. Does he have my complexion? Does he look like me?"

Hungry and homesick

When Filipino construction worker Jovanie Cario's employer stopped paying him in 2018, he deliberately got arrested so he could eat a free meal in jail.

Cario, who spent six years in Qatar, said it was a common tactic among Filipino migrants struggling to survive.

Hungry workers would show outdated documents to Qatari police, who would lock them up for a night, feed them and then let them go.

"In the facility there was so much food," Cario, 49, told AFP.

"When we were released and returned to our accommodation our stomachs were full."

Cario arrived in Qatar in 2012, two years after the country was named as the World Cup host.

He installed glass and aluminium panels on several construction projects, including the 80,000-seat Lusail Stadium near Doha, where the final will be held on December 18.

The monthly pay in Qatar was more than his basic salary as a Nestle products salesman in the Philippines — and it went up the longer he was there.

He wired most of it back to his family in the central province of Negros Occidental.

But there were times when his wages were delayed for months and he was forced to borrow money from friends, relatives, or loan sharks.

At the beginning of 2018, Cario's pay suddenly stopped again. He kept working, oblivious to the fact his employer had gone bankrupt.

After three months, Cario managed to get compensation from Qatar's labour ministry, and he flew home.

In the six years he was away, Cario said he saw his two children once. Despite being homesick, he wanted to save more money before returning to the Philippines.

"The body is yearning to go home, but the pocket isn't deep enough," he said.

 

The left-liberal march forward: Pirc Musar is president of Slovenia

Łukasz Kobeszko

The independent candidate Nataša Pirc Musar won the presidential election in Slovenia on 13 November with 53% of the vote. She was supported by two small extra-parliamentary parties, the Pirate Party of Slovenia (PSS) and the Young People’s Party/European Green Party (SMS-Zeleni). Her rival Anže Logar, a former foreign minister in Janez Janša’s government, who had the backing of the centre-right opposition Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) and New Slovenia (NSi), won 46% of the vote. Although fewer voters voted for Pirc Musar in the first round than for Logar, she won in the second round thanks to the support of the Freedom Movement (GS) and the Social Democrats (SD), the two parties which have led the left-green governing coalition since they won the parliamentary elections earlier this year. Turnout in the second round was 53%, 2% up on the first round. Pirc Musar will be sworn in on 22 December; she will be the fifth president in the history of independent Slovenia, and the first woman to hold the post.

Commentary

• The election results show how polarised Slovenian society is, but at the same time makes clear the predominance of the left-liberal camp, concentrated in the larger cities, over the right-wing conservative camp, which is more strongly represented in the rural areas of northern and eastern Slovenia. The results did not come as a surprise, as most polls after the first round predicted that Pirc Musar, who got 28% of the vote on 23 October, would beat the centre-right candidate in the second round thanks to the votes of the left and liberal electorate. Logar’s result in the first round (33% of the vote) shows stable support for the opposition, which is centred around former PM Janša and the SDS party.
• Pirc Musar’s victory can be seen as a relative success for Robert Golob’s green-left cabinet, which was formed in May. Although the candidates supported by the parties in the ruling coalition (Milan Brglez (GS, SD) and Miha Kordiš (Left)) got much lower results in the first round (15% and 2% respectively), and the Left (the third party in the coalition) did not officially support any of the candidates in the second round, Pirc Musar’s views do not differ greatly from the government’s programme. During the election campaign, she emphasised ecological and social issues, promised to cooperate with NGOs and civic activists in the field of human rights, and that she would work towards maintaining the high standard of living in the country. That is why the two big coalition parties (GS and SD) unreservedly supported her even though she distanced herself from them. Pirc Musar has made a name for herself as a lawyer (she has represented Melania Trump, among others), and in the past she served as the national commissioner for access to public information, and later as the president of the Slovenian Red Cross.
• The victory for Pirc Musar shows that the Slovenian electorate’s tendency, which has been clear since its independence in 1991, to give the office of president to politicians with broadly liberal and left-wing views has continued (she was supported by Milan Kučan and Danilo Türk, two former Slovenian presidents with liberal and left-wing backgrounds). Together with the success of GS (led by Robert Golob) in this year’s parliamentary elections, Pirc Musar’s victory is proof that the Slovenian electorate is willing to lend credence to new groupings and politicians.
• In Slovenia, the president is treated as an arbiter and supra-party authority, but they lack real instruments of power. Despite the universal nature of presidential elections, the constitution limits the head of state’s powers to representative and protocol functions. The president does not have the power to dissolve parliament or veto laws, or to propose legislation; their management of parliamentary and local government elections is also purely formal. The head of state can put forward candidates for ambassadors, but the government can ignore these proposals, as was often the case in 2020-2, when the Janša government was in ‘cohabitation’ with the outgoing president Borut Pahor, whose roots lie in the SD.
• The next president of Slovenia will most likely support the left-liberal government’s foreign policy course, maintaining a moderate level of aid to Ukraine, and supporting the European integration of the Western Balkans through dialogue with Serbia, while pressing it on issues of the rule of law. In Pirc Musar’s campaign, the topic of Ukraine was little mentioned, in contrast to the its stronger emphasis in Logar’s campaign. As with Golob’s cabinet, Pirc Musar may be less interested in cooperating with Hungary and the V4 countries; she may prefer to focus on EU-wide issues, in particular the EU’s green transformation programme.                                       

