Emergent beings – III

Roberto Saracco June 28, 2017 Blog 304 Views

A prosthetic hand with a sense of touch. Prosthetics are becoming more and more “aware” and able to dialogue with the person wearing them. Credit: Louis Stokes Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center

The symbioses of artefacts with ourselves will move by little steps and it has already begun. Prosthetic hands are becoming more and more sophisticated and part of their increased functionalities stems from the autonomous nature of the prosthetics. When we pick up an object, several control systems are at work, even though we are normally unaware of their working. We pick up with the same ease a nut and a raspberry, though applying pressure on a nut is fine but on a raspberry it would crash it. The decision process is quite complex and it involves the cooperation of different systems, sensorial –touch, sight- motion, decision making at brain/cortical level, fine grading coordination by the cerebellum, immediate response by the spinal nodes and more.
Prosthetic hands are now able to sense and interoperate with the person neural system, they can also take local decision (like the level of pressure to exercise). To a certain extent they are “autonomous systems” and they enter into a symbiotic relation with the person wearing them. Notice that this is a continuously evolving process resulting in a more and more advanced symbiotic relationship, so far with evolution slanted towards the person who is (slowly) learning to adapt its actions and reaction to achieve a better control of the prosthetic. A leading edge prosthetic hand, differently from the first model that did not have sophisticated interaction capability, would not fit a different person because over time a very specific symbiotic communication has evolved, mostly on the part of the person -today- but we are now seeing learning and adaptation taking place in the prosthetic hand.

Embedded IoT are also becoming more common (think of sensors to monitor chronic pathologies, smart drug dispensers –like insulin pumps) and they are getting more and more sophisticated. In a short while these IoTs will start to communicate with one another through body area networks and in the longer terms they are likely to create distributed decision points with an emergent intelligence. Shortly after this will establish a symbiotic relationship with the person wearing them, first improving the wellbeing, then the physical performances and ultimately the intellectual ones. This is the path leading to augmented humans, human 2.0 or transhumanism.