Prosthetics of the Brain

Posted by Emile Wolfaardt

Some creatures are able to regrow lost limbs (like crayfish, salamanders, starfish and some spiders). As humans, we are not as advanced in that department. But we can create such limbs – conventional prosthetics – artificial limbs or organs designed to provide (some) return of function. Some replacements, like glass eyes, don’t even provide that – they don’t see better, they simply look better. But a new wave of smart prosthetics is busy changing all that.

Bionic eyes are surgically implanted, and connect with retina neurons, recreating the transduction of light information back to the brain – so the brain can once again ‘see’. Bionic lenses provide augmented abilities, enabling eyes to see three times better than ‘perfect vision’. Bionic eyes will have all the abilities of modern visual technology like night vision, heat sensors, distant, infra-red and x-ray vision - and other augmented abilities. Likewise, other prosthetics will become smart, enhancing the human experience with enhanced reality.

The latest innovation in prosthetics is the revolutionary addition of machine learning and AI. Here, the wave of change is going to be of tsunamic proportion. Bioengineers are impressively pushing into this frontier, merging the human experience with superhuman abilities. The new field of development is the power of ‘smart brains’ – or neuro-mechanical algorithmic collaboration - where artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the human brain interface to create a brand-new human experience.

Neuro-mechanical algorithmic collaboration may sound like a huge tongue twister – but you already know what it means. Let’s parse it. Neuro- (of the brain), mechanical (of machines) algorithmic (all information, human or machine, is processed by way of algorithms) collaboration (working together). These BMIs (Brain Machine Interfaces) will become the norm of our future. What does that look like? The end result is the human brain having access to any and all information instantly, being able to share it with others seamlessly, and interpolating it into the situation appropriately.

For instance, a doctor in the middle of a surgery observes an unexpected bleed, instantly pulls up in his brain the last 20 occurrences of that bleed in similar situations, and is able to select the best cause and solution. Or you and I could have this conversation brain to brain, without the use of telephones or devices - simply using brain to brain communication. While that seems like a huge concept, in one sense it is not very different to what we do all the time. We use technology – the cell-phone – to communicate thoughts from one brain to another brain. Imagine if we could use technology to negate the need for the cell-phone. That is brain to brain communication.

There is a rat in a cage in Duke University, USA. In front of him are two glass doors that cannot open. He has a probe in his brain that links to a computer. In Brazil, there is another rat with a similar probe in his brain. In front of him are two wooden doors that he cannot see through. Then place a treat behind one of the glass doors in front of the rat in the USA, and his brain tells the rat in Brazil which door to open. That is brain to brain communication. Remove the probe (go wireless) and we have innate brain to brain communication.

There are many, many challenges before this can become a functional reality – but it is within sight. Amongst the biggest challenges are mapping the human brain sufficiently so we know what neurons to fire up, and creating a broad enough wireless connection to relay the enormous amount of information required to transmit even a single thought. We are making progress. Elon Musk is one of the innovators in this field. He is currently suggesting he can make changes to the brain to address Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Autism and other brain disorders.

Scientists can control the movement of a rat with a PlayStation remote type control, have it climb a ladder, jump off a ledge that is higher than it would comfortably jump from, then inject endorphins into the rat’s brain that made the jump feel good.

Who knows – perhaps the opportunity lies ahead to correct socially disruptive behaviour, or criminal thinking? Would that be more effective than incarceration? Who knows - perhaps couples will be able to release endorphins into each other’s brains to establish a sense of bliss? Who knows – perhaps we will be able enhance our brains so that our knowledge is infinite, our character impeccable, and our reality phenomenal? If so, we shall be able to create our own reality, a world in which we and others live in peace and happiness. We can have the life we want in the world we choose.

Who would not want that? Or would they?

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Further reading:

https://medium.com/@tinaphm7/superhuman-vision-bionic-lens-ad405fc42127

https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/feb/28/brains-rats-connected-share-information

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/gyad49/its-2019-and-scientists-have-created-mind-controlled-rat-cyborgs

Getting the Ethics Right: Life and Death Decisions by Self-Driving Cars

Yes, the ethics of driverless cars are complicated.