Two centuries since the first law to prevent animal cruelty, how much has changed?

Campaigners say the growth of intensive farming means many animals are worse off than before








A wrestling camel leaves the field after competing during the 40th International Camel Wrestling Festival in Selcuk, Turkey. 

All photos: Reuters

Daniel Bardsley
Nov 14, 2022

Two centuries ago this year the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act, which was championed by Richard Martin, an Irish politician and member of the British parliament, passed into law in the UK.

Often referred to as Martin’s Act, enacted in 1822, made it illegal to be cruel to animals such as cattle, sheep and horses, although those found guilty of mistreating these creatures faced only a fine.

While the protection Martin’s Act offered was limited, it was ground breaking, because this was the first animal welfare legislation to come into force anywhere in the world.

Technology now allows alternatives that are viable and perhaps even better than animal testing, it’s just a matter of convincing companies and bureaucracies to change their way
David Favre, professor at Michigan State University

Martin’s Act paved the way for similar legislation in, among other places, New York, in 1828, and Massachusetts, in 1835.

Two centuries on, laws to protect animals from cruelty have reached the statute book in scores of countries around the globe, although in others anti-cruelty legislation is limited or non-existent and much work needs to be done.

Cruelty of factory farms and lab testing on animals

Andrew Knight, an Australian veterinary surgeon who is a professor of animal welfare and ethics at the University of Winchester in the UK, said every year about 80 billion land animals are killed for food ― more than 10 for every person on the planet ― along with one to three billion fish, some intensively reared.

“This increase in animal produce consumption globally is bringing with it major animal welfare problems and indeed has become the second-biggest animal welfare concern in history, the biggest of all being, unfortunately, the wholesale destruction of the other species with which we share the planet,” Prof Knight said.

“Well over three quarters of all animals farmed are intensively farmed in modern industrialised environments in which they’re spatially very restricted and confined in relatively barren environments which are chronically stressful for them.”

Likewise, despite lengthy campaigning against animal experiments, with the first anti-vivisection organisations having been formed in the late 19th century, the number of animals used in laboratories is growing.

One published study estimated that 192.1 million animals were used for scientific purposes in 2015, compared with 115.2 million in 2005.

Increases are happening in part because the availability of genetically modified animals means that many more scientific questions may be investigated, according to Prof Knight, who is also the lead editor of the Routledge Handbook of Animal Welfare.
Animals for research and amusement unacceptable

In other fields, efforts to ban practices that activists regard as cruel often meet with limited success.

For example, the hunting of wild animals with dogs is still legal, or bans are poorly enforced and, decades after newspapers ran horrific front-page stories about the practice, seal pups are still clubbed to death in Canada.

In much of Spain, Portugal, France and some Latin American countries, bullfighting, in which animals may be repeatedly stabbed with lances, barbs, a sword and a dagger, is legal and frequently subsidised by the authorities.

Dr Aysha Akhtar of the Centre for Contemporary Sciences says in the future we will have more options for testing that do not use animals. Photo: Dr Aysha Akhtar

According to Dr Aysha Akhtar, a US medical doctor who is the co-founder and chief executive of the Centre for Contemporary Sciences, an organisation that promotes human-relevant instead of animal-based scientific research, there is an obvious reason why achieving change is harder when it comes to animal protection as opposed to other advocacy movements, such as feminism and civil rights.

