The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (56 page)

We will also be able to place sensors in the brain of a paralyzed person that
will be programmed to recognize the brain patterns associated with intended movements and then stimulate the appropriate sequence of muscle actions. For those patients whose muscles no longer function, there are already designs for “nanoelectromechanical” systems (NEMS) that can expand and contract to replace damaged muscles and that can be activated by either real or artificial nerves.

We Are Becoming Cyborgs.
The human body version 2.0 scenario represents the continuation of a long-standing trend in which we grow more intimate with our technology. Computers started out as large, remote machines in airconditioned rooms tended by white-coated technicians. They moved onto our desks, then under our arms, and now into our pockets. Soon, we’ll routinely put them inside our bodies and brains. By the 2030s we will become more nonbiological than biological. As I discussed in
chapter 3
, by the 2040s nonbiological intelligence will be billions of times more capable than our biological intelligence.

The compelling benefits of overcoming profound diseases and disabilities will keep these technologies on a rapid course, but medical applications represent only the early-adoption phase. As the technologies become established, there will be no barriers to using them for vast expansion of human potential.

Stephen Hawking recently commented in the German magazine
Focus
that computer intelligence will surpass that of humans within a few decades. He advocated that we “urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain, so that computers can add to human intelligence, rather than be in opposition.”
²⁵
Hawking can take comfort that the development program he is recommending is well under way.

There will be many variations of human body version 2.0, and each organ and body system will have its own course of development and refinement. Biological evolution is only capable of what is called “local optimization,” meaning that it can improve a design but only within the constraints of design “decisions” that biology arrived at long ago. For example, biological evolution is restricted to building everything from a very limited class of materials—namely, proteins, which are folded from one-dimensional strings of amino acids. It is restricted to thinking processes (pattern recognition, logical analysis, skill formation, and other cognitive skills) that use extremely slow chemical switching. And biological evolution itself works very slowly, only incrementally improving designs that continue to apply these basic concepts. It is incapable of suddenly changing, for example, to structural materials made of diamondoid or to nanotube-based logical switching.

However, there is a way around this inherent limitation. Biological evolution did create a species that could think and manipulate its environment. That species is now succeeding in accessing—and improving—its own design and is capable of reconsidering and altering these basic tenets of biology.

Human Body Version 3.0.
I envision human body 3.0—in the 2030s and 2040s—as a more fundamental redesign. Rather than reformulating each subsystem, we (both the biological and nonbiological portions of our thinking, working together) will have the opportunity to revamp our bodies based on our experience with version 2.0. As with the transition from 1.0 to 2.0, the transition to 3.0 will be gradual and will involve many competing ideas.

One attribute I envision for version 3.0 is the ability to change our bodies. We’ll be able to do that very easily in virtual-reality environments (see the next section), but we will also acquire the means to do this in real reality. We will incorporate MNT-based fabrication into ourselves, so we’ll be able to rapidly alter our physical manifestation at will.

Even with our mostly nonbiological brains we’re likely to keep the aesthetics and emotional import of human bodies, given the influence this aesthetic has on the human brain. (Even when extended, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will still have been derived from biological human intelligence.) That is, human body version 3.0 is likely still to look human by today’s standards, but given the greatly expanded plasticity that our bodies will have, ideas of what constitutes beauty will be expanded upon over time. Already, people augment their bodies with body piercing, tattoos, and plastic surgery, and social acceptance of these changes has rapidly increased. Since we’ll be able to make changes that are readily reversible, there is likely to be far greater experimentation.

J. Storrs Hall has described nanobot designs he calls “foglets” that are able to link together to form a great variety of structures and that can quickly change their structural organization. They’re called “foglets” because if there’s a sufficient density of them in an area, they can control sound and light to form variable sounds and images. They are essentially creating virtual-reality environments externally (that is, in the physical world) rather than internally (in the nervous system). Using them a person can modify his body or his environment, though some of these changes will actually be illusions, since the foglets can control sound and images.
²⁶
Hall’s foglets are one conceptual design for creating real morphable bodies to compete with those in virtual reality.

B
ILL
(
AN ENVIRONMENTALIST
):
On this human body version 2.0 stuff, aren’t you throwing the baby out—quite literally—with the bathwater? You’re suggesting
replacing the entire human body and brain with machines. There’s no human being left
.

R
AY:
We don’t agree on the definition of human, but just where do you suggest drawing the line? Augmenting the human body and brain with biological or nonbiological interventions is hardly a new concept. There’s still a lot of human suffering
.

B
ILL:
I have no objection to alleviating human suffering. But replacing a human body with a machine to exceed human performance leaves you with, well, a machine. We have cars that can travel on the ground faster than a human, but we don’t consider
them
to be human
.

R
AY:
The problem here has a lot to do with the word “machine.” Your conception of a machine is of something that is much less valued—less complex, less creative, less intelligent, less knowledgeable, less subtle and supple—than a human. That’s reasonable for today’s machines because all the machines we’ve ever met—like cars—are like this. The whole point of my thesis, of the coming Singularity revolution, is that this notion of a machine—of nonbiological intelligence—will fundamentally change
.

