For having me. Craig we also have suresh raghavan, a professor of Biomedical Engineering at the university of iowa. Suresh, i thank you so much for being with us today. Suresh a pleasure, craig. Craig thank you. Today people of my generation, i wont include you guys in this, but people of my generation encountered only in science we see regularly today in the news. Artificial intelligence, mechanical organs, bionic limbs, these things happen on a daily basis. They are being improved and becoming much more sophisticated as we speak. A few years ago, i had the opportunity to read an excellent book entitled radical evolution. Originally published in 2005, 2020, that the combination of genetic robotic information and nanotechnolo gies would soon combine to change the very nature of who we are. A particular point that stood out to me in that book is the fact that it is much easier for us to introduce rapid changes in technology than it is for humans to adapt to those changes, our values, and our cultures. This implies that we can introduce extraordinary technologies and not be fully aware of how to use them or what they mean in our lives. The Industrial Revolution was an early example of this. The 1950s in nuclear munitions, we introduced mainframe computers, the early start of globalization. Sociologists today tell us that it took over a century for societies to adapt to the Industrial Revolution, and were still that happened in the 1950s. On this mornings show, were going to explore some of the ideas that bionic engineering of humans means for society, and what some of the ethical issues involved in that are. Suresh, id like to turn to you first. You work in the field of Biomedical Engineering. Youre on the cutting edge of what we tell us just generally some of the things that are available out there, and what you see for the next decade or so . Suresh certainly, i do think Biomedical Engineering is the cutting edge of human endeavor. There has been a lot of advancements in the last two decades, for example. Some of the greatest advancements of being in im improve upon, organs that have some depleted function. This could be everything from a hip implant to a cardiovascular implant, like artificial heart, or a stents that keep arteries open, things of that sort. In various sort of organ systems, engineers and doctors have gotten together to function. More examples would be everything from dialysis machines that have gotten a lot better in the last two decades, to pretty much any organ system we pick, there are ways in which we improved them. Now, i expect that in the next decade or two, those improvements to continue and actually get better and so forth. Well be optimizing many of these designs so patients who have these. U device we are talking about, patients do well, some do well, some dont, and so forth. I expect that these outcomes will continue to improve over time, as engineers and optimizing these designs and so forth. However, i do think there will be limitations to what we can do. I think out there in the mainstream, or even in the popular press for example, i think there is a lot of hope, if you may, about what could be accomplished in the very near future. I do think some caution is warranted on that. There is a lot of hype surrounding the sort of we will see, and appeared in as little as a decade. Those things give me some. I can say while as a biomedical engineer, i am amazed and quite impressed with what has been happening in this field. I do think the hype and the hope is getting a little ahead than where it could be. Craig okay, i want to come back to what you limitations are. Before we do that, tom, id like to ask you a completely unfair question. As a philosopher, you know very well that philosophers have been debating human nature and what it is for literally thousands of years. Tom were done. We finished last week. Craig oh you did . Oh good, good. Tom no, im kidding. Craig can you tell us what that consensus is . Tom broadly speaking, there is a consensus that when you talk about human nature, you need to specify whether youre talking about what it is be human in terms of some sort of biological race inclusion. Theres also the notion of what it means to be a person, theyre a moral bearer of some kind of importance, or a thinking thing. Both of these questions are apropos for this and its impacts or its intersection with bionics. It seems to be it wouldnt be a problem if we already assume or already have concluded that completely artificial intelligences can be thinking things. Then, when they intersect with human beings, and of course youve got a thinking thing, and its a person. If youre somebody who wants to deny a thinking sort of personhood to artificial intelligences, then you might run into the problem of what happens when youve microchips. Am i a person anymore . On the other side of things, its not any simpler when you talk about inclusion in the race of humanity. Theres no consensus, but there will be many people who will simply shrug their shoulders and say, well, its biological. Its dna. I dont want to say many philosophers, because many philosophers, if theyre things. I did in a really, really, really, really informal little bit of survey in the last couple of days, and if you ask somebody for example, whether neanderthals were humans. You get probably 75 of people saying theyre not human. Craig really . Tom homo sapiens is human. If you look at the taxonomy, neanderthals were denied in the 1800s, almost arbitrarily denied membership in humanity. People are starting to question that now. Probably all of us in this stage have one to as were finding out, which means theres been interbreeding in the past. We can interbreed with something, why not accept that this thing is a human . If im a human, and ive got one to four percent neanderthal dna, what about somebody the doors for inclusion into humanity, simply on the basis of the slippery slope of what your dna is. We share so much dna with so many other primates, for example, why are we human and other hominids arent human . Why is only the homo genus or the homo sapiens, or homo sapiens sapiens sub species . Youve also got other people, somebody like ray kurzweil, who wants to just say well look, inclusion into humanity is. We can accept computers eventually as human beings, something needing to be biological, or needing to have any dna at all. We should include humanity, or we should include inhumanity, the race more of the topics that people want to talk about when they talk about thinking personhood. It seems strange to consider that you can consider other genus species races as human, but the differences between us and dolphins, if you want to nail down what humans are, and you dont want to look at dna, if its not a whole lot of difference. Youve got one camp that will try to pin down through genetics what humans are, and theyve got a really difficult task, in terms of our australopithe cines humans. Theyre hominids, but theyre not homo genus. Are they people . What happens eventually if we take the designer baby crazy and start giving people gills, or giving people significantly different dna. Excluding them from humanity . If you dont want to go the dna route, then the doors seem to be able to be flung even wider into inclusion in humanity. Craig if im understandin g what youre saying correctly, there is at least a camp out there that says, if we