“With animals, it requires humans to take that protest for them. It requires a sense of empathy on behalf of someone who is not yourself or not of your group,” Dr Akhtar said.

All such advocacy movements, she said, campaign against “the same underlying principles that deny rights to a group”, but societies have, Dr Akhtar said, “created such a stark divide between humans and every other animal” that to campaign on behalf of animals, people have to break away strongly from cultural paradigms.

“Why do we say humans and animals? We don’t use the words dogs and animals. We don’t say cats and animals," she said.
Mainstream media sparsely reports on animal rights

Another issue may be that animal protection issues tend to be sparsely covered by the media. Dr Akhtar, the author of Our Symphony with Animals: On Health, Empathy, and Our Shared Destinies.

Where protections have been put in place, they vary significantly between countries, species and situations.

Paula Sparks, chairperson of the UK Centre for Animal Law and a visiting professor of animal welfare law at the University of Winchester, noted that in the UK, for example, a pet mouse will be subject to the Animal Welfare Act 2006. But the act does not regulate experiments on animals, nor does it apply to wild animals.

So a laboratory mouse may legally be subjected to what is described as “severe suffering”, while a wild mouse may be trapped or poisoned.

Prof David Favre of Michigan State University says there has been a sea change in attitudes to pet adoption, with many more people keen to take rescued animals rather than pets bred to be sold for profit. Photo: David Favre

“It’s very context-specific and that reflects the fact that society sees there being a balancing exercise between the use of the animal and what’s in the animal’s interests,” Prof Sparks said.

In his 1975 book Animal Liberation, often seen as a founding text of the modern animal protection movement, the Australian academic Prof Peter Singer put forward a similar view.

Steven Wise, an American lawyer, animal advocate and researcher, has suggested that autonomy is important, while David Favre, a professor of law at Michigan State University in the US has formulated the idea of “living property”.


Prof Favre, who has decades of research experience in animal law and related fields, and has authored numerous books on the subject, suggests that this recognition of the status of living property would enhance the rights of at least some animals.

For all that the lot of many animals has not improved, there are myriad ways in which, in the eyes of animal advocates, progress has been made.

In the US, for example, Prof Favre says that there has been a sea change in attitudes to pet adoption, with many more people keen to take rescued animals rather than pets bred to be sold for profit.

While it still happens, the Canadian seal hunt has shrunk significantly, not least because of European Union bans on the importation of certain seal products.

Animal protection is also being strengthened with legislative changes.


Spain’s Council of Ministers recently passed a ruling that will mandate the use of CCTV in slaughterhouses, something that follows similar legislation in Israel and the UK.

Meanwhile, a court in Mexico recently upheld what was a temporary ban on bullfighting in the largest bullring in the world. In Spain, often regarded as the home of bullfighting, audiences have dwindled significantly over the past decade, fewer fights are being staged and some bullrings have closed.
Can technology bring an end to animal cruelty?

The growth of plant-based diets, Prof Knight said, is the “biggest achievement” since people began advocating for animals.

“I think that’s got more potential to help animals than any other social change that has occurred throughout the history of the animal rights movement," he said.

“The increase in plant-based lifestyles is driven by major consumer trends and they’re only going to increase in strength over time.”

Culturing animal cells industrially is becoming cheaper and the ability of food companies to produce plant-based products that look, taste and feel like meat has dramatically improved.
Lab-grown meat - in pictures











Chicken bites made from lab-grown cultured chicken developed by Eat Just. Eat Just via Reuters

“People that are on the fence can say, ‘I can still enjoy that sensation and receive that benefit and it doesn’t have to kill animals,’” Prof Favre said.

“I think there’s a big group of people in the middle that would like to be veganish, or at least vegetarian, but it’s not easy to do. As these [alternatives] come forward it will be easier and easier to do.”

Campaigners also suggest that technological advances could lead to reductions in the use of animals in laboratories.

Prof Favre makes a distinction between the use of animals in research and in testing, with the latter often involving mandated assessments of commercial products. With testing, he said alternatives are available and will most likely be cheaper than using animals.

“I think that our technology now allows alternatives that are viable and perhaps even better than animal testing,” he said. “It’s just a matter of convincing companies and bureaucracies to change their way.”

Animal protection advocates hope that technology will not just reduce the use of animals in food production and in experiments, but may also drive change in attitudes. As Dr Akhtar put it, it is about “setting a new normal”.

