Category Archives: Transhuman

SAN JOSE, Calif. Editors note: The picture above is a file image from a 2012 furry convention in Pittsburgh.

When you think of furry crimefighters, sharp-toothed police K-9s usually come to mind.

But the heroes in this story are humans in big furry costumes.

ABC7 reports three people attending FurCon a gathering of people who dress in large and elaborate animal costumes stopped a violent assault on the streets of San Jose, California.

According to the local news station, a dinosaur, a tiger and a cowboy, for some reason saw a car drive up and witnessed a man beating his girlfriend in the front seat.

KTLA reports the anthropomorphic trio pulled 22-year-old Demetri Hardnett out of the car, took him to the ground and restrained him until officers arrived.

The girl driver was yelling for him to get out, as he started trying to fight us off, Robbie Ryans told CNN, which reported Hardnett was booked into the Santa Clara County Jail on a domestic violence charge.

According to ABC7, the furry convention continued uninterrupted with an event-filled weekend including dance programs, a furry boxing workout and a panel discussion on transhumanism the belief that humans can evolve beyond their current limitations.

RELATED: Suspects, victims in Calf. killings were 'furries'

RELATED: Chlorine gas sickens 19 at furries convention

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Vigilante furries band together to stop an assault - WTSP.com

Bioteq is also looking to create chips for visually impaired people, which trigger audible or touch sensory cues. Credit: Bioteq

In 2016, entrepreneur Steven Northam had a radiofrequency identification (RFID) implant placed in his left hand. The chip, which enabled him to open his office door simply by waving his hand, gave him the inspiration for what would become BioTeq.

I did it for a bit of fun really a quirky party trick, he says. My main business interest is in startup investments, so it was clear that the idea of fitting a microchip in my hand was going to turn into a business.

A human biotech implant company based in Hampshire, UK, BioTeq now provides implants not just for door entry systems, but also for storing data (like a digital business card). Northam says the customer base is wide and varied.

It ranges from those who just love tech to those who feel it provides them with some sort of benefit or convenience, he says.

Beyond that, the company is making inroads into the realm of assistive technology, for instance helping disabled people enter their homes. It is also looking to create chips for visually impaired people, which trigger audible or touch sensory cues, and implantable GPS trackers for those with learning disabilities.

The ethical debate here is quite complex, given the need for consent and who can give this in certain instances, says Northam. Our stance is that if it improves someones wellbeing and day-to-day life then its a good thing. These devices are already being used in the market and a range of further developments will be released in 2020.

Many of the people who opt for such procedures class themselves as transhumanists, meaning they seek to augment their bodies via technology. Some kookier examples include compass chips that vibrate every time the wearer faces north, magnets that allow them to sense whether their microwave is running, and implanted cyborg antennae that allow them to hear colours.These practices, a subset of what is called biohacking, are regarded as leftfield currently, but many practitioners are convinced well all be using biohacking implants further down the line.

I suspect human-based technology implants will become much more commonplace, as with most technology, says Northam.

From this perspective, getting an RFID chip implanted isnt too far removed from getting an IUD or even contact lenses. The trajectory over the last few decades has been towards a greater acceptance of implantables, with more and more people having devices of some kinds in their bodies.

Biohacking is when people experiment with implantable devices such as such as magnets, microchips or electronic devices, says Catherine Joynson, assistant director of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Sometimes biohacking is carried out for medical purposes. For example, the project #OpenAPS is developing ways of connecting a continuous glucose sensor and insulin pump to form a closed loop system that automatically maintains safe glucose levels in people with diabetes.

The big question here is, are these kinds of implants medical devices? Currently, the MHRA does not classify them as such, as they have no defined medical purpose.

This means that there is currently no regulation as such around human microchips, says Northam. We expect this will change in due course, and our driver is to provide a high level of quality control.

While similar procedures have been cropping up in tattoo studios (most of them safe and reputable), Northam would not recommend that people go down that route.Theres nothing stopping anyone putting anything in their body legally, as long as its their own choice, he says. As a company we only provide implants conducted by a medical doctor under medical conditions and provide a local anesthetic for this tattoo studios cannot administer such drugs.

