Cyborgs

Future superintelligent AI will be able to reconstruct a model of the personality of a person who lived in the past based on informational traces. This could be regarded as some form of immortality if this AI also solves the problem of personal identity in a copy-friendly way. A person who is currently alive could invest now in passive self-recording and active self-description to facilitate such reconstruction. In this article, we analyze informational-theoretical relationships between the human mind, its traces, and (...) its future model; based on this analysis, we suggest the instruments to most cost-effectively collect quality data about a person for future resurrection. These guidelines form a “digital immortality protocol”. Digital immortality is plan C for achieving immortality, after plan A, life extension, and plan B, cryonics. (shrink)

In exploring the intra-active, relational and material connections between humans and non- humans, proponents of posthumanism advocate a questioning of the ‘human’ beyond its traditional anthropocentric conceptualization. By referring specifically to controversial developments in mHealth applications, this paper critically diverges from posthuman accounts of human/non-human assemblages. Indeed, we argue that, rather than ‘dissolving’ the human subject, the power of assemblages lie in their capacity to highlight the antagonisms and contradictions that inherently affirm the importance of the subject. In outlining this (...) claim, we propose a turn from the posthuman to the inhuman as a way of understanding the contemporary landscape of (digital) health. (shrink)

Contemporary research into the values, bias, and prejudices within “Artificial Intelligence” tends to operate in a crux of scholarship in computer science and engineering, sociology, philosophy, and science and technology studies (STS). Even so, getting the STEM fields to recognize and accept the importance of certain kinds of knowledge— the social, experiential kinds of knowledge— remains an ongoing struggle. Similarly, religious scholarship is still very often missing from these conversations because many in the STEM fields and the general public feel (...) that religion and technoscientific investigations are and should be separate fields of inquiry. Here I demonstrate that experiential knowledge and religious, even occult beliefs are always already embedded within and crucial to understanding the sociotechnical imaginaries animating many technologies, particularly in the areas of “AI.” In fact, it is precisely the unwillingness of many to confront these facts which allow for both the problems of prejudice embedded in algorithmic systems, and for the hype-laden marketing of the corporations and agencies developing them. This same hype then intentionally obfuscates the actions of both the systems and the people who create them, while confounding and oppressing those most often made subject to them. Further, I highlight a crucial continuity between bigotry and systemic social projects (eugenics, transhumanism, and “supercrip” narratives), revealing their foundation in white supremacist colonialist myths of whose and which kinds of lives count as “truly human.” We will examine how these myths become embedded into the religious practices, technologies, and social frameworks in and out of which “AI” and algorithms are developed, employing a composite theoretical lens made from tools such as intersectionality, ritual theory, intersubjectivity, daemonology, postphenomenology, standpoint epistemology, and more. This theoretical apparatus recontextualizes our understanding of how mythologies and rituals of professionalization, disciplinarity, and dominant epistemological hierarchies animate concepts such as knowledge formation, expertise, and even what counts as knowledge. This recontextualization is then deployed to suggest remedies for research, public policy, and general paths forward in “AI.” By engaging in both the magico-religious valences and the lived experiential expertise of marginalized people, these systems can be better understood, and their harms anticipated and curtailed. (shrink)

Although legal personality has slowly begun to be granted to non-human entities that have a direct impact on the natural functioning of human societies (given their cultural significance), the same cannot be said for computer-based intelligence systems. While this notion has not had a significantly negative impact on humanity to this point in time that only remains the case because advanced computerised intelligence systems (ACIS) have not been acknowledged as reaching human-like levels. With the integration of ACIS in medical assistive (...) technologies such as companion robots and bionics, our legal treatment of ACIS must also adapt—least society faces legal challenges that may potentially lead to legally sanctioned discriminatory treatment. For this reason, this article exposes the complexity of normalizing definitions of “natural” human subjects, clarifies how current bioethical discourse has been unable to effectively guide ACIS integration into implanted and external artefacts, and argues for the establishment of legal delineations between various ACIS-human mergers in reference to legal protections and obligations internationally. (shrink)