READ MORE
Fashion brands failing on animal welfare according to new report

“We’re going to have more options for testing that don’t use animals, more options for food that are more appealing to humans, that are more appealing culturally," Dr Akhtar said.

“They will ultimately become the predominant option and we’ll see a reduction of animals in these spheres, and the ethics in how we treat animals will tag along with that.”

So, two centuries after Martin’s Act became law, it may be that technology, not just legislation, will change the relationship between humankind and other animals.

Updated: November 15, 2022

BECAUSE,OF COURSE THEY CAN

In the corner of an Australian lab, a brain in a dish is playing a video game – and it’s getting better

Scientists Develop Lab-Grown Brain That Can Play Pong Video Game

LONG READ

Liam Mannix

STUFF

Nov 15 2022

In a corner of a lab south of Melbourne sits an open laptop. None of the scientists working nearby give it a second glance. On the screen, someone is playing a game of Pong.

The unseen player is hesitant and twitchy, wobbling the paddle across the laptop screen towards the pixelated ball. But they hit it, more often than not.

A cable runs from the laptop to a large incubator. Inside, kept warm and bathed in nutrients, about 800,000 human neurons are behind the controls. And they are getting better.

CHRIS HOPKINS/SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Cortical Labs Dr Brett Kagan, alongside the Hudson Institutes Dr Nhi Thao Tran and Monashs Dr Adeel Razi, who worked on the key paper published in Neuron

This brain in a dish could be the start of a whole new field of computing, where silicon and neurons are wired together to produce extraordinarily powerful artificial intelligences. It may open a whole new path towards building an AI that thinks like a human.

READ MORE:
* Chimps 'show and tell' like humans
* Aussie discovers part of brain that lets you play piano
* 'Minibrains' raise hopes, ethical questions
* Brains grown in a laboratory could halt Alzheimer's
* Robot speech simulator that can imitate anyone may be the future of fake voices

It might also make an awful ethical mess. Can a bunch of brain cells ever be called conscious? Do they have rights? If their only reality is the pixels of Pong, is it ethical to… turn the game off?

We need to figure that out, and quickly. But Socrates has been dead for 2400 years and neither philosophers nor neuroscientists have a workable definition of consciousness. And when you start worrying about protecting consciousness, you run into our barbarous treatment of animals - many of whom surely meet some definition of having feelings and being aware.

DishBrain’s arrival signals a field where our technological power may soon exceed our ethical understanding. “We’re like children,” says Professor Julian Savulescu, chair in ethics at the University of Oxford, “with a loaded AK-47″.

The first thing you notice when you enter Cortical Labs’ office in Parkville is not the laptop – it’s the robot dog.

CORTICAL LABS
This brain in a dish could be the start of a whole new field of computing, where silicon and neurons are wired together to produce extraordinarily-powerful artificial intelligences.

The dog has four back-bending legs which gives it the low-slung look of a predator about to pounce, and a head full of sensors. Boston Dynamics sells them for about A$113,000(NZ$123,930), but this is a cheaper Chinese knockoff. It sits inanimate in its box, waiting like the Scarecrow for someone to insert a brain. Which is one of Cortical’s next projects.

That’s the company in a nutshell: low-budget, fast-moving, doing progressively-crazier things.

Cortical is the sci-fi dream of Hon Weng Chong, an ebullient entrepreneur who trained as a doctor and first tried to make it big selling Bluetooth stethoscopes (that company shuttered in 2019).

Chong had watched as scientists spent the last 20 years making dramatic progress growing neurons in the lab and turning them into increasingly-sophisticated models of regions of the human brain. These ‘brain organoids’ are more than just lumps of tissue: in recent experiments, the cells’ electrical activity started syncing up in waves – brain waves. Some of the brain activity mimics that seen in babies. In other studies, scientists were able to stimulate rat neurons and get a signal back.

What if, Chong wondered, you could close the loop? Send signals into the neurons, get information back, and then give feedback? Could you get them to respond, process data, learn? You’d have a biological computer.

ELKE MEITZEL/SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Cortical Labs CEO Hon Weng Chong.

Chong knew he’d never get conservative government research funders to back his idea. He needed a sci-fi geek. He found one in Niki Scevak, partner at venture-cap firm Blackbird; “he’s always been one to believe in deep-tech and a sci-fi world”, says Chong (Scevak says Cortical had “a chance of magic”). Blackbird invested A$1 million and the race to biology began.