Professor Tom Joyce is a biomedical engineer at Newcastle University. He has brought to light a number of implant-related scandals, including flaws in metal hip replacements that left thousands of patients in pain. He points out that, when it comes to regulating implantables, it isnt necessarily as straightforward as saying thats a medical device and that isnt.

As someone interested in the regulatory aspects of medical devices, Id begin by asking if the biohacking implant has a medical purpose, he says. If it has no medical purpose then, in general, all those complicated medical device regulations do not apply.However, given the very reasonable desire to protect people, some items have been defined as medical devices despite not having a medical purpose.

Two common examples might be breast implants and coloured contact lenses while their purposes are cosmetic, they are regulated as medical devices.

You might also want to ask yourself if toothpaste is a cosmetic, as it whitens teeth, or a drug, as it contains fluoride, or a medical device, as it cleans and thus protects teeth through an abrasive action, says Joyce. Depending on content and product claims, and your regulatory authority, toothpaste can be any of the three.

Of course, regulations will vary from country to country, and in some parts of the world theyre very lax. In India, for instance, the majority of medical devices are completely unregulated. While the picture is now changing all implanted devices will be subject to regulation from April 2020 the industry is reportedly wary and confusion abounds.

Devices implanted into the human body may pose potential risk (and) must be strictly controlled This will regulate and make sure that devices that are implanted in the body are not rushed into the market, bypassing critical testing that would protect consumers, said S. Eswara Reddy, the Drug Controller General of India.

Even within the EU, emerging types of devices pose problems from a categorisation standpoint. As Joynson points out, biohacking raises questions about liability and responsibility in the event that something goes wrong.

For example, while a user might be held responsible for modifying an implant counter to the manufacturers instructions, the possibility of hacking the implant might be attributed to a security vulnerability for which the manufacturer might be liable, she says. The UK Department of Health and Social Care has said that a new EU Regulation on medical devices will improve the cybersecurity of connected medical devices.

When it comes to regulating these implants, Joyce thinks that lip fillers might serve as a useful pointer.

Although having no medical purpose, after many botched operations, often blamed on unqualified beauticians, it was said that the people fitting them had to be regulated and lip fillers have become medical devices, he says. But this is a slow process and, as shown with current EU medical device regulations, take years to be agreed and brought into effect. So I think any change for biohacking implants could be slow in coming.

Read this article:
How could regulation apply to biohacking devices? - Medical Device Network

Susan Schneider, associate professor of philosophy and cognitive science and director of the AI, Mind and Society (AIMS) Group at UConn, has gained a national and international reputation for her writing on the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence (AI). She writes about the nature of the self and mind, AI, cognitive science, and astrobiology in publications including the New York Times, Scientific American, and The Financial Times and her work has been widely discussed in the media, such as Science, Big Think, Nautilus, Discover, and Smithsonian. She was named NASA-Baruch Blumberg Chair for the Library of Congress and NASA and also holds the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress. In her new book, Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind (Princeton University Press, 2019), she examines the implications of advances in artificial intelligence technology for the future of the human mind.

Q: What is the focus of your newest book?

A: This book is about the future of the mind. It explores the nature of the self and consciousness in a not so distant future, using todays work in artificial intelligence and brain enhancement technologies. Consciousness is the felt quality to experiencewhat it feels like to be you. When you smell the aroma of your morning coffee, hear the sound of a Bach concerto, or feel pain, you are having conscious experience. Indeed, every moment of your waking life, and even when you dream, it feels like something from the inside to be you. This book asks: assuming we build highly sophisticated artificial intelligences at some point in the future, would they be conscious beings? Further, how would we detect consciousness in machines? These questions are addressed in the first half the book. The second half of the book is on the nature of the self. I illustrate that AI isnt just going to change the world around us. Its going to go inside the head, changing the human mind itself, but Im concerned about the potential uses of invasive AI components inside of our heads. I urge that we need to understand deep philosophical questions about the self, consciousness, and the mind before we start playing with fire and start replacing parts of our brains with artificial components. When it comes to the self and mind, we are faced with vexing philosophical questions that have no easy solution.

