Inspired by the technology in the movie Iron Man, this article imagines a future where the lines between humans and machines are blurred, and considers how we define the difference between human identity and robotics. We discuss the possibilities of advances in science and technology and the resulting changes in human identity, and ask whether we will still be Homo sapiens in the future.
In the movie Iron Man, Tony Stark is attacked by terrorists and suffers shrapnel in his heart, but a scientist named Ho Ying-Sen saves Tony’s life by placing a mechanical device called an arc reactor in his heart. This device is more than just life support. It was the machine that gave Tony a new life and changed his life forever. Later, Tony takes inspiration from the device to turn himself into a miniature walking reactor, and uses its power to create the Iron Man suit. This scene is a key turning point in the movie, as Tony Stark becomes Iron Man, but how amazing would it be if this technology were possible in real life?
Even if modern medical technology isn’t quite that advanced, medicine has come a long way in the last few centuries. Think back to the 18th century, when people could easily lose their lives to heart disease or infectious diseases. But now, thanks to advances in surgical techniques and medicines, countless lives are being saved. This shows how far humans have come in their efforts to prolong life and overcome disease.
After the Scientific Revolution, humans began to use technology to solve their physical discomforts, such as hearing aids, glasses, posture correctors, and even mechanical arms and legs to help people with missing body parts. These technologies help people overcome obstacles in their daily lives and lead better lives. Given the rate of technological advancement today, it may not be impossible to create a healthy artificial heart to replace a diseased heart in the distant future. We don’t know when that point will be, but it’s exciting to imagine how medicine and science will change human life.
Now we’re not just talking about extending life, we’re talking about how to overcome human physical limitations. No one would call a person who wears glasses or hearing aids a robot, and no one would call a person who lost an arm in an accident a robot because they use a mechanical arm. But what about the heart, and by extension, the brain? I asked myself where the line between human and robot is drawn.
If the only function of the brain is the memory unit, is a person who carries a hard disk a robot? If so, then the doctor with only 80 minutes of memory in the book “The Formula the Doctor Loved” is also a robot. He was born naturally and lived a normal life, so he cannot be called a robot. However, if 100% of the brain is a mechanical device, it seems to be too robotic, and I wondered what percentage of the brain is human and what percentage is robotic, and how to draw the line. The definitions of robot and human are clearly different, but it is possible for something to be both at the same time. We will no longer be able to distinguish robots from humans with certainty.
Let’s continue with this plausible scenario. In the distant future, when most of our physical and mental deficiencies can be compensated for by mechanical devices, someone might have a chip in their head that helps them with their lack of computational ability or memory, or someone might have their brain connected to a full-body robot to address their physical deficiencies and still look like a normal person. Someone might have grown four arms to get things done faster, or someone might have connected a supercomputer to their head to solve a math challenge, increasing their intelligence beyond that of a normal human. Someone might have left everything behind and gone into computer data to live in their own utopia. Data can be manipulated to do whatever you want with it. At this point, can we really call them the species Homo sapiens?
In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari argues that the end of Homo sapiens will not be because we are extinct, but because we are no longer Homo sapiens. Humans are creatures whose primary goal is to survive, so it’s inevitable that we’ll have aspirations for eternal life or a cure for disease. In the modern world, where bionic and computer technologies are advancing by leaps and bounds to make such things possible, the odds of us staying the way we are are rather close to zero. As the technological sky seems to be the limit, what we need to worry about is how we will remain human.
The advancement of science and technology brings great expectations to many people, but it also brings deep concerns. Is it right for us to blindly pursue technological advancement? Is a society where everyone is designed to feel only happy emotions, where everyone is happy whether they are sick or dead, the utopia we want? If we, as Homo sapiens, are not to disappear, at least not yet, we will need to have as many deep discussions about our identity as we do advances in science and technology. We need to constantly remind ourselves of what it means to be human and why it’s important to maintain our identity.
