“A great science fiction detective story” – Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine “Cutting edge speculative fiction” – Ernest Hogan, author of Cortez on Jupiter “Sharply erudite, with the vicious tang of cordite”– Paul Morris, author of Time Traveller Danny and the Codebreaker
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In June 2012 the International Journal of Machine Consciousness published a special issue on mind uploading, one of the featured topics here at Homo Artificialis.
You can find the original here, and there are links to the introduction and all of the papers below in PDF format:
“A great science fiction detective story” - Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
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Late in 2012 Homo Artificialis reported on the launch of a campaign to ban autonomous weapons or “killer robots” (see Killer Robots and Real Life Warfare)
A report by the group organizing the campaign, called Losing Humanity: the Case Against Killer Robots, has also been placed in the HA library of free PDF documents. You can read it online or download it.
Killer Robots on a Rampage
The report and campaign are now beginning to get some media attention elsewhere, although it remains to be seen whether the campaign can gather enough momentum to generate ongoing coverage.
“A great science fiction detective story” - Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
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In the United States, the Federal Drug Administration has now approved the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System, created by Second Sight. It is billed on the company’s site as:
…the world’s first and only approved device intended to restore some functional vision for people suffering from blindness. Argus II is approved for use in the United States and the European Economic Area.
“A great science fiction detective story” - Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
Now Available for Instant Download! Click for details.
Earlier this month HA reported that four British professional and scientific bodies had issued a joint report regarding their concerns about the potential pitfalls of augmented humanity (British Academies Raise Alarm About ‘Souped-Up’ Humanity).
Now Human Rights Watch has issued a 50-page report urging national and international legislation pre-emptively banning “killer robots,” by which they mean weapons of war that are able to autonomously make life-and-death decisions with no input from a human being.
As with the report on human augmentation, I have made the Killer Robots report available as a free, downloadable PDF in the Homo Artificialis Library (HAL), filed under Ethics and Homo Artificialis.
As Raw Story reports in its news item on the report, the weapons in question aren’t yet deployed, but they are in development:
Such weapons do not yet exist, and major powers, including the US, have not decided to deploy them. But precursors are already being developed. The US, China, Germany, Israel, South Korea, Russia, and Britain are engaged in researching and developing such weapons.
The Report, wisely, not only proposes legislative solutions, which can sometimes reflect the realities of the political landscape more than the issue at hand, but also a grassroots approach rooted in professional ethics, urging roboticists themselves to generate a code of conduct, tasking them to:
Establish a professional code of conduct governing the research and development of autonomous robotic weapons, especially those capable of becoming fully autonomous, in order to ensure that legal and ethical concerns about their use in armed conflict are adequately considered at all stages of technological development.
Military applications of advanced technology are inevitable–indeed, much advanced technology begins life as a military project, for instance within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This has several consequences, among them:
as with any technology, there is the potential for error or abuse, but because of the military context this can result in serious injury or death,
there is likely to continue to be a trickle-down effect in which military applications migrate to civilian applications, like law enforcement and civil security, that also have the potential for error or abuse resulting in serious injury or death, and
the first two issues raise the possibility for an alarmist backlash that ends up limititing the positive, beneficial effects such technology can have (and, as we know from laws ostensibly intended to curb the pirating of intellectual property, we are sometimes likely to get all the bad consequences of such a measure without it actually accomplishing its stated goal).
Many readers of this page are, on balance, optimists regarding the life-enhancing potential of technology. Clearly, though, recognizing the immense benefits that have come from technology and that will continue to flow from it shouldn’t mean being naive regarding possible negative consequences. If those consequences are going to be minimized (along with the potential anti-technological backlash) then we have to engage with these issues in a constructive way.
I haven’t yet read the report, so I haven’t decided if it’s sensible and constructive, alarmist and over-reaching, or a bit of both, but if we’re going to act constructively then killer robots isn’t a bad place to start.
You can watch the Human Rights Watch video on the topic, below.
Click image to go to the Homo Artificialis Library (HAL)
“A great science fiction detective story” - Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
Now Available for Instant Download! Click for details.