Image credit: Iyad Rahwan

Posted by Keith Tidman

In 1967, the British philosopher Philippa Foot, daughter of a British Army major and sometime flatmate of the novelist Iris Murdoch,  published an iconic thought experiment illustrating what forever after would be known as ‘the trolley problem’. These are problems that probe our intuitions about whether it is permissible to kill one person to save many.

The issue has intrigued ethicists, sociologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, legal experts, anthropologists, and technologists alike, with recent discussions highlighting its potential relevance to future robots, drones, and self-driving cars, among other ‘smart’, increasingly autonomous technologies.

The classic version of the thought experiment goes along these lines: The driver of a runaway trolley (tram) sees that five people are ahead, working on the main track. He knows that the trolley, if left to continue straight ahead, will kill the five workers. However, the driver spots a side track, where he can choose to redirect the trolley. The catch is that a single worker is toiling on that side track, who will be killed if the driver redirects the trolley. The ethical conundrum is whether the driver should allow the trolley to stay the course and kill the five workers, or alternatively redirect the trolley and kill the single worker.

Many twists on the thought experiment have been explored. One, introduced by the American philosopher Judith Thomson a decade after Foot, involves an observer, aware of the runaway trolley, who sees a person on a bridge above the track. The observer knows that if he pushes the person onto the track, the person’s body will stop the trolley, though killing him. The ethical conundrum is whether the observer should do nothing, allowing the trolley to kill the five workers. Or push the person from the bridge, killing him alone. (Might a person choose, instead, to sacrifice himself for the greater good by leaping from the bridge onto the track?)

The ‘utilitarian’ choice, where consequences matter, is to redirect the trolley and kill the lone worker — or in the second scenario, to push the person from the bridge onto the track. This ‘consequentialist’ calculation, as it’s also known, results in the fewest deaths. On the other hand, the ‘deontological’ choice, where the morality of the act itself matters most, obliges the driver not to redirect the trolley because the act would be immoral — despite the larger number of resulting deaths. The same calculus applies to not pushing the person from the bridge — again, despite the resulting multiple deaths. Where, then, does one’s higher moral obligation lie; is it in acting, or in not acting?

The ‘doctrine of double effect’ might prove germane here. The principle, introduced by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, says that an act that causes harm, such as injuring or killing someone as a side effect (‘double effect’), may still be moral as long as it promotes some good end (as, let’s say, saving five lives rather than just the one).

Empirical research has shown that redirecting the runaway trolley toward the one worker is considered an easier choice — utilitarianism basis — whereas overwhelmingly visceral unease in pushing a person off the bridge is strong — deontological basis. Although both acts involve intentionality — resulting in killing one rather than five — it’s seemingly less morally offensive to impersonally pull a lever to redirect the trolley than to place hands on a person to push him off the bridge, sacrificing him for the good of the many.

In similar practical spirit, neuroscience has interestingly connected these reactions to regions of the brain, to show neuronal bases, by viewing subjects in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine as they thought about trolley-type scenarios. Choosing, through deliberation, to steer the trolley onto the side track, reducing loss of life, resulted in more activity in the prefrontal cortex. Thinking about pushing the person from the bridge onto the track, with the attendant imagery and emotions, resulted in the amygdala showing greater activity. Follow-on studies have shown similar responses.

So, let’s now fast forward to the 21st century, to look at just one way this thought experiment might, intriguingly, become pertinent to modern technology: self-driving cars. The aim is to marry function and increasingly smart, deep-learning technology. The longer-range goal is for driverless cars to consistently outperform humans along various critical dimensions, especially human error (the latter estimated to account for some ninety percent of accidents) — while nontrivially easing congestion, improving fuel mileage, and polluting less.

As developers step toward what’s called ‘strong’ artificial intelligence — where AI (machine learning and big data) becomes increasingly capable of human-like functionality — automakers might find it prudent to fold ethics into their thinking. That is, to consider the risks on the road posed to self, passengers, drivers of other vehicles, pedestrians, and property. With the trolley problem in mind, ought, for example, the car’s ‘brain’ favour saving the driver over a pedestrian? A pedestrian over the driver? The young over the old? Women over men? Children over adults? Groups over an individual? And so forth — teasing apart the myriad conceivable circumstances. Societies, drawing from their own cultural norms, might call upon the ethicists and other experts mentioned in the opening paragraph to help get these moral choices ‘right’, in collaboration with policymakers, regulators, and manufacturers.

