Cyborgs r us

If a cyborg is defined as a human-machine interface, then we already have cyborgs walking in our midst.

The technologies to allow technology to interface with our neurons are developing rapidly: We are not far away from implantable interfaces that will restore 20/20 vision.

A company has already piloted a lower-resolution system. Higher resolution systems are in development.

It is only a matter of time, and not much time at that, before these systems outperform our natural vision - one forsees military applications,where soldiers are implanted with UV and IR sensing chips that can be voluntarily enabled. Possibly at some point even terrahertz vision may be possible. These technologies raise a myriad of ethical issues.

Other modifications may be digital zoom, and macro - especially once resolution reaches the megapixel range, effective digital zoom will become a reality. The ability to record what is seen, and therefore broadcast it, will probably also be incorporated - at first for military use, later, for civilian.

We will inevitably see the first people implanting this technology as an elective measure, and then getting regular upgrades.

Looking back so we can look ahead

Sometimes looking back helps to give us some perspective about the way forward:
Here is the state of things in 1981

Now remember, we have been on an exponential growth curve since then, and this exponential curve is showing no signs of slowing down - rather, it is speeding up, as the newer software and AI systems (narrow AI, but still increasingly powerful) help us design the next step.

It is hard to fathom how  *slow* the world still was in 1981.

This talk by NASA's Neill Jacobson does a good job of putting things in perspective in a clear, level-headed way in this TED talk:

The question is, how does one plan one's future under these conditions?

For example, a student entering a university in the UK will take on massive debt, to educate themselves for a career that may not exist within a decade of their graduation. Will it make sense at all to attend university for most careers, and to take the gamble of indebtedness? Surely it would make more sense to carefully research your selected subject, and see if the material you need to educate yourself in your subject area already exists on-line  Then, look for an institution that would charge you to sit examinations only, that isn't a course provider? In other words, a university as originally conceived, a degree granting institution, not a teaching one?

In fact,this might be a business model one could imagine in operation: a university that offers no courses or lectures, but which simply provides a list of syllabi, with reading lists and examinations for a set fee. This would operate in a similar manner to the professional accountancy examination bodies, which are provided by the professional institutes, but these institutes do not teach per se: somewhat along the lines of the pharmacy examinations offered by the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries in the eighteenth century. Anyone could register to sit the examinations, and individuals were responsible for studying for the exams alone - usually with a tutor.

 Will universities for the most part end up as institutions for the liberal arts? Will the entire notion of getting your education in an expensive institution still be meaningful, when the equivalent lectures and access to knowledge can be had online for free, with your own dedicated AI tutor?

Further down the line, we will be looking at sophisticated neural implants, and direct wetware-hardware interfacing, along the lines of the primitive ones already in existence, such as cochlear implants. Google glasses will end up internal, not external.

How long before modification becomes elective? There is already an FDA approved artificial retina. What happens when this technology outperforms the wetware body organ? Will people have elective surgery, to upgrade their eyes? This would equally apply to other body organs, as technology begins to make progress in emulation, initially for treatment of disease, and finally, outperforming our nature.

Molecular Printing and Public Policy

Dr Lee Cronin and his team have been working on a number of interesting and unique projects - one is highly theoretical - an attempt to evolve life using non carbon based chemistry - and the other has more immediate implications for policy and everyday life - the development of a molecular printer.

Assuming such a printer becomes cost effective for the average consumer (the feedstock is cheap enough to make the end products competitive with the market, and output is in large enough amounts per unit time etc), it will immediately be used for production of illicit drugs.

This will have several positive knock on effects, and other negative ones:

I assume the technology will first be adopted by drug pushers - but in the end, the technology will also be their undoing, and will destroy their livelihood, such as it is.

The cycle of criminality that surrounds the illegal narcotics market will collapse: and drug use will probably drop, as there will be no drug pushers out there trying to sell drugs to buy their own drugs - the bottom will fall out of the market,and prices will collapse. The purity of the drugs available will also increase, and so drug deaths due to contaminated product will also decrease. Third world countries with large narcotics industries will find that these collapse.

Other forms of drugs will also be more readily available - for example, performance enhancing drugs for body-builders and athletes will be easy to obtain. Designer narcotics will blossom, as users will experiment with novel molecules, and share the print files for them freely on-line.

Pharmaceutical companies will also take a major hit - they will rapidly lose control of their intellectual property, as drugs and molecule will be reduced to shareable software instructions. It will be impossible to regulate table top printing of expensive drugs. The technology will be rapidly adopted in developing nations where modern western pharmaceuticals are too expensive.

The pharmaceutical industry will go the way of EMI and HMV, unless they start to plan ahead of the curve, because this technology will arrive, it is only a question of when, not if. Once drugs become data, then the product becomes information.  The Bayer/ ICI  iTunes pharmacy? Or just straightforward bankruptcy?

The tax take that derives from this economic area will also plummet, as will employment in all areas of drug production, apart from basic research carried out by universities.

It will be almost impossible to regulate the use of experimental drugs by patients with terminal diseases - with nothing to lose, they will simply print out the experimental medication, and take their chances.

Will government regulation of such a printer be possible? It may not be, if a molecular printer could be constructed ( or even most of the parts for it constructed) with a standard 3-d printer. One would simply download the construction file to your own desktop 3d printer, and print yourself a new molecular printer, or table-top micro-chemistry set, or whatever it ends up being called. Preventing distribution of the construction files will be impossible, likewise distribution of the software files for the individual molecules.

Once cocaine/ heroin/ecstasy  becomes a data file, will possession of the data file for printing  be illegal? How could that be policed?

Synthetic Biology

Eric Drexler in the talk I referenced in my last post basically said that all bets are off the table about what the implications of atomic scale fabrication would be.

I find it interesting that on YouTube there are only three significant talks by Drexler - one given at Lloyds Insurance last year, and another given at the Oxford Martin Institute, and a third, at the Singularity University.
All cover the same areas of discussion. There is a fourth speech given in Russia, which is very similar to the others in scope.

Lloyds Talk
Oxford Martin Talk
Singularity Summit Talk
Russian Polytechnic Museum Talk

Drexler, only 12 months ago, thought that an atomic assembler was still a future technology. However, the reality on the ground - the ability to engage in nano-fabrication, is jumping ahead even faster than Drexler predicted - for example, researchers at Imperial College, London, are talking in terms of a 'New Industrial Revolution', in relation to molecular fabrication using modified cellular machinery: The press release can be read here

This, taken in combination with the research carried out at Leeds University on an atomic assembler, indicate that we are far closer to the tipping point than even Drexler envisaged 12 months ago.

Once these technologies are available  progress will be incredibly rapid, as much of the engineering design has already been carried out in silico for the first generation of molecular machines. These machines in turn will be used to construct their successors, and we will move rapidly into a new industrial paradigm.