There has been much talk recently about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence (AI).
Notable figures like Professor Stephen Hawkins, the renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist, and Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX, have warned that humanity would face an existential threat if machines acquired self-awareness.
Elon Musk described AI as "summoning the demon." Stephen Hawkins said that it "could spell the end of the human race."
Though it's impossible to predict accurately, most scientists expect computers to acquire a level of processing complexity comparable to that of the human brain within the next hundred years. When that happens, many of those scientists believe the machines will be conscious.
When conscious machines appear, they will, in effect, be a brand new species separate from humans, but potentially a serious threat to human existence.
Humanity, however, faces a much more immediate technology related threat. It's called bionics, and it's already here.
With bionics, the machines will be part of our bodies.
That's not a problem when we're talking about prosthetic limbs or eyes. It's a different story altogether, however, when it means brain implants that affect thoughts and feelings.
Taken to extremes (and nobody knows how far this technology will go), implanting man-made circuits in human beings' brains could lead to the creation of another species - the sort of beings referred to as cyborgs by science fiction writers.
Cyborgs, Replicants, an Uncertain Future
In the 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner, "replicants" were robots so visually indistinguishable from adult humans that only an advanced type of detector could tell they were not human.
The scientists who built the replicants implanted emotions, memories, and a sense of self in their brains.
In a few replicants' brains, they even implanted the belief that the robots were actually humans. The film was set in the year 2019.
In 1982, that kind of technology was very much in the realm of science fiction.
Since then, however, neuroscience, bioelectronics, computerization, and nanotechnology have advanced considerably.
In recent years, scientists have endowed damaged human brains with new memory capabilities.
Brain Implants
A brain implant developed at the University of California in collaboration with North Carolina's Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center restored the ability to retain new memories in patients previously deprived of it due to brain damage.
This research, details of which were published in September 2015, holds out great hope for people with many kinds of memory-related brain damage, including sufferers of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.
Separately, doctors have enabled people crippled by spinal injuries to walk again thanks to implanted electronics that read thought messages and pass them directly to muscles.
Working with laboratory animals, scientists have eliminated bad memories and reinforced good ones by rewriting the animals' brain memory codes. There is no medical reason why such procedures could not be applied to people.
If all our body parts apart from the brain were replaced by prosthetics, we would still regard ourselves as human.
- Would we still be human, if parts of our brain were replaced by preprogrammed electronic implants?
- Would we still be the same persons, or would we have become new beings, cyborgs perhaps?
We may not yet be able to build Blade Runner "replicants," or even wish to do so, but the technology involved is no longer science fiction.
Scientists have already mastered the basic computational, biological, and mechanical processes involved. As a result, medical science is set to change radically.
Patients have always put their lives in the hands of doctors, but never before did they face the prospect of placing their thoughts, feelings, and maybe even personalities into their doctors' hands.