Thought experiments like this have gained new traction in our techno-centric world, including the forward-leaning development of ‘strong’ AI, big data, and powerful machine-learning algorithms for driverless cars: vital tools needed to address conflicting moral priorities as we venture into the longer-range future.

God: a New Argument from Design

The game of our universe does not reveal sameness

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

The venerable ‘argument from design’ proposes that the creation reveals a Creator. More than this, that the creation reveals the power and glory of God. Isaac Newton was one among many who believed it—stating in an appendix to his 1637 Principia or Principles of Mathematics:

‘This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.’

The trouble is, there are alternative explanations for design—in fact complete, coherent explanations. To put it in a nutshell, there are other ways that order and design can come about. So, today, the argument is often said to be inconclusive. The evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, writes that it is ‘unanswerable'—which is not to say, however, that it is disproven.

Yet suppose that we push the whole argument back—back beyond all talk of power and glory—back beyond the simplest conceptions of design, to a core, a point of ‘ground zero'. Here we find the first and most basic characteristic of design: it is more than chaos or, alternatively, it is more than featurelessness.

On the surface of it, our universe ought to be only one or the other. Our universe is governed by laws which ought not to produce any more than chaos on the one hand, or featurelessness on the other. We might use the analogy of a chess game, although the analogy only goes so far.* A careful observer of a chess match reports that the entire game is governed by rules, and there is no departure from such rules.

Yet there is clearly, at the same time, something happening in the game at a different level. Games get won, and games get lost, and games play out in different ways each time. There is something beyond the laws. We may even infer that there is intelligence behind each game – but let us not rush to go that far.

However, without seeing the players, one could assume that they must exist—or something which resembles them. To put it as basically as we can: the game lacks sameness from game to game—whether this be the sameness of chaos or the sameness of featurelessness. Something else is happening there. Now apply this to our universe. We ought to see complete chaos, or we ought to see complete featurelessness. We ought not to see asymmetry or diversity, or anything of that sort—let alone anything which could resemble design.

The problem is familiar to science. The physicist, Stephen Hawking, wrote:

‘Why is it (the universe) not in a state of complete disorder at all times? After all, this might seem more probable.’

That is, there is no good explanation for it. Given the laws of nature, we cannot derive from them a universe which is as complex as the one we see. On the other hand, biologist Stuart Kauffman writes,

‘We have no adequate theory for why our universe is complex.’

This is the opposite view. We ought not to see any complexity emerging. No matter what degree of complexity we find today, whether it be Newton's system of the universe, or the basic fact that complexity exists, it should not happen. It is as if there is more than the rules—because the game of our universe does not reveal sameness.

This idea of ‘more’—of different levels of reality—has been seriously entertained by various scientists. The  science writer Natalie Wolchover says, ‘Space-time may be a translation of some other description of reality,’ and while she does not propose the existence of the supernatural, the idea of some other description of reality could open the door to this.

Call this the ‘ground zero’, the epicentre of the argument from design. There is something going on, at a level we do not see, which we may never discover by examining the rules. In the analogy of the chess game, where we observe something beyond the rules, we may not be able to tell what that something is—yet it is clear that it is.

This argument differs from the familiar version of the theological argument from design, which generally assumes that God created the rules which the design displays. On the contrary, this argument proposes that God may exist beyond the rules, through the very fact that we see order.

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* A problem with the analogy is that a chess game manifests complexity to begin with. The important point is, however, that the game reveals more than it should.

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.' 

Posted by Jeremy Dyer *

This is a detail from a great work of art. Which one? Whose? We are expected to admire it, to marvel and to learn. 

What if I told you that it was a detail from one of Pollock's works? Would you then try to 'see' the elusive essence of it? On the other hand, what if I told you it was merely a photo from above the urinal in a late-night restaurant? Does that make it any more or less 'art'? 

If everything is art—the sacred mantra—then the reverse corollary must also be true. Nothing is art.

* Jeremy Dyer is an acclaimed Cape Town artist.