Four British professional and scientific bodies–the Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society–have gone public with their alarm over the potential pitfalls of augmented humanity in a joint report entitled Human Enhancement and the Future of Work. (BBC news item, Telegraph news item)
Illustration of augmentation attributed to the fictional company Sarif Industries in the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution
The report may be alarmist–I’ll know better once I’ve had a chance to read it–but whatever else it does, it underscores a genuine issue: technologies to enhance natural human beings and create artificial ones are advancing far more rapidly than our practical framework for thinking about them.
I don’t mean our technological thought, I mean our social, political, and philosophical thought. We need–very quickly–to create a far more developed outlook on how these technical advances will affect other aspects of our lives.
If we look just at the issue of longevity, the issues proliferate quickly:
What will happen to actuarial science and the insurance industry when human lifespan advances far more dramatically than it’s done in the past and over a relatively short period of time?
What happens to the time scales of other social instituations, such a prison sentences, when human lifespan is significantly increased? Does five years in prison have the same meaning if I live twice as long?
What happens to human attitudes toward risk-taking (in many different spheres) in a world of drastically extended lives? Will I be less willing to engage in risky activity if I know that what I stand to lose isn’t another twenty years of life but another hundred?
How will increased lifespan affect our patterns of work, training, and retirement over the span of our lives?
How might it change the shape of the family when grandparents–and even great-grandparents–are youthful, healthy, and capable of working and caring for children? Will our ability to conceive and bear children also be extended, and if so, how will that affect the structure of the family?
And how will increased lifespan interact with changes arising from other quarters? The traditional family structure may change as lifespan and vitality are extended, but it’s already changing for other reasons, for instance as attitudes toward gay and lesbian marriage and parenthood evolve. Changes in longevity might well mix with changes that spring from other sources in ways that are difficult to predict until both changes are in effect and have a chance to affect one another.
If you want to go beyond pre-digested news items, none of which seem to link to the report itself, I’ve made it available in the Homo Artificialis Library (HAL) under the subheading Homo Artificialis at Work.
Click image to go to the Homo Artificialis Library (HAL)
What technology is best at is making real magic. Like alchemy or wizardry, only genuine.
It’s morally neutral. It can do this for good or ill. Today I want to talk about the good.
The real science being done today is more advanced than many people realize and that brings even the most difficult goals tantalizingly close, including enhanced human intelligence and radically extended healthy human life. Just look at recent posts on:
But the entire venture of technologizing humanity will fail in important ways if, in looking toward lofty goals like these, we lose sight of other goals that are equally important even if they’re more prosaic. Simple (but difficult) things like:
defusing the causes of much of human disfigurement and disability: war, poverty, and inequality.
devoting our resources toward making sure that technology is used not just so that a few people can reach the highest heights, but also to make sure that everyone can reach at least a basic minimum of physical and intellectual functionality.
It’s with that in mind that I want to introduce you to Jaipur Foot, the nickname of a non-profit organization whose full name is Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti. (It’s also non-religious, non-sectarian, and non-political.)
Jaipur Foot is the largest organization for the handicapped in the world, providing custom-made artificial limbs and other aids and appliances for free in 25 countries, including India (where it started).
So far it has benefitted more than 1 million people, without payment, without paperwork, and without delay. As its proponents are fond of saying: in the morning people crawl in, or are carried in, and later that day they walk out.
Recipients of free artificial limbs in Lebanon, just one of 25 countries where Jaipur Foot has operated.
The program is the brainchild of D.R. Mehta,a former chairman of Securities and Exchange Board of India, who now works as a full time volunteer for the group. It operates based on donations and it supplies each prosthetic limb at a cost (to itself, not to the person getting the limb) of about $45.00, so even a small donation goes a very long way. If you’re of a mind to donate you can find out how on the group’s web site.
You want to see what technology is best at? Watch the video.
“A great science fiction detective story” - Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
Now Available for Instant Download! Click for details.
Most posts on Homo Artificialis have to do with current science and its potential application in the future.
We explore scientific precursors to the development of artificial persons, homo artificialis. That means looking at the possibility of homo-analogous artificial intelligence and the potential creation of synthetic humanoid bodies (inhabitable by either natural or artificial intelligences).
As an important adjunct to that, we look at technologies that might allow humans who are alive now or in the near future to survive into the far future so that they can avail themselves of functional synthetic bodies. These technologies include various forms of radical life extension and physical preservation (such as cryopreservation).