Compulsive smartphone users’ psyches, today, are increasingly directed away from their bodies and onto their devices. This phenomenon has now entered our global vocabulary as “smartphone zombies,” or what I will call “iZombies.” Given the importance of mind to virtually all conceptions of human identity, these compulsive users could thus be productively understood as a kind of human-machine hybrid entity, the cyborg. Assuming for the sake of argument that this hybridization is at worst axiologically neutral, I will construct a kind (...) of phenomenological psychological profile of the type of cyborg which engages in these patterns of behavior. I follow Judith Butler in seeing this identity as the result of performance practices, which as such can be modified or replaced using other performances. Pursing one such alternative, I compose a dancing critique that “reverse engineers” the choreographies implied by these cyborgs’ survival practices. The upshot of this critique is that their movement patterns do indeed align closely to those of horror cinema’s zombies. I therefore conclude by suggesting a few possible choreographic imperatives to facilitate more enabling ways of being for iZombie cyborgs today. (shrink)

Defenderé que la tesis de la mente extendida no es un argumento a favor de la posibilidad del transhumanismo. Si la tesis es cierta, el que nuestra mente se extienda en el mundo no es algo que se da exclusivamente por las nuevas tecnologías, sino que es una característica que poseemos desde hace miles de años. La inscripción de signos en las cavernas sólo difiere en grado de los implantes tecnológicos de un cyborg. Argumentaré lo anterior mostrando que, aunque los (...) cyborgs pueden obtener cierta información que un cuerpo humano normal puede no tener, esta diferencia no es cualitativa. El qualia de la experiencia humana tendría que variar radicalmente para que sea posible afirmar que el cyborg es algo distinto y superior. En últimas, quizás los seres humanos siempre hemos sido cyborgs. (shrink)

In his engaging book, James MacFarlane details the emergence of Technological Human Enhancement Advocacy (THEA) and provides a detailed ethnographic account of this phenomenon. Specifically, he aims to outline how transhumanism, as a specific offshoot of THEA, has “come to represent an enduring set of techno-optimistic ideas surrounding the future of humanity, with its advocates seeking to transcend limits of the body and mind according to an unwavering Enlightenment-derived faith in science, reason and individual freedom” (pg. 3).

Purpose of the article is to identify the religious factor in the teaching of transhumanism, to determine its role in the ideology of this flow of thought and to identify the possible limits of technology interference in human nature. Theoretical basis. The methodological basis of the article is the idea of transhumanism. Originality. In the foreseeable future, robots will be able to pass the Turing test, become “electronic personalities” and gain political rights, although the question of the possibility of machine (...) consciousness and self-awareness remains open. In the face of robots, people create their assistants, evolutionary competition with which they will almost certainly lose with the initial data. For successful competition with robots, people will have to change, ceasing to be people in the classical sense. Changing the nature of man will require the emergence of a new – posthuman – anthropology. Conclusions. Against the background of scientific discoveries, technical breakthroughs and everyday improvements of the last decades, an anthropological revolution has taken shape, which made it possible to set the task of creating inhumanly intelligent creatures, as well as changing human nature, up to discussing options for artificial immortality. The history of man ends and the history of the posthuman begins. We can no longer turn off this path, however, in our power to preserve our human qualities in the posthuman future. The theme of the soul again reminded of itself, but from a different perspective – as the theme of consciousness and self-awareness. It became again relevant in connection with the development of computer and cloud technologies, artificial intelligence technologies, etc. If a machine ever becomes a "man", then can a man become a "machine"? However, even if such a hypothetical probability would turn into reality, we cannot talk about any form of individual immortality or about the continuation of existence in a different physical form. A digital copy of the soul will still remain a copy, and I see no fundamental possibility of isolating a substrate-independent mind from the human body. Immortality itself is necessary not so much for stopping someone’s fears or encouraging someone’s hopes, but for the final solution of a religious issue. However, the gods hold the keys to heaven hard and are unlikely to admit our modified descendants there. (shrink)