B
ILL:
Well, that’s exactly my problem. Part of our humanness is our limitations. We don’t claim to be the fastest entity possible, to have memories with the biggest capacity possible, and so on. But there is an indefinable, spiritual quality to being human that a machine inherently doesn’t possess
.

R
AY:
Again, where do you draw the line? Humans are already replacing parts of their bodies and brains with nonbiological replacements that work better at performing their “human” functions
.

B
ILL:
Better only in the sense of replacing diseased or disabled organs and systems. But you’re replacing essentially all of our humanness to enhance human ability, and that’s inherently inhuman
.

R
AY:
Then perhaps our basic disagreement is over the nature of being human. To me, the essence of being human is not our limitations—although we do have many—it’s our ability to reach beyond our limitations. We didn’t stay on the ground. We didn’t even stay on the planet. And we are already not settling for the limitations of our biology
.

B
ILL:
We have to use these technological powers with great discretion. Past a certain point, we’re losing some ineffable quality that gives life meaning
.

R
AY:
I think we’re in agreement that we need to recognize what’s important in our humanity. But there is no reason to celebrate our limitations
.

. . . on the Human Brain

Is all what we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?

                   —E
DGAR
A
LLAN
P
OE

The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is the lawgiver. No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage or a field of battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops.

                   —J
OSEPH
W
EIZENBAUM

One windy day two monks were arguing about a flapping banner. The first said, “I say the banner is moving, not the wind.” The second said, “I say the wind is moving, not the banner.” A third monk passed by and said, “The wind is not moving. The banner is not moving. Your minds are moving.”

                   —Z
EN
P
ARABLE

Suppose someone were to say, “Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful.”

                   —L
UDWIG
W
ITTGENSTEIN

The 2010 Scenario.
Computers arriving at the beginning of the next decade will become essentially invisible: woven into our clothing, embedded in our furniture and environment. They will tap into the worldwide mesh (what the World Wide Web will become once all of its linked devices become communicating Web servers, thereby forming vast supercomputers and memory banks) of high-speed communications and computational resources. We’ll have very high-bandwidth, wireless communication to the Internet at all times. Displays will be built into our eyeglasses and contact lenses and images projected directly onto our retinas. The Department of Defense is already using technology along these lines to create virtual-reality environments in which to train soldiers.
²⁷
An impressive immersive virtual reality system already demonstrated by the army’s Institute for Creative Technologies includes virtual humans that respond appropriately to the user’s actions.

Similar tiny devices will project auditory environments. Cell phones are already being introduced in clothing that projects sound to the ears.
²⁸
And there’s an MP3 player that vibrates your skull to play music that only you can hear.
²⁹
The army has also pioneered transmitting sound through the skull from a soldier’s helmet.

There are also systems that can project from a distance sound that only a specific person can hear, a technology that was dramatized by the personalized talking street ads in the movie
Minority Report
. The Hypersonic Sound technology and the Audio Spotlight systems achieve this by modulating the sound on ultrasonic beams, which can be precisely aimed. Sound is generated by the beams interacting with air, which restores sound in the audible range. By focusing multiple sets of beams on a wall or other surface, a new kind of personalized surround sound without speakers is also possible.
³⁰

These resources will provide high-resolution, full-immersion visualauditory virtual reality at any time. We will also have augmented reality with displays overlaying the real world to provide real-time guidance and explanations. For example, your retinal display might remind us, “That’s Dr. John Smith, director of the ABC Institute—you last saw him six months ago at the XYZ conference” or, “That’s the Time-Life Building—your meeting is on the tenth floor.”

We’ll have real-time translation of foreign languages, essentially subtitles on the world, and access to many forms of online information integrated into our daily activities. Virtual personalities that overlay the real world will help us with information retrieval and our chores and transactions. These virtual assistants won’t always wait for questions and directives but will step forward if they see us struggling to find a piece of information. (As we wonder about “That actress . . . who played the princess, or was it the queen . . . in that movie with the robot,” our virtual assistant may whisper in our ear or display in our visual field of view: “Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala in
Star Wars
, episodes 1, 2, and 3.”)

The 2030 Scenario.
Nanobot technology will provide fully immersive, totally convincing virtual reality. Nanobots will take up positions in close physical proximity to every interneuronal connection coming from our senses. We already have the technology for electronic devices to communicate with neurons in both directions, yet requiring no direct physical contact with the neurons. For example, scientists at the Max Planck Institute have developed “neuron transistors” that can detect the firing of a nearby neuron, or alternatively can cause a nearby neuron to fire or suppress it from firing.
³¹
This amounts to two-way communication between neurons and the electronicbased neuron transistors. As mentioned above, quantum dots have also shown the ability to provide noninvasive communication between neurons and electronics.
³²