Left to their own devices in a dish, neurons will sprout long tendril-like connections (called axons), building their own network. At first, Cortical tried to match those networks to the underlying hardware – but it proved enormously time-consuming.

Eventually Brett Kagan, Cortical’s chief scientific officer, decided to stop trying to adapt the hardware to the neurons and let the neurons adapt to the hardware. After all, it is the neurons that were evolutionarily-designed to be flexible, he thought. To his surprise, left alone the neurons started performing dramatically better.

“It makes sense. Your brain, my brain, they are going to be quite different, but we can all do the same things,” says Kagan.

Working alone in the lab during Melbourne’s long Covid lockdowns, he would watch his dishes of neurons play Pong again and again.

“I used to glare at it, and say, ‘I swear it’s getting better’. And then we did some analysis, and it was,” says Kagan. “And then the immediate thought was: what did we do wrong?”

The neurons sit atop a microchip that feeds electrical information in – like the distance of the ball from the paddle. Electrical signals from the neurons are used to move the paddle left and right. Each time the paddle hits the ball, the neurons get a little electrical reward. And, over time, they play better. Not by much, but enough to show something is happening.

“Yes, brain cells should be flexible and should be able to learn and get better. But to see it respond this strongly…. It was pretty crazy,” says Kagan.

How? We don’t know – because we don’t really know how the brain works. But DishBrain’s success lends support to one theory: the brain is trying to build an accurate internal model of reality. Every time the neurons struck the ball, they were being told ‘your model is right’.

Such is the speed at which Cortical has to operate there is no time to rest on laurels. A new chip is already under-construction with increased input-output power. Coders are writing a custom programming language; soon they plan to start letting external developers write code and feed it in to the DishBrains. Daniela Duc shows me 3D-printed cases containing life-support systems that will allow DishBrain to sit on a desk like a portable computer – or be stacked in a server farm.

CORTICAL LABS
A scanning electron microscope image of a neural culture that has been growing for more than six months on a high-density multi-electrode array. A few neural cells grow around the periphery and have developed complicated networks that cover the electrodes in the centre.

Artificial intelligence controls an ever-increasing slice of our lives. Smart voice assistants hang on our every word. Our phones leverage machine learning to recognise our face. Our social media lives are controlled by algorithms that surface content to keep us hooked.

These advances are powered by a new generation of AIs built to resemble human brains. But none of these AIs are really intelligent, not in the human sense of the word. They can see the superficial pattern without understanding the underlying concept.

Siri can read you the weather, but she does not really understand that it’s raining. AIs are good at learning by rote, but struggle to extrapolate: even teenage humans need only a few sessions behind the wheel before the can drive, while Google’s self-driving car still isn’t ready after 32 billion kilometres of practice.

A true ‘general artificial intelligence’ remains out of reach – and, some scientists think, impossible.

Is this evidence human brains can do something special computers never will be able to? If so, the DishBrain opens a new path forward. “The only proof we have of a general intelligence system is done with biological neurons,” says Kagan. “Why would we try to mimic what we could harness?”

He imagines a future part-silicon-part-neuron supercomputer, able to combine the raw processing power of silicon with the built-in learning ability of the human brain.

Others are more sceptical. Human intelligence isn’t special, they argue. Thoughts are just electro-chemical reactions spreading across the brain. Ultimately, everything is physics – we just need to work out the maths.

SUPPLIED
Pong, one of the first video games ever coded.

NEW SCIENTIST Dec 17, 2021

Living brain cells in a dish can learn to play Pong when they are placed in what researchers describe as a "virtual game world". "We think it's fair to call them cyborg brains," says Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer of Cortical Labs, who leads the research.

Many teams around the world have been studying networks of neurons in dishes, often growing them into brain-like organoids. But this is the first time mini-brains have been found to perform goal-directed tasks, says Kagan.

“If I’m building a jet plane, I don’t need to mimic a bird. It’s really about getting to the mathematical foundations of what’s going on,” says Professor Simon Lucey, director of the Australian Institute for Machine Learning.

Why start the DishBrains on Pong? I ask. Because it’s a game with simple rules that make it ideal for training AI. And, grins Kagan, it was one of the first video game ever coded. A nod to the team’s geek passions – which run through the entire project.

“There’s a whole bunch of sci-fi history behind it. The Matrix is an inspiration,” says Chong. “Not that we’re trying to create a Matrix,” he adds quickly. “What are we but just a goooey soup of neurons in our heads, right?”

