> yeah definitely not
I don't know about ants, but after a refresher on the people favorite fruit fly, I'd be hard pressed to be so dismissive - 200K seems to be plenty: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47302051
I inspire you to look up what is known about fruit flies' behavior.
The reason it's probably nevertheless not as messed up as people might assume it to be is specifically because it's an organoid, not an actual brain. Which is to say, it has the numbers but not the performance, not by a long shot.
> Surely it makes no difference
It absolutely should, though specifically with organoids, I guess it might not. Ironically, I would expect the ethics angle to be actually worse with small animals. The size of the organoid will be closer to the real thing comparatively, after all, so more chances of it gaining whatever level of sentience the actual organism has.
But then this will be heavily muddled by what people believe consciousness is and whether or how humans are special, I suppose.
> so more chances of it gaining whatever level of sentience the actual organism has
Yeah but people have no problems experimenting on actual fully working mice already.
Yes *, and in the real world. The question then is if you rate that to be an equivalent existential horror to being a varyingly maldeveloped, malnutritioned, disembodied version of those mice, forced to live out life in a low fidelity version of the Matrix [0], potentially in constant or recurring agony. You get a potential match or approximate match in cognitive ability and operation, but with a lot different set of circumstances.
* They kinda do have a problem with that too, that's why ethics committees exist, and why the term "animal testing" pops up in the news cycle every so often.
[0] https://xcancel.com/alexwg/status/2030217301929132323