As Artificial Intelligence researchers attempt to emulate human intelligence and transhumanists work toward superintelligence, philosophers and theologians confront a dilemma: we must either, on the one horn, (1) abandon the view that the defining feature of humanity is rationality and propose an account of spirituality that dissociates it from reason; or, on the other horn, (2) find a way to invalidate the growing faith in a posthuman future shaped by the enhancements of Intelligence Amplification (IA) or the progress of Artificial (...) Intelligence (AI). I grasp both horns of the dilemma and offer three recommendations. First, it is love understood as agape, not rational intelligence, which tells us how to live a godly life. Love tells us how to be truly human. Second, the transhumanist vision of a posthuman superintelligence is not only unrealistic, it portends the kind of tragedy we expect from a false messiah. Third, if as a byproduct of AI and IA research combined with H+ zeal the wellbeing of the human species and our planet is enhanced, we should be grateful. (shrink)

Hace algunos años, Llegué al punto en el que normalmente puedo decir del título de un libro, o al menos de los títulos de los capítulos, qué tipos de errores filosóficos se harán y con qué frecuencia. En el caso de trabajos nominalmente científicos, estos pueden estar en gran parte restringidos a ciertos capítulos que enceran filosóficos o tratan de sacar conclusiones generales sobre el significado o significado a largo plazo de la obra. Normalmente, sin embargo, las cuestiones científicas de (...) hecho se entrelazan generosamente con la galimatías filosóficas en cuanto a lo que estos hechos significan. Las claras distinciones que Wittgenstein describió hace unos 80 años entre los asuntos científicos y sus descripciones por varios juegos de idiomas rara vez se toman en consideración, y por lo tanto uno es cautivado alternativamente por la ciencia y consternado por su incoherente Análisis. Así es con este volumen. -/- Si uno es crear una mente más o menos como la nuestra, uno necesita tener una estructura lógica para la racionalidad y una comprensión de los dos sistemas de pensamiento (teoría del proceso dual). Si se trata de filosofar sobre esto, se necesita entender la distinción entre cuestiones científicas de hecho y la cuestión filosófica de cómo funciona el lenguaje en el contexto en cuestión, y de cómo evitar las trampas del reduccionismo y el cientismo, pero Kurzweil, como más estudiantes de conducta, no tiene ni idea. Él está encantado con los modelos, teorías y conceptos, y el impulso de explicar, mientras que Wittgenstein nos mostró que sólo necesitamos describir, y que las teorías, conceptos, etc., son sólo formas de usar el lenguaje (juegos de idiomas) que tienen valor sólo en la medida en que tienen un claro prueba (claro que los creadores de la verdad, o como John Searle (el crítico más famoso de AI) le gusta decir, claras condiciones de satisfacción (COS)). He intentado proporcionar un comienzo en este en mis escritos recientes. -/- Aquellos que deseen un marco completo hasta la fecha para el comportamiento humano de la moderna dos sistemas punta da vista puede consultar mi libro 'La estructura lógica de la filosofía, la psicología, la mente y lenguaje en Ludwig Wittgenstein y John Searle ' 2a ED (2019). Los interesados en más de mis escritos pueden ver 'Monos parlantes--filosofía, psicología, ciencia, religión y política en un planeta condenado--artículos y reseñas 2006-2019 3rd ED (2019) y Delirios utópicos suicidas en el siglo 21 4a Ed (2019) y otras. -/- También, como es habitual en las cuentas "fácticas" de la IA/robótica, no da tiempo a las amenazas muy reales a nuestra privacidad, seguridad e incluso la supervivencia de la creciente ' androidización ' de la sociedad que es prominente en otros autores (Bostrum, Hawking, etc.) y frecuentes en SciFi y películas, así que hago algunos comentarios sobre las delirios utópicos muy posiblemente suicidas de androides ' agradables ', humanoides, inteligencia artificial (IA), la democracia, la diversidad y la ingeniería genética. -/- Me da por sentado que los avances técnicos en electrónica, robótica e IA ocurrirán, resultando en profundos cambios en la sociedad. Sin embargo, creo que los cambios provenientes de la ingeniería genética son al menos tan grandes y potencialmente mucho mayores, ya que nos permitirán cambiar totalmente Quiénes somos. Y será factible hacer servidores SuperSmart/súper fuertes modificando nuestros genes o los de otros monos. Al igual que con otras tecnologías, cualquier país que resista se quedará atrás. Pero, ¿será socialmente y económicamente factible implementar BioBots o superhumanos a gran escala? E incluso si es así, no parece Probable, económica o socialmente, para evitar que el Destrucción de la civilización industrial por la sobrepoblación, el agotamiento de los recursos, el cambio climático y probablemente también la regla tiránica de los siete sociópatas que gobiernan China. -/- Por lo tanto, ignorando los errores filosóficos en este volumen como irrelevantes, y dirigiendo nuestra atención sólo a la ciencia, lo que tenemos aquí es otra ilusión utópica suicida enraizada en el fracaso de captar la biología básica, la psicología y la ecología humana, las mismas ilusiones que están destruyendo Estados Unidos y el mundo. Veo una remota posibilidad de que el mundo se pueda salvar, pero no por Ia robótica, CRISPR, ni por neomarxismo, diversidad y la igualdad. (shrink)