In other words, we don’t normally look at immediate applications.
Once in a while, though, it’s good to take stock of where we are right now in relation to all these technologies and nothing gives that issue more urgency than someone whose life depends on it.
Kim Suozzi is a young woman with Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a very aggressive type of brain cancer. Her life expectancy is somewhere between three and six months.
Like me — and maybe you — Kim’s a Reddit user. A few months ago, on her 23rd birthday, she went on Reddit to solicit bucket-list-type suggestions for her last few months of life. Her post was straightforward and informative, it was heartfelt without being maudlin, and it got a lot of responses.
Kim’s original Reddit post (click the image to go to the page).
But the suggestion that really caught her attention had nothing to do with last-minute thrills: have yourself cryopreserved so that maybe, just maybe, you can be revived one day when there are better treatment options availalbe for your cancer.
Kim wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the idea of long-term physical preservation. She’d read Ray Kurzweil’s The Age Of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near. In fact, before her diagnosis she’d decided to make plans for her own preservation, to be paid for using an insurance policy, but being in her 20s she’d assumed she had a while to act on the idea.
“I had always planned on establishing cryopreservation plans through life insurance, I was caught off guard when I was suddenly diagnosed during my last month and a half of college.”
Then came the diagnosis, the comment on Reddit, and she went into action.
Less than a month ago Kim was back on Reddit. She’d investigated the existing options for cryopreservation and was asking for help in raising the $30-35,000 it would take to have herself preserved. The Society for Venturism had established a charity for her — you can find it here if you want to contribute.
Kim’s fundraising Reddit post (click the image to go to the page).
The most recent entry on Kim’s WorPress blog indicates that the charity has raised about $7,000, although that was as of August 24 so the figure may have changed in the meantime.
I’ll be posting soon about cryopreservation — an approach to physical preservation that’s been much derided, but which has benefitted from scientific advances in the last couple of decades.
In the meantime, check out Kim’s video, below, and consider supporting her campaign.
“A great science fiction detective story” - Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
Now Available for Instant Download! Click for details.
Earlier this year this site featured Dmitry Itskov, the media entrepreneur who recently announced a concrete plan — complete with a timetable — for developing a functional technology for uploading human consciousness into an artificial substrate.
That post was part of our three-part series Brain Mapping, Uploading, and Immortality:
Now Itskov is back in the news, soliciting support with a letter to the members of the Forbes World Billionaires List. The letter is reproduced below.
Inviting investment from the world’s richest men and women makes strategic sense. At the same time, it can’t help but raise concerns about who will end up benefitting from this set of technologies, assuming Itskov’s project is successful.
Itskov is clearly aware of this concern, and has gone to some lengths to distinguish what 2045 is doing from military projects on the one hand and from elitist dystopias on the other.
In an article highlighting an endorsement from the Dalai Lama, Itskov contrasts 2045′s goals with those of military projects investigating similar technologies:
“My project has very different, humanitarian goals – it involves technologies that could mark a transition for humanity, with endless benefits in the future. But already in the next few years, we will be able to enhance the life of those who are disabled, radically improving their living standards. This is just the beginning. It’s my goal to ensure it is affordable and accessible for all people – not just for the elite and the military.”
Dmitry Itskov, founder of 2045 Initiative, with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, at his Dharamsala residence.
The text of the letter follows below.
Homo Artificialis will continue to track 2045 in future posts.
Honorable Members of Forbes World’s Billionaires List,
In 2012 alone, 16 new members brought your number to 1,226 people, and your total fortune from 100 billion to $ 4.6 trillion. You have worked hard to achieve amazing results, and often even compromising your health, your longevity. And unfortunately, modern medicine is still the medicine of a hundred percent mortality – the best it can do is to temporarily delay the process of human aging.
But it no longer has to be this way.
Many of you who have accumulated great wealth by making success of your businesses are supporting science, the arts and charities. I urge you to take note of the vital importance of funding scientific development in the field of cybernetic immortality and the artificial body.
Such research has the potential to free you, as well as the majority of all people on our planet, from disease, old age and even death.
