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Building the bionic man

Posted on 27 Jan 2012 at 09:04

“Then there’s an additional level where the AI comes into play: how do you create team strategies? These are problems that we need to solve, for everything from prosthetics to assisted living, because it’s an ever-changing and dynamic environment.” And Roberto Mancini thinks Carlos Tévez is difficult.

Of course, the idea of “Human 2.0” removes some of the problems associated with artificial intelligence by tapping into our existing grey matter, only relying on machinery for added grunt, rather than thought mechanisms.

The only way is ethics

So bionic bodily enhancement is no longer consigned to science fiction: it’s possible, here and now. Yet as technology moves from curing to augmenting, new ethical quandaries emerge – namely, how far can we enhance our own bodies before it becomes dangerous? And how can we know which technologies will be beneficial and which will ultimately prove to be detrimental to humanity?

How can we know which technologies will be beneficial and which will ultimately prove to be detrimental to humanity

Professor Matti Häyry, one of the founder directors of the International Association of Bioethics, believes some of the problems of distinguishing between medicine and enhancement are overblown, and that it’s human nature to push the technical possibilities as far as possible.

“Since it’s usual for us to lose some of our eyesight with age, glasses (or laser treatments) prescribed to older people would, according to this definition, be an attempt at enhancement,” he says. “But we don’t have an ethical problem with this, which suggests that the therapy/enhancement distinction doesn’t draw a strict line between what’s ethical and what isn’t.”

In terms of cause and effect, it’s difficult and perhaps not altogether sensible to have an all-encompassing ethical definition of how, where and to what extent enhancement technology should be allowed to evolve. It would be counter-intuitive to stop the development of technology because it might be used unethically, as almost anything can potentially be misused.

The biggest question is how these enhancements will affect “human nature”, and the truth is that mankind had been moving away from nature for centuries.

“Humanity is at a crossroads with regard to whether we become re-embedded in the natural world (and begin to take seriously that we differ from other animals by only marginal genetic differences), or extend the most distinctive features of our being through various forms of bio and cyber-based forms of enhancement, and make ourselves more ‘artificial’,” says Steve Fuller, a social epistemologist at the University of Warwick and author of Humanity 2.0.

“One hope I have is that we might retire the phrase ‘human nature’ once and for all, since it’s the ultimate oxymoron. To be human is to be artificial. Technology isn’t simply ‘the extension of man’, as Marshall McLuhan famously said of media. It’s how we express our distinctiveness from nature.”

Does that mean using technology to go beyond what we’d traditionally regard as “human” isn’t only possible, but desirable?

“I think augmented personal devices will become commonplace,” says Vijayakumar, “because the fundamental idea behind it is saying ‘we’ll exploit human perception of contextual knowledge and high-level control, but use machines to deliver higher accuracy, higher power, higher robustness.’

“That’s the hallmark of shared augmented devices. You take the best of both worlds, the best of what machines are good at, the best of what humans are good at, and marry them together.”

Author: Richard Lane