In his speech “The European Responsibility,” the Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili summarizes his utopia of a fulfilled humanity by presenting it as an integration of two main traditions: the Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian ones. In contrast, David Dubrovsky launches a new perspective for present and future human evolution: the cyber-superman, i.e. the perfect merging of human mind and digital brain—or the bio-digital interface. “Intelligence” here is not just an artificial by-product of a highly organized technological structure, but the re­production of mental (...) operations through the techno-replication of the bio-brain as material substrate: the Dubrovskyan avatar. In the present article, I focus on Dubrovsky’s and Mamardashvili’s anthropological paradigms, and their relationship to the phenomena of cyberbeing and cyberculture. I examine the phenomenon of cyberbeing as a “built-in” feature of a bio-electronic, transhuman ontology that impacts and transforms personhood into “cyborghood” in the context of an interactive digital framework of fictional transcendences, body-deconstruction and bio-technological interplays. My aim is to develop a critical approach to Dubrovsky’s cybernetic anthropology and avatar-theory, along with its meaning and implications for our world-epoch, in contrast to Mamardashvili’s ontology, which proves essentially incompatible with the moment of technological singularity—i.e. with the creation of a transhuman bio-digital avatar as envisioned and prophesized by Dubrovsky. (shrink)

So, you’re tired of your squishy meatsack of a body, eh? Ready for the next level of sweet biomechanical upgrades? Well, you’re in luck! The world of Futurama has the finest in back-alley and mad-scientist-based bio-augmentation surgeons, ready and waiting to hear from you! From a fresh set of gills, to a brand new chest-harpoon, and beyond, Yuri the Shady Parts Dealer and Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth are here to supply all of your upgrading needs—“You give lungs now; gills be (...) here in two weeks!” Just so long as, whatever you do, stay away from legitimate hospitals. The kinds of procedures you’re looking to get done…well, let’s just say they’re still frowned upon in the 31st century; and why shouldn’t they be? As the woeful tale of Hermes Conrad illustrates, there is a lot at stake— for your mind, your body, and possibly even your very understanding of your self— if you choose to pursue your biomechanical dreams. (shrink)