Maybe. But the Matrix wasn’t meant as inspiration: it’s a cautionary tale. The humans wired into it existed in a simulated reality while machines stole their bioelectricity. They were slaves.

Is it ethical to build a thinking computer and then restrict its reality to a task to be completed? Even if it is a fun task like Pong?

“The real life correlate of that is people have already created slaves that adore them: they are called dogs,” says Oxford University’s Julian Savulescu.

Thousands of years of selective breeding has turned a wild wolf into an animal that enjoys rounding up sheep, that loves its human master unconditionally.

“Maybe it’s OK to create a DishBrain that’s happy playing Pong, and that’s all it desires,” says Savulescu. “I really have no idea what the answer is.”

SUPPLIED
The Matrix wasn't meant as inspiration, but as cautionary tale.

That was a common refrain from philosophers to most of the questions DishBrain raises: we just don’t know.

Most philosophers say if something has consciousness, it deserves some level of protection.

DishBrains remain primitive, and no experts told The Age they believed it was already conscious. “Is my garage door opener conscious when it opens the garage door as my car gets close to it?” says Stanford’s Hank Greely, founder of the International Neuroethics Society.

But the path is clear: we are going to continue to build ever-more-sophisticated models of the human brain. These models, says Savulescu, may one day come to represent genuinely new life-forms, that demand answers to a new set of ethical questions.

Can a brain wired into a computer suffer? If so, how could it tell us? “There’s a risk you might get it completely wrong, and end up inflicting horrible suffering in the context of trying to make these things learn,” says Dr Julian Koplin, a research fellow in biomedical ethics at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.

Could a sophisticated DishBrain become conscious? We don’t know, because we don’t have a good yardstick for what consciousness is. “And we’re not close to being there yet,” says Koplin. “The development of DishBrain is a sign we really need to get on top of this.”
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AUDUBON NATURE INSTITUTE
Why is an awake, aware primate given less moral worth than a comatose human?

Many philosophers think of consciousness as being able to have a subjective experience: feeling the bitterness of coffee or the painfulness of pain. But… animals can experience sensation, and society often does not treat them as conscious.

Perhaps the answer is only human consciousness deserves the highest form of moral protection? “You can see where the problem arises when you think like that: who gets to be treated with dignity and who does not?” says Dr David Kirchhoffer, director of the Queensland Bioethics Centre.

Aristotle distinguished between humans who could reason, and therefore deserved dignity –men – and those who could not – slaves, children, women.

The issue gets worse when you start thinking about animals, many of whom seem a lot more conscious than DishBrain. Ravens play, remember the past and anticipate the future. Apes, elephants and dolphins recognise themselves in mirrors. Elephants mourn. In experiments, rhesus monkeys will refuse to injure their companions in exchange for food – evidence, perhaps, for empathy. More empathy than we extend when we subject them to medical experiments.

CORTICAL LABS/THE AGE
A microscope image of DishBrain, showing connections forming between the neurons.

Why is an awake, aware primate given less moral worth than a comatose human?

“It’s even difficult in the same species. Consider the right to abortion,” says Associate Professor Frederic Gilbert, head of philosophy at the University of Tasmania. Scientists generally think of them as somewhat conscious at between 20 and 30 weeks of fetal development. But that’s no guarantee of moral rights.

Cortical are aware of the issues and have tried to be proactive. Kagan published a paper with Gilbert in March setting out their thinking - including the argument that testing on DishBrain offers an alternative to animal testing.

Giving protection to DishBrain “would mean these cells have more ethical importance than a rodent or primate,” says Gilbert. “And so we’d keep testing on animals - and I think that’s ethically wrong.”

But even Cortical agree some form of regulation is going to be needed. Australia’s health research agency told The Age it was looking closely at the issue “with a view to determining if specific ethics guidance is required in the future”.

For decades, scientists were prevented from growing a human embryo in a lab for longer than 14 days. Cortical’s fridge has a DishBrain that’s been alive for more than a year.

“This is totally uncharted territory, ethically,” says Savulescu. “We’re in Medieval times in terms of our ethical progress relevant to our power.”

   

Lab-Grown Brain Learns Pong - Is This Biological Neural Network "Sentient"?

