Page 32 - Monocle Quarterly Journal Vol 3 Issue 2 Spring

MONOCLE QUARTERLY JOURNAL | DEEP LEARNING
blending of technology and corporeality. The willingness of writers to mix elements that are human with those that are not has been hailed as a potentially significant transgressive act, producing characters whose identities are fluid and permeable – for they are neither strictly human, nor machine. The power of the cyborg was articulated perhaps most famously by Donna Haraway in her academic essay A Cyborg Manifesto (1984), where she argues that the figure of the cyborg allows for the possibility of envisioning a world where the human and the non-human merge seamlessly.
Haraway’s argument is an important one to consider, as fiction increasingly becomes reality. Humans have been augmenting themselves for years and it could be
were reported to make Pistorius more energy efficient than normal sprinters and to reduce the time between strides to such a degree that researchers estimated that he would have as much as a seven second advantage in a 400m race. These small, but significant, advancements had given a damaged human body more functionality than the average human body, and collectively, we generally view these enhancements with suspicion.
A far more advanced development in prosthetics is robotic limbs, which rely on brain-computer interfaces to help amputees regain an unprecedented level of movement and control over their bodies. Jesse Sullivan – who had both of his arms amputated following an electrocution accident – underwent a nerve graft to join his shoulder muscles to his pectoral muscles, and a computerised prosthesis was joined to his body where his right arm used to be. Using thought control, Sullivan is able to contract the muscles in his chest, and the computer in the arm is able to interpret these signals to perform the desired motion. When he thinks “close hand”, the chain of communication through his body – and its artificial addition – work seamlessly and his prosthetic hand closes. Moreover, researchers in Utah announced in 2017 that they had developed a hand that can simulate over 1 000 unique touch sensations in the brain of a user, enabling them to interact with their environment in a tactile sense. These prosthetics are far more technologically advanced than Pistorius’s legs – and yet, society views these as medical marvels.
Often, our first response is fear when futurists such as Kurzweil talk about singularity or businessmen such as Elon Musk talk about a neural lace enabling human brains to interface directly with computers. These ideas may seem outlandish, and yet to consider them so is to draw a fairly arbitrary line between what are acceptable augmentations to the human body and what are not. Humans have always found ways to enhance themselves, and as AI advances, the possibilities for pushing beyond our present physical limits are only growing.
Perhaps what is more important is to question more deeply what these changes will imply for our sense of self. After all, if we believe that we can create an artificial intelligence, and if we believe that this creation will enhance our natural human state in some way, it is then surely incumbent upon us to better understand what we actually mean by human intelligence. ■
As a species, we are getting smarter, running faster, and
living longer thanks to artificial augmentation.
argued that, in fact, almost all of us are already cyborgs to some extent. We use synthetic drugs to improve our health, to stave off life-threatening disease, and to enhance our performance both mentally and physically. Artificial devices are routinely used to improve our eyesight or hearing, to give people new limbs, or to keep hearts beating. As a species, we are getting smarter, running faster, and living longer thanks to artificial augmentation. We have always been altering the limits of what the human body is capable of. It is therefore perplexing that we should fear the more advanced physical enhancements that artificial intelligence is likely to facilitate in the not-too-distant future. Perhaps it is because in the case of pace-makers and prosthetics, we feel that technology is only restoring a normal level of physical functionality, rather than enhancing the natural body. But this is not entirely true.
Before he made headlines for his involvement in a dramatic murder, South African double-amputee Oscar Pistorius was the subject of an international debate of a rather different kind. In 2008, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) banned Pistorius from competing against able-bodied runners, as it claimed that his prosthetic limbs gave him an unfair advantage over human legs. These artificial appendages
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