Yes, for sure. The field of AI is also tasked with solving related ethical issues. To figure out what those implications are we still need to learn more about thinking.

But I think that this work is not really so much about the practical use of integrating a neuron into an electronic device, but rather is a paper about how to train a neuron.

It is actually a very deep and interesting concept. If we think about how one can train a dog via positive and negative reinforcement, that concept is obvious - the dog will change its behavior to try to minimize pain and maximize reward. But the dog is already possesses a complex system to interpret “pain” and “reward”.

As I understand it, this work is about taking a neural system in its simplest form and answering the question “what is ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ reinforcement for a neuron?” The neuron is just a neuron, so it doesn’t have a concept of pain in the same sense that an animal does. But there is a theory that states that neural systems do experience a form of “pain” and that this “pain” is caused by unpredicatable feedback, so the neural network will behave in ways that minimize the amount of unpredicatable feedback. It is a fascinating concept, and the evidence for this model that this ping-pong experiment provides is very compelling.