Ihm Curious

Nov 4, 2022

A leading neuroscientist claims that a pong-playing clump of about a million neurons is "sentient". What does that mean? Why did they teach a lab-grown brain to play pong? To study biological self-organization at the root of life, intelligence, and consciousness. And, according to their website, "to see what happens." CORRECTIONS/Clarifications: - The cells aren't directly frozen in liquid nitrogen - they are put in vials and stored in liquid nitrogen: https://www.atcc.org/products/pcs-201... - The sentience of some invertebrates, like octopuses, is generally agreed upon. Prominent scientists affirmed non-human consciousness in the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness: https://philiplow.foundation/consciou... DISCLAIMER: The explanations in this video are those proposed by the researchers, or my opinion. We are far from understanding how brains, or even neurons, work. The free energy principle is one of many potential explanations. Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/IhmCurious Footage from Cortical Labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neV3a... NASJAQ's interview with founder Hon Weng Chong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1R5k... Cortical Labs website: https://corticallabs.com Full paper on DishBrain: https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/... Paper on the free energy principle definition of sentience: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/5/516 Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:36 Sentience 1:23 Self-organization 2:00 DishBrain setup 2:17 Punishment and reward 3:43 Results 4:12 Consciousness 5:04 Ethics 6:25 What’s Next

Argentine healthcare workers march demanding better salaries

Updated: 15/11/2022


Doctors, nurses and assistants from public hospitals in Buenos Aires are striking for 24-hours demanding better wages and working conditions amid soaring inflation which is projected to hit 100% this year.

Staff within the capital's thirty public hospitals say they have been put to the test as the cost of living crisis continues.

"We can no longer work like this and live like this," said Tatiana Estrada, an infectious disease doctor at the Fernandez Hospital.

Under the slogan "health in an emergency", more than a thousand professionals, complete in their hospital gowns, marched through the city's historic centre from the Obelisk to Plaza de Mayo and protested in front of the Ministry of Health

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Adnan Oktar: Turkish cult leader sentenced to 8,658 years in prison after retrial

The former televangelist and 'sex cult' leader was imprisoned last year for crimes including sexual assault and espionage

Adnan Oktar meets with a range of religious leaders in 2010 (Wikicommons)

By Alex MacDonald
Published date: 16 November 2022 

Televangelist and cult leader Adnan Oktar has been sentenced to a record 8,658 years in prison, following a retrial in Turkey on charges of sexual assault and depriving someone of their liberty.

Oktar, who also went by the alias Harun Yahya, was jailed last year on a range of crimes including sexual abuse of minors, fraud and attempted political and military espionage.

Although that ruling was overturned on appeal by an upper court, on Wednesday the Istanbul high criminal court handed him and 13 of his associates a sentence of 8,658 years in prison each.

Oktar became known internationally for the talk show he hosted on his own A9 TV channel, which often featured a mix of religious discussion alongside scantily clad women dancing to modern pop music.

The "kittens", as the women associated with Oktar were known, were the most prominent advocates of his movement - but a number of those who left his company said they were subjected to sexual slavery. One woman previously testified at his trial that Oktar had sexually assaulted her and other women and forced them to take contraceptive pills.

Around 69,000 contraceptive pills were found by police in his home, which he claimed in court were used to treat skin disorders and menstrual problems.

Oktar was originally taken into custody in Istanbul in 2018 as part of a probe by the city's police financial crimes unit.

Sexual abuse and lawsuits

Former members of his group have described repeated sexual abuse within his organisation, as well as constant harassment after leaving it.

Ebru Simsek, a former member of Oktar's organisation, told Turkish media after his conviction in 2021 that she had found herself subjected to more than 300 defamation lawsuits from Oktar, who she said was "obsessed" with her after seeing her in a beauty contest on TV in 1994.

"Adnan Oktar saw me on the screen and went crazy! He even said, 'I saw you in the newspaper, on TV, I liked it very much, take your pajamas and live with me in my wonderful mansion'," she told Posta.

Adnan Oktar: The rise and fall of a Turkish sex cult leader

Read More »

"'Come here, I will offer you the best conditions, you will wear the best brands, your life will be luxurious'. I felt that they had nothing to do with religion."

She said the pressure he applied on her after leaving the organisation eventually became so intense - disrupting both her work and social life - that she left for the United States to escape his harassment.

Oktar's followers claim, however, that he has been the subject of a political stitch-up.

Aylin Kocaman, one of Oktar's supporters and a former columnist for Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, told Middle East Eye last year that the trials against him and his associates were controlled by "a bigger hand, a deep force".