Q: You report about such experimentation with neural implants for things like Alzheimers disease but return to the question of, if theres an artificial intelligence when does it become aware of itself?

A: There are all kinds of impressive medical technologies underway, and Im very supportive of the use of invasive brain chips to help individuals with radical memory loss or locked in syndrome, in which individuals entirely lose their ability to move. I think innovations to help these people are important and exciting. What I get worried about, though, is the idea that humans should engage in widespread and invasive AI-based enhancement of their brains. For instance, Elon Musk has recently declared that we will eventually need to keep up with super-intelligent AI a hypothetical form of AI that vastly outsmarts us and we need to do that by enhancing our brains. He also thinks doing so will help us keep up with technological unemployment that many economists claim will happen because AI will outmode us in the workforce. Musk and others talk about merging with AI and I through gradually augmenting intelligence with AI technology until, in the end of the day, we are essentially AIs ourselves. Musk has recently founded a company to do this, and Facebook and Kernal are also working on this. But I argue in the book and in op-eds for the New York Times and the Financial Times that the idea we could truly merge with artificial intelligence in the ways that a lot of tech gurus and transhumanists advocate is actually not philosophically well-founded. We have to think things through more carefully

Q: You use examples of AI from science fiction, including one with the Star Trek: Next Generation character Lt. Commander Data, who is under attack on a planet and he uploads his brains memories to a computer on the Enterprise. You ask: Will he still be the same Data that he was before being destroyed? Will he really survive?

A: I think people assume that AIs will have the capacity to be immortal because they can just keep uploading and downloading copies of themselves whenever they are in a jam. By this they mean the android be practically immortal, living until the end of the universe. This makes them almost God-like. I am skeptical. In the book I use the Data example to illustrate that if Data found out that he was on a planet that was about to be destroyed, he couldnt upload and genuinely survive. I think the idea that you could transfer your thoughts to a different format and still be you, surviving impending death, is conceptually flawed. It is flawed in both the human case and the case of androids. Believe it or not, there are advocates of uploading the human brain to survive death at places like the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute. I am skeptical.

Q: One of the points that you make in the book is that we have come far technologically but havent heard anything yet from an alien culture. You suggest we should prepare for alien contact by including the involvement of sociologists and anthropologists and philosophers.

As the NASA chair at NASA and the Library of Congress, I love to think about the Fermi paradox, which is the question: Given the vast size of the universe, where is all the intelligent life? Where is everybody? Nowadays, the question can be framed in terms of all of the intriguing exoplanet research that identifies habitable planets throughout the universe, but are these exoplanets actually inhabited (not just inhabitable), and if they are inhabited, does life survive into technological majority? Or are we alone? Why havent we heard anything? To the extent that we even do find life out there, my guess is that we will first find microbial life. Theres dozens of gloriously fun answers to the Fermi paradox.

Q: In the work that youre doing with Congress, what kinds of questions are you being asked and what we should be thinking about going forward with all this technology?

Theres been a lot of concern over the last few years about deep fake videos. Nobody likes it; your career could be ruined by a deep fake video that has you saying something really rotten that you never said. Algorithmic discrimination is a big issue, the fact that algorithms that are based on deep learning technologies will be data-driven, so if the data itself has implicit bias, hidden biases in it, it can actually lead to a bad result which discriminates against certain groups. There are many members of Congress whove been concerned about that. Thats why we really need AI regulations. AI regulation could do tremendous work. And so I do hope we move forward on all of these issues.

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Q&A: AI and the Future of Your Mind - UConn Today

As we embark on a new decade, how do visions of the 2020s imagined in books likeDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, films likeSoylent Green, or even manga likeGhost in the Shellmatch up against our reality? In this series, we look at seven pop culture artefacts from the past that foretold the future, providing a prophetic glimpse of the decade were now entering.

Words by Prahlad Srihari | Art by Trisha Bose and Sharath Ravishankar | Concept by Rohini Nair and Harsh Pareek

***

We already live in a world where bionic eye implants have made it possible to restore partial sight for visually impaired people. In fact, augmentations to Second Sight's Argus II may enable future users to even see in infra-red, like the Predator. Ossur's implanted myoelectric sensors allow amputees to control their bionic limbs with their minds. Meanwhile, scientists in North Carolina are hard at work trying to build a future where 3D printers can churn out customised kidneys, livers and other vital organs for those in need.

