{"id":7238,"date":"2013-06-26T10:29:44","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T04:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/?p=7238"},"modified":"2021-02-20T14:58:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-20T09:28:17","slug":"humachines-and-the-role-reversal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2013\/06\/26\/humachines-and-the-role-reversal\/","title":{"rendered":"Humachines and the role reversal"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his post ‘Virtual People<\/a>‘, Scott Adams writes that his generation would be the last of the ‘pure humans’\u00a0\u00a0raised with no personal technology. Someday historians will mark the smartphone era as the beginning of the Cyborg Age. From this day on, most kids in developed countries will be part human and part machine. As technology improves, we will keep adding it to our bodies.<\/em><\/p>\n

Singularity<\/a>\u00a0has appeared on this blog in various forms, and in at least a couple of posts, I have written about the\u00a0augmented human<\/a>, and like the proverbial frog in the slowly-boiling water,\u00a0we wouldn’t know when it happened<\/a>. (check\u00a0this post<\/a>\u00a0for a fantastic short film on the subject) In fact,\u00a0medical applications of 3D Printing<\/a>\u00a0are already accepted and on the rise. Not just ‘accessories like hearing aids or dental braces, we have moved on to a lower jaw, (previous link)\u00a075% of the skull<\/a>,\u00a0an ear<\/a>, and yes, ‘cyborg flesh<\/a>‘! It’s obvious that the applications are improving the lives of many. My question though remains – as we replace more and more of ourselves, possibly the brain itself within my lifetime, what happens to the essence of us that makes us human – the feelings, the emotions, the zillion unique reactions to various physical and mental stimuli?<\/p>\n

In this wonderful post titled “How not to be alone<\/a>“, in which the author writes about how we have begun to prefer (diminished) technological substitutes to face-to-face communication, (I couldn’t help but remember this<\/a>) \u00a0he quotes\u00a0Simone Weil, \u201cAttention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.\u201d And from that statement I realised how the the narrative might come full circle – I remembered this\u00a0post<\/a>\u00a0I had read a few months back. It\u00a0mentions bots that have passed the Turing test (“test of a\u00a0machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of an actual human”) and has a compelling argument that while we’re singular entities with a complex design, we’re still just blueprints – \u00a0with many similarities. This also \u00a0entails that we’re building machines that can mimic, and evoke, our emotions. Thus, he writes, the era of artificial emotional intelligence is not far.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, in the future we will outsource our humanity and reverse roles – half-machine former humans who deal with each other in mechanical ways and go back home to a humanoid bot that will give it<\/em> all the empathy and emotional anchoring needed. Or would it<\/em> need it at all? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

until next time, be human, comment \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his post ‘Virtual People‘, Scott Adams writes that his generation would be the last of the ‘pure humans’\u00a0\u00a0raised with no personal technology. Someday historians will mark the smartphone era as the beginning of the Cyborg Age. From this day on, most kids in developed countries will be part human and part machine. As technology […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6054,6055,1479,98,6026,6056,6060],"tags":[4164,2038,4179,1906,1941],"class_list":["post-7238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-augmented-human","category-thoughtstream","category-future","category-ideas-future","category-society-culture","category-technology","tag-3d-printing","tag-cyborg","tag-humachine","tag-scott-adams","tag-singularity"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7238"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15101,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7238\/revisions\/15101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}