Some other political figures have also questioned the conduct of his arrest and the trial.

Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, a lawyer and MP for the left-wing Peoples Democracy Party (HDP), suggested earlier this year that Oktar's original trial contained "unlawful evidence" and criticised the use of "secret witnesses."

"If people have committed crimes, they should be tried fairly and punished accordingly," he said, in a statement to parliament.

CHUTZPAH

'All we could do was watch': Israeli army demolishes six family homes in occupied West Bank

Israel ignores open court case and bulldozes three Palestinian-owned residential buildings in area C, then asks family to pay for demolition

Rashid Kawazba standing in front of the rubble that remains of the homes that he and his brothers spent two and a half years building in Al-Maniya village, southeast of Bethlehem (Akram Al-Waara)

By Leila Warah in Bethlehem, occupied West Bank
Published date: 15 November 2022 

Rashid Kawazba, 41, and his brothers were excitedly awaiting the day the electrical company would turn on the electricity, so they could move into their new homes, which they built neighbouring each other in the Al-Maniya village, southeast of Bethlehem.

However, the 25 family members never got to experience their first night in the three adjacent three-storey buildings.

'I can't even describe how I felt; I almost wish I didn't see the demolition. I felt defeated'

- Rashid Kawazba

At around 5am on Monday morning, Israeli army forces raided the village and surrounded the Kawazba family homes. They had brought several bulldozers along with them.

"While I was on my way to work, my family called to tell me that dozens of Israeli soldiers accompanied by bulldozers and military jeeps were raiding the neighbourhood," Kawazba told Middle East Eye, standing near the ruins of what was to be his new home.

Kawazba said that the military shut down the entire neighbourhood, and began demolishing the buildings almost immediately.

"All we could do was watch. I can't even describe how I felt; I almost wish I didn't see the demolition. I felt defeated. Everything my brothers and I worked for was gone instantly," he recounted.

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"We were already picturing our lives in those houses, we couldn't wait to move in, but the Israelis came and destroyed everything. They didn't even let us take anything out of the house,” he said.

"They killed our dream. Everything I did and all the money I paid was for nothing.”
Asked to pay for cost of demolition

Last year, the family received a letter from the Israeli Civil Administration, which enforces home demolitions in the occupied West Bank, stating its plan to demolish their homes within 96 hours. The family immediately hired a lawyer to appeal the case.

The appeal had been moving through the courts for months, and the family’s lawyer had told them things were going well, but there were no new decisions or developments recently. That’s why Kawazba said he was shocked to see the army at his doorstep Monday morning.

'It's ridiculous that now they are demanding we pay for demolishing our house. If we refuse, we have no idea what they will do'

- Rashid Kawazba

"The military appeared out of nowhere, with no notice, and demolished our house,” he said.

Kawazba told MEE that after the demolition, Israeli army officials gave the families a ticket to pay Israeli authorities for the cost of demolition, approximately $18,000.

“It's ridiculous that now they are demanding we pay for demolishing our house. If we refuse, we have no idea what they will do,” Kawazba said.

"And it doesn't stop there," he continued, explaining how much money they have already put into constructing these buildings.

"I have to pay even more money for something that we can't even live in," he said, going on to explain that the total cost of the construction was about $730,000, and he was still in debt for about $292,000.

"Financially, this is terrible. I have lost a lot of money in construction. My brothers and I must continue working for the next two years to pay off a debt for houses that no longer exist and we never got to live in."

Palestinians banned, settlers allowed

The Kawazba family homes are located in Area C of the West Bank, which makes up more than 60 percent of the territory. Area C is under full Israeli security and civilian control; as a result, Palestinians who live there are required by Israeli military law to receive permission from Israel’s Civil Administration in order to build, even if the land is privately owned.

The Civil Administration, however, rarely approves Palestinian building permit applications, forcing many people to build on their land without permission, thus subjecting them to home demolition.

During the first eight months of 2022, 590 Palestinian-owned structures across the West Bank and East Jerusalem were demolished or seized, displacing 707 people.

Kawazba said he tried to get permission from the Israeli Civil Administration, giving them “everything they asked for” throughout the application process. But the family’s applications were still denied, affirming his belief that “Israel doesn't want any Palestinians to have land and houses.”

He also told MEE about a nearby settlement that cuts into land owned by the Palestinian village, "We cannot build on our land, but the Israeli settlement three or four kilometres away can build on our land.”