Even if science fiction has had a headstart over science, the latter is catching up. We're not far away from the transhumanist futures of Ghost in the Shell, Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Robocop. Taking cues from these imaginative works, science hopes to aid and accelerate our evolution from human to post-human through genetic modifications, ironing out our limitations and pushing our limits. But as always, sci-fi has repeatedly warned us against the often unnatural nature of science the importance of knowing when to tinker with technology to aid human progress and when to let nature take its course.

Masamune Shirow's manga Ghost in the Shell offers some vital lessons on transhumanism. Our story begins in 2029 at a time when it is all too common for humans to enhance themselves by replacing their organs with cybernetic parts. Our protagonist, Major Motoko Kusanagi, is a cybernetically enhanced officer of an elite cyber-crime-fighting unit called Section 9. Our plot follows the hunt for an elusive cyber-criminal, called the Puppet Master, a formidable AI who can take up residence in any cyborg body, take over their minds and essentially reprogramme them to do his bidding.

Masamune Shirow's manga Ghost in the Shell offers some vital lessons on transhumanism. Illustration by Sharath Ravishankar for Firstpost

So, Motoko has a crisis of identity when she begins to question the authenticity of her thoughts, her memories and the very nature of her being. If she is a human-machine hybrid, is her identity defined by her human thoughts or are they just exabytes of stored data? If she has no memories of her past human existence and her mind can be manipulated, then what makes her human? If Philip K Dick suggested empathy to be the defining factor of humanity, Shirow suggests it is the human soul (what he calls the ghost) that separates man from machine. But a hybrid made of human cells and a cybernetic body (the shell) brings with it its own unbridgeable dualism, as surmised by Motoko. "I suspect I am not who I think I am. Maybe I died a long time ago and somebody took my brain and stuck it in this body. Maybe there never was a real me in the first place, and I'm completely synthetic," she wonders, before questioning, "What if a cyber brain could possibly generate its own ghost, create a soul all by itself? And if it did, just what would be the importance of being human then?"

(Note: Those averse to reading manga should watch the animated film, not the 2017 live-action film featuring Scarlett Johansson, which revels in cyberpunk spectacle rather than the murky waters of obscurity in Shirow's poetic reflections.)

The blurring of these lines between man and machine reaches its climax when Motoko's ghost merges with the Puppet Master to evolve into a new entity, favouring an immaterial existence free of physical boundaries (like Samantha and her fellow AIs in Her). Instead of trying to put Motoko in distinct human or AI camps, Shirow studies the implications of transhumanism in the intermediary phase between the two. He thus foreshadows the emergence of the posthuman or humanity 2.0.

The video game, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, ventures further into a transhuman future, with one foot in a utopia, and the other in a dystopia. Its cyberpunk future of 2027 is a world where "augmentations" are what separates the upper classes from the lower. Like in Yukito Kishiro's Alita: Battle Angel, they have become so common they're like tattoos or piercings. After a terrorist attack leaves security guard Adam Jensen critically injured, his life is saved thanks to these "augmentations" that turn him into a Robocop. Stronger, faster, and smarter than before, he begins a pursuit of the terrorists, only to uncover a larger conspiracy involving radical supporters and opponents of transhumanism.

It is easy to see why transhumanism has its fair share of supporters and opponents. On the one hand, it represents the next stage in our evolution as cybernetic implants could extend our lifespan, enhance our physical and mental capacities, and help us shape ourselves according to our needs, our desires, or our environment. On the other, any extension, enhancement or reshaping beyond the natural barriers will make life less miraculous or spontaneous. So, rather than curing death, technology should be used to make life worth living.

However, in this quest to improve the human condition through technology, we should not forget what makes us human. Dick's right: It's our empathy. But it is also our ability to introspect, wonder and speculate. As long as these abilities are inherently linked to the human soul, it does not matter what shell it is, the ghost of humanity will forever be preserved in it.