This paper aims to show how recent cinematic representations reveal a far more pessimistic and essentialised vision of Human/Cyborg hybridity in comparison with the more enunciative and optimistic ones seen at the end of the twentieth century. Donna Haraway’s still influential 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” saw the combination of the organic and the technological as offering new and exciting ways beyond the normalised culturally constructed categories of gender and identity formation. However, more recently critics see her later writings as (...) embodying a Faustian deal between the individual and hegemony, where technology does not enhance but merely returns the subject to a level of normalisation. As such cybernetics is only configured as a form of prosthetic rehabilitation, to ‘re’-able the ‘dis’-abled, that ultimately re-establishes earlier essentialised subject positions through that same evolutionary process. The Six Million Dollar Man, which ran from 1974 to 1978, exampled a symbiosis between the organic and the technological where the broken human body is not just re-made via mechanical prosthesis but through a process of Cyborg hybridity which actually makes it better, faster, stronger than before. In contrast, contemporary films such as Avatar (Cameron 2009), Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen (Bay 2009) and Iron Man II (Faveraeu 2010) portray an inherent anxiety toward the cyborg body disavowing of any human/cyborg interaction beyond re-establishing their own discrete and separate subject positions. Although human/cyborg symbiosis constructs the possibility for potentialised bodies beyond those previously imagined, contemporary, popular, film represents them as separated and essentialised. This article looks at what cultural anxieties might produce such an about turn in such representations how this positions human identity in a time of increasing technology and, as a result, asks “whatever happened to The Six Million Dollar Man?”. (shrink)

In this brief essay, we discuss the nature of the kinds of conceptual changes which will be necessary to bridge the divide between humanity and machine intelligences. From cultural shifts to biotechnological integration, the project of accepting robotic agents into our lives has not been an easy one, and more changes will be required before the majority of human societies are willing and able to allow for the reality of truly robust machine intelligences operating within our daily lives. Here we (...) discuss a number of the questions, hurdles, challenges, and potential pitfalls to this project, including examples from popular media which will allow us to better grasp the effects of these concepts in the general populace. (shrink)

Starting with service robotics and industrial robotics, this paper aims to suggest philosophical reflections about the relationship between body and machine, between man and technology in our contemporary world. From the massive use of the cell phone to the robots which apparently “feel” and show emotions like humans do. From the wearable exoskeleton to the prototype reproducing the artificial sense of touch, technological progress explodes to the extent of embodying itself in our nakedness. Robotics, indeed, is inspired by biology in (...) order to develop a new kind of technology affecting human life. This is a bio-robotic approach, which is fulfilled in the figure of the cyborg and consequently in the loss of human nature. Today, humans have reached the possibility to modify and create their own body following their personal desires. But what is the limit of this achievement? For this reason, we all must question ourselves whether we have or whether we are a body. (shrink)

In the near future, our life will normally be surrounded with fairly complicated artifacts, enabled by the autonomous robot and brain–machine interface technologies. In this paper, we argue that what we call the responsibility flaw problem and the inappropriate use problem need to be overcome in order for us to benefit from complicated artifacts. In order to solve these problems, we propose an approach to endowing artifacts with an ability of socially communicating with other agents based on the artifact-as-a-half-mirror metaphor. (...) The idea is to have future artifacts behave according to the hybrid intention composed of the owner’s intention and the social rules. We outline the approach and discuss its feasibility together with preliminary work. (shrink)

A provocative work by medical ethicist James Hughes, Citizen Cyborg argues that technologies pushing the boundaries of humanness can radically improve our quality of life if they are controlled democratically. Hughes challenges both the technophobia of Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama and the unchecked enthusiasm of others for limitless human enhancement. He argues instead for a third way, "democratic transhumanism," by asking the question destined to become a fundamental issue of the twenty-first century: How can we use new cybernetic and (...) biomedical technologies to make life better for everyone? These technologies hold great promise, but they also pose profound challenges to our health, our culture, and our liberal democratic political system. By allowing humans to become more than human - "posthuman" or "transhuman" - the new technologies will require new answers for the enduring issues of liberty and the common good. What limits should we place on the freedom of people to control their own bodies? Who should own genes and other living things? Which technologies should be mandatory, which voluntary, and which forbidden? For answers to these challenges, Citizen Cyborg proposes a radical return to a faith in the resilience of our democratic institutions. (shrink)

. The ethics and politics of Cyborg embodiment: Citizenship as a hypervalue. Cultural Values: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 252-258.