The rapid pace of advancements in artificial intelligence is making it imperative to improve human capabilities, and machine-human fusion has been proposed as one solution. While mechanization of the human brain and research into extending our capabilities through machines could be a way to push our limits, there are still ethical and technical challenges.
Science fiction movies and novels, such as The Matrix, often depict a bleak future for humanity, one that is dominated by artificial intelligence. There’s a reason we think AI will threaten humanity’s survival: as the technology improves, we’re seeing more and more examples of AI demonstrating similar or better problem-solving skills than humans. Will we one day be ruled by robots that are smarter than us? If A.I. becomes self-aware and intelligent, humanity will need to have the intellectual capacity to avoid being dominated.
Technological advancement and the future of humanity
The expansion of human capabilities through machines may seem like the stuff of science fiction. But given today’s pace of technological advancement, we’re looking at a point where it’s not just a distant fantasy, but a reality. What’s more, machines can go beyond simply complementing human capabilities and enable new intellectual and physical capabilities that were previously unattainable for humans. This is being realized through scientific research that was once unimaginable, and will transform our daily lives. Advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience are at the forefront of this, enabling technological leaps beyond human limits.
Biological evolution can only go so far, so how can we keep up with the exponential pace of AI and improve our abilities? Let’s take a look at a sci-fi vision of what humans might look like in the future.
First, we can think about how to become AI ourselves: if we can mechanically reduce all the mechanisms in our brains, it shouldn’t be impossible to transfer our brains to machines. In fact, research is already underway to create a computerized representation of the human brain. The Human Brain Project, which has been running in Europe since 2013, aims to simulate the human brain on a supercomputer. Professor Henry Markram, the head of the project, has already succeeded in simulating part of a rat’s brain. In addition to attempts to simulate the brain computationally, there is also research in many countries to create hardware in the form of neurons that mimic the way the brain works. IBM’s TrueNorth and the University of Manchester’s SpiNNaker project, for example, both aim to emulate the brain’s characteristics of a highly parallel, low-power network on an electronic chip.
However, these radical and unique attempts to replicate the brain on a machine are immediately met with mixed reviews. Aside from debates about the unethical nature of the research, or the fact that the complexity and breadth of the subject matter make it impractical to realize in the near future, there is a fundamental skepticism about whether the way the brain works can be perfectly mimicked by the way a computer works. The human brain certainly doesn’t seem to work as a logical combination of signals as a computer does. This is a very strong objection, and their argument is that human thought is incomputable, and therefore it is fundamentally impossible to replicate it in any computational machine, which they refer to as a computer. Crucially, however, their argument lacks empirical evidence that human thought is incomputable. Of course, proving them wrong is also currently impossible, but their argument seems more convincing than the fact that many of the mechanisms in the brain are computable, as evidenced by the aforementioned brain modeling studies.
Extending human capabilities through machines
Even if it is possible to transfer the human brain into a machine, some may fear that the day this research succeeds will not come sooner than the day artificial intelligence advances and dominates humanity. So, what if we do the opposite and connect machines to brains to advance human capabilities? This is certainly more realistic, faster, and less objectionable than transferring the entire brain to a machine.
Researchers have already been working on ways to fill in the gaps in human abilities for a few years now, with significant results. It’s not that long ago that blind people were able to see by sending electrical impulses to their optic nerves directly from a camera, or that prosthetic limbs were developed to move by detecting the brain waves of a person who had lost a leg. So, is it possible to extend human capabilities beyond what they are lacking? While there have been no human applications of this yet, there have been successful attempts to give rats extrasensory abilities or even implant memories they have never experienced. Researchers at Duke University connected infrared sensors to the sensory cortex of rats, allowing them to detect infrared light, and in 2013, some researchers implanted fake memories into lab rats.
Future possibilities
Research into extending human capabilities through machines isn’t just about compensating for blindness or physical defects. It’s also about transcending human cognitive limitations. For example, researchers are working to overcome the limitations of memory and connect external memory devices to the human brain to enable new forms of information storage. This goes beyond simply restoring some of the brain’s functions and offers the possibility of maximizing the amount and quality of information that humans can remember. Advances in this technology could lead to revolutionary advances in cognitive domains such as language learning, information analysis, and creative thinking.
Research is also expanding into mental areas such as emotion regulation. For example, by connecting mechanical devices to the brain’s emotion-regulation centers, it may become possible to inhibit or enhance certain emotions. This could provide practical solutions not only for the treatment of mental illnesses such as depression, but also for a variety of other modern problems, such as stress management and improved concentration.
So far, we’ve looked at technologies that expand human capabilities that seem like something out of science fiction, and we’ve also seen a number of studies that have already been done or are currently underway that suggest they could be realized in the not-too-distant future. Of course, this is only the beginning of a long journey, with many technical and non-technical challenges to overcome, as well as social and ethical issues. However, if research in fields related to this technology, such as neuroscience and artificial intelligence, continues to be actively conducted, and if we continue to envision a better future through social discourse, I dream that there will be a time when humans and robots will coexist and form a highly developed culture, rather than a bleak future.