Contributing to cutting-edge innovations in the fields of neuroscience, nanotechnology and android robotics is more than building a brighter future for human civilization, but also a wise and profitable business strategy that will create a new and vibrant industry of immortality – limitless in its importance and scale. This kind of investment will change every aspect of business as we know it: the pharmaceutical industries, transportation, medicine, energy generation, construction techniques, to cite a few.
Currently you invest in business projects that will bring you yet another billion. You also have the ability to finance the extension of your own life up to immortality. Our civilization has come very close to the creation of such technologies: it’s not a science fiction fantasy. It is in your power to make sure that this goal will be achieved in your lifetime.
For anyone interested, but skeptical, I am ready to prove the viability of the concept of cybernetic immortality by arranging an expert discussion with a team of the world’s leading scientist working in this field.
I will also be willing to coordinate your personal immortality project entirely free of charge for the sake of speeding up the development of these technologies.
Honorable businessmen and businesswomen, members of the Forbes richest list: human life is unique and priceless. It is only when we have to part with life do we realize just how much we have not done, that we have not had enough time to do what we really wanted or to address something we’ve done wrong. Everything that we have cherished and loved all of a sudden becomes unreachable.
Today you have a unique chance to change this situation. And at the same time bring invaluable benefits to your countries and the world as well as make a mark in history by supporting the creation of the new industry of immortality. You have the power to support and create a new industry of immortality to make revolutionary change that will forever reverberate through the pages of history.
“A great science fiction detective story” - Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
Now Available for Instant Download! Click for details.
Researchers at the University of Granada in Spain have developed an artificial cerebellum — really a biologically-inspired adaptive microcircuit — that provides finely tuned motor control for robots that can operate more safely in an environment shared with humans.
University of Grenada research team.
The safety issues arising from shared human/robot environments is a subject we’ve dealt with previously on this page, notably in the posts:
Matti Mintz of Tel Aviv University in Israel and his colleagues have created a synthetic cerebellum which can receive sensory inputs from the brainstem – a region that acts as a conduit for neuronal information from the rest of the body. Their device can interpret these inputs, and send a signal to a different region of the brainstem that prompts motor neurons to execute the appropriate movement.
“It’s proof of concept that we can record information from the brain, analyse it in a way similar to the biological network, and return it to the brain,” says Mintz.
“A great science fiction detective story” - Ian Watson, author of The Universal Machine
Now Available for Instant Download! Click for details.
We’re Back after a Hiatus. Why? See this post on my main blog to find out how a Mexican revolution temporarily stymied my blogging. Don’t care? No problem — scroll down and on with the show!
A whole spectrum of current scientific research from disparate disciplines is contributing to the prospect of artificial humanity, from sciences rooted in synthetics, like traditional robotics, to sciences that apply biological processes, like regenerative medicine and xenotransplantation.
Traditionally, cells taken from fat had to be cultured for weeks to isolate the stem cells which could become bone, and their expansion increases risk of infection and genetic instability. A fresh, non-cultured cell composition called stromal vascular fraction (SVF) also is used to grow bone. However, SVF cells taken from adipose tissue are a highly heterogeneous population that includes cells that aren’t capable of becoming bone.
Péault and Soo’s team used a cell sorting machine to isolate and purify human perivascular stem cells (hPSC) from adipose tissue and showed that those cells worked far better than SVF cells in creating bone. They also showed that a growth factor called NELL-1, discovered by Dr. Kang Ting of the UCLA School of Dentistry, enhanced the bone formation in their animal model.
Their results were published in the June issue of Stem Cells Translational Medicine (not yet online, but earlier issues are available without a paywall — plus they have a free iPhone app available here).
Stem Cells Translational Medicine
The Center is relatively new, having been founded in February 2011, as is the journal, which began in 2012. Introductory videos for both the institution and the publication are embedded below. The videos contain a lot of bombastic music and ad-copy-style rhetoric, but there’s some worthwhile information in there that makes them worth a watch.
If you’re interested in an introduction to stem cells and regenerative medicine, don’t miss the third video, which is a good beginner lecture by Dr. Jill Helms, Associate Professor of Surgery at the Stanford School of Medicine.
Intro to the Center
Announcement of the Journal
Introductory Lecture on Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