Also read Class structures and dehumanisation of the workforce, as foretold by Metropolis (1927)

Read our 'Decade in Review' series here.

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Updated Date: Jan 05, 2020 01:05:35 IST

Link:
The future is sci-fi: How Ghost in the Shell, Deus Ex Human Revolution foreshadowed humanity 2.0 - Firstpost

Only from the 12th century onwards did knowledge begin to become self-referential. And this is exactly what the populists are now trying to turn around, Lars Jaeger writes in his essay on finews.first.

This article is published on finews.first, a forum for authors specialized in economic and financial topics.

It is sometimes quite banal experiences, conversations or incidents that open our eyes to the drama of social developments. A professionally esteemed colleague at work who doubts the theory of evolution, internet bloggers who loudly proclaim that Einsteins theory of relativity cannot be correct, the mother-in-law, who vehemently fights against the vaccination of her grandchildren or the friend who unexpectedly presents himself as a climate skeptic.

A cautious objection that in all these respects science makes unambiguous statements and that the experts agree to 99 percent is then wiped away with the reference Oh, the scientists, they dont know any better. They do not agree 100 percent or even They are paid to make these statements.

It is precisely the increasing dependence of science on commercial interests that should concern us

It seems contradictory: people trust science in principle but also associate it with strong conflicts of interest. Scientists are paid, they say, often with the appendix by the government. But what is supposed to sound scandalous on closer inspection turns out to be a banality: Should researchers perhaps work for free? The fact that most research institutions, and thus financial sponsors, are government institutions has proven to be very helpful for society.

For it is precisely the increasing dependence of science on commercial interests that should concern us. For all the positive developmental dynamics of the interaction of entrepreneurial spirit and scientific creativity that have triggered the enormous increase in economic prosperity over the last 200 years, it seems rather uncanny to most people to let the profit motives of technology investors, the ideology of the Silicon Valley transhumanists or, more generally, the capitalist (or military) logic of exploitation decide on our all future.

There is a second development within the sciences that accommodates its populist opponents

And the example of China shows us what we will encounter when an all-powerful state outside democratic structures controls scientific and technological progress.

In addition, there is a second development within the sciences that accommodates its populist opponents. Beginning with modern physics at the beginning of the 20th century, it increasingly abandoned any belief in the possibility of absolute certainty. Thus, Newtons idea of absolute space or absolute time had to be replaced by the relational space-time of Einsteins theory of relativity, which for non-physicists is barely comprehensible.

Even more drastic was the realization that a quantum object is both wave and particle at the same time and that the laws that apply in the microcosm are completely different from those of our macrocosm. The scientists had to learn to live with complementary truths, i.e. not A or B is true, but A and B can both be true at the same time.

The price for our knowledge gain is high we now have nothing left to hold on to

The final deathblow for the philosophical claim for ultimate and substantiating truths was the new concept of objects in quantum physics: Following that time is no longer absolute, physicists claim further that in the microcosm there should no longer be any real and independently existing objects, no objective reality and thus no absolute certainty. It is a paradox: The more knowledge we gained, the less we could hope that there is an ultimate truth.

Thus, the price for our knowledge gain is high we now have nothing left to hold on to. In a process lasting over three centuries, mankind has gradually robbed itself of all its laboriously built up certainties.

We have lost the absolute and eternal truth. This is a good thing because that is not the way the world works. All the more important are the scientific truths, they help us to find our way in our world. These truths are not dogmas, because they are constantly put to the test, for example through experiments and rational discourse with colleagues; they can be rejected and reformulated at any time, depending on the facts. As already Galilei recognized, this is the great strength of science.

These points play into the hands of today's populists, simplifiers and opponents of science

All these losses of truths have consequences for the human psyche. Unique truths, clear spiritual foundations, and unshakable principles are obviously important for us to find our way in the world. The vacuum left by the loss of old certainties creates deep insecurity within us. Thus, in view of the complexity of social, political, economic and scientific issues, for many people, an escape route leads to the past, where everything was supposedly easier and better.

Slogans like The theory of relativity is illogical. Newton was right are more attractive than struggling through the mathematical complexity of modern physics, just as Make America Great Again or There is no man-made climate change sounds better to many ears than the discussion about complex international trade relations or non-linear global meteorological effects caused by the warming of our atmosphere.

