This month the Baltimore Declaration (1) appeared, claiming that "We must be alert to any possibility that organoids could develop forms or aspects of consciousness and mitigate and safeguard against this".
In my perspective (2), there is an interesting side and a foolishness in the Baltimore Declaration. The interesting side is that of ethics in technological research (3). I am against the Frankenstein artifacts that mix biological tissue with machines. Foolishness is wanting to avoid consciousness. Since the organoid is truly biological, not a Frankenstein (there are experiments with both types, purely cellular and cell-machine hybrid), and interacting properly with the environment, it is not possible to prevent it from becoming conscious.
(1) Article The Baltimore declaration toward the exploration of organoid...
(2) Article Neural Stimulation of Brain Organoids with Dynamic Patterns:...
(3) Article Brain organoids: are they for real?
This depends a great deal on the details. Organoids similar enough to our brains even though much simpler will experience pain and/or pleasure. However, unless they are quite similar they will experience no self.
Karl Sipfle
unfortunately brain organoids so far are blobs, potentially stand alone ganglia at best, the architecture that supports memory formation and perception is missing.
there is no easy way to introduce sensation to organoids in a way that they can form memory engrams.
our brains have a thalamic gateway that keeps sensory bottom up feeds active long enough to form memory - each thalamic neuron has a cortical neuron partner - and this is very significant (the cortical partner's axon feeds back to the thalamic neuron - they are hardwired for feedback).
Also the pyramidal neurons in our cortex have thousands of branches so that when they fire (in response to cortical neuron activation) they can make connections (spine formation) when they contact other active cortical neurons both near and far. This is how associative memory is made, what fires together wires together and is thereafter linked.
This critical architecture is missing in organoids.