These two points, the quite real danger of an exclusively capitalist logic of exploitation of new scientific knowledge and the flight into simple truths, play into the hands of todays populists, simplifiers and opponents of science. Their success lies in the distorting simplification of intellectually demanding social and scientific contexts and the conspiratorial reference to the belief that scientists only follow their own interests.

The populists, on the other hand, are not concerned with increasing knowledge, but with affirming faith

But who says that populists, relativity critics, opponents of evolution and climate change deniers are not allowed to know what they want with the same claim as scientists? What is the difference between scientific truth and populist truth? The difference lies in the motivation of those involved. Scientists want to increase their knowledge in a world full of uncertainties unconstrained, sincere, rational and methodical. To achieve this, they have powerful virtues of science at their disposal:

The populists, on the other hand, are not concerned with increasing knowledge, but with affirming faith. They presuppose clear, unquestionable truths; what does not correspond to their truth is fought with the means of power, not with those of argument or fact. This is literally a step back into the early Middle Ages when there was no self-referential attitude towards ones own knowledge. At that time, knowledge served a foreign purpose, mostly that of confirming particular beliefs.

Only from the 12th century onwards did knowledge begin to become self-referential. And this is exactly what the populists are now trying to turn around. Once again, we must counter this fatal trend!

Lars Jaeger is a Swiss-German author and investment manager. He writes on the history and philosophy of science and technology and has in the past been an author on hedge funds, quantitative investing, and risk management. He is the founder and CEO of Alternative Beta Partners and currently serves asset manager GAM as Head of Alternative Risk Premia. There is an extended version of this article.

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Lars Jaeger: Science in the Fight Against Populist Programs - finews.asia

Tony Stark's Iron Man armor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe underwent various upgrades since the character first appeared in 2008'sIron Man.Thankfully, one of those upgrades wasn't to Stark's Bleeding Edge armor - one of the grossest and coolest armors Iron Man has worn in the comics.

Iron Man's Bleeding Edge Armor first appeared inThe Invincible Iron Man #25by Matt Fraction and Ryan Meinerding. The armor isn't external like Tony's past suits, it's internal. It's stored inside Stark's body using nanotechnology to form a suit from inside of him. Stark essentially made himself transhuman, commanding the armor mentally. It would spawn from his body and mold onto his skin. There was no need to carry a suit around, as he could activate it whenever he needed it.

RELATED:All The Clues To Iron Man's Death In Avengers: Endgame

Stark's Bleeding Edge armor is extremely powerful. It could self-repair when damaged, was practically invulnerable, and could be restored in seconds when destroyed. Stark literally made the suit a part of his body. His transformation when wearing the suit was incredibly cool, but also disgustingly gross. You can see the nanites take over and graft the suit onto his body.

It is pretty easy to see why Robert Downey Jr. didn't sport an exact version of the armor during his time as Iron Man in the MCU. It simply was too gross to include in its comic form. The Bleeding Edge armor would have traumatized kids and watchers alike. The transformation is neat and cutting edge, but there was no real reason to have Tony Stark go full transhuman. It would be unnecessary body horror, and just wouldn't fit the tone of the films. Instead, giving him an advanced suit, like theMark LXXXV, that could be summoned when needed was a much better choice.

The Bleeding Edge armor lasted a couple of years before Stark retired from being Iron Man in 2012. In theLong Way Downarc, Tony undergoes a surgical procedure that removes the Bleeding Edge technology from his body - making him fully human once again. Most recently, Stark's armor became even more disturbing.

It is very Tony Stark of him to design a suit that was stored and enabled from his own body. Stark is a genius who loves to take risks. By implementing the Bleeding Edge armor into his own body, he was doing what he does best, testing his own limits in order to be a better hero. It was a noble move, but we're glad it stayed in the comics - even if the Bleeding Armor was one of the coolest suits Iron Man has ever worn. His MCU suit-upsshould be epic, not disgusting.

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Iron Man Never Got His Coolest (Grossest) Armor in The MCU - Screen Rant