can produce an entirely mechanical robot that can think and learn, include them as humans. Tom yes. Not even include them as people, but include them as humans. Yeah, youve got again, the transhumanists and the posthumanists for different reasons, will want to say that we eventually will move past being human. Im not sure that moving past being human is something thats conceivable if were not even entirely sure what it is were doing right now, if you were to replace one section of my brain with a microchip. A little damaged section, put a microchip in it. Im still human. If you were to slowly replace, the , slowly replace every portion of my brain a identical functioning microchip. When you swap that last little bit of gray matter out, it seems like a somewhat actually an arbitrary kind of decision to then say, well, youre no longer human, because the just that i started as a human that you want to call me a human . What if we just built that thing fresh . Why do we have to have this slavish devotion to dna when my dna could be altered . My childrens dna could be altered to produce something,. And again, could be meaning in the future. Craig well, as i understand it, its actually happening today. Tom yeah, the end of my sentence would be that you could alter my child even look like a human. Would we still consider it human . There are many people who would want to flip the question around and say, why wouldnt we consider that child to be human . Craig okay. Well suresh, let me put this back to you. You mentioned earlier that you let me put this back to you. You mentioned earlier that you saw limitations on what Biomedical Engineering can do. Does what tom is talking about sound totally out of the realm of possibility to thought that came. And excellent points you make, tom. I have to say, one thing is clear to me, the day when Biomedical Engineering comes up with all the things we want to come up with, you guys will be ready for us, it sounds like. You guys have thought it through. Tom we all have . Suresh which is great. Thats great, thats great. I would say, again, i think reasonable people could disagree on this, but in my opinion, i do think we are quite far away from a point. Where wed be faced with the sort of. Replacing the brain, or something the level where we could almost find it indistinguishable such that we might have to face the question of should we call it human or not, and that sort of thing. I do think we are quite far away from it. All though i see reasonable people disagree for whos a big advocate of this idea of singularity. Tom yeah, right. Suresh i think ray kurzweil is a very smart man, and there are many such people out there who strongly think that with the current advancements in artificial intelligence, we cant see it, but it is exponential. In other words, the moment it starts, well only be able to recognize it and the prospect. We wont see it coming. I can see that the challenge of goes with all of this is you cant tell something is exponential right. Suresh you cant tell when youre on the exponent, you just cant. I suppose from that sense, its difficult to argue. As somebody whos working in device design and so forth, and the challenges we face. These are not challenges that were not able to solve for lack of trying. Its just that medicine has secrets that we havent unlocked yet. We dont know what we dont know about this. It sounds to me like there has to be biological and medical breakthroughs, biological mainly, breakthrough s of basic biology, before we will be in a point where wed be staring at singularity. This is just, like i said, my personal opinion, i think reasonable people could over that. Tom thats one of the criticisms thats been leveled at kurzweil by a number of biologists is that he understands technology, but he doesnt understand biology. Suresh thats right. Tom hes said 2040 is his. Suresh right. Tom ball park for the singularity. Suresh right. Tom im not sure if i can get my cell phone working in two miles from my house by 2040. Suresh thats right, thats right. Craig of course, your children. Tom if theres a tower. I just need a tower. Advanced issues. Let me take us back a little bit and talk about the history of human enhancement. We talked about this a little before we started the show. There have been ways of enhancing performance, and helping people live longer, all those kinds of things, basically since the beginning of humans. We have better diets. Weve developed vitamins. Weve hired tutors for our children. How is biomedical advancement any different than that, if it is . Suresh i think biomedical advancement isnt any different. I think its far too. In fact, when we talk about biomedical a very long time. Perhaps the bionic , what would be a bionic device. I think that is a newer term, and i do think there is some. All though, im sure theres a spectrum of opinion on what constitutes a bionic human, or a bionic device. I think there is some coalescing around some definition around it. Again, there would always be exceptions to any such definitions, but one way we could define. A bionic humanou whos at least one bionic device, if you may. What a bionic device would be is perhaps a device that enhances a human function that is previously depleted that this bionic device brings it back to normality. Or, something thats at the normal level of this, enhances to a level that its better than normal. Having said that, though, if it was , i think that still goes back into time, for a long time. When we use a winter coat, its a device that we use that enhances our ability. We werent weather, and a winter coat does it. We dont think of a winter coat as a bionic device. One could introduce some additional restrictions to that. For example, one i would say is something that is that inherently eliminates a lot of available devices that we use, an eyeglass, or even a ear piece, and so forth. Those things enhance our. They are enhancements, but they are not. They are things that you can take out and put it back. I think a practitioner, a skilled practitioner adds some restrictions, or something that a skilled some room here for vagueness, but bionic. When we say bionic, we tend to think of electromechanical devices. Devices that have a, electrical function to it, perhaps a mechanical function to it. Thats not a perfect restriction, but i think its a reasonable one. It eliminates inherently. Maybe even crutches that get fixed onto. An amputee, for example. Oscar pistorius, whos the runner. Craig the blade runner. Suresh the blade runner, right . Craig yes. Suresh those blades, i suppose one could say that is bionic, but in this definition, that will get eliminated as a bionic device we are talking electro mechanical. I think within these two restrictions, i think it roughly catches what this recent phenomenon we are talking about. Some examples would be all these. Myoelectric signals, which are the signals in the muscles and nerve endings, in order send signals to the motors in the leg and make them move in specific ways. That would certainly constitute it. The only third restriction, again there could be exceptions to, the third these. When we say bionic i think we are not talking about implants that are put inside the body. We are talking about implants outside the body. A prosthetic arm with a lot of electro mechanical pieces to it, a prosthetic leg, things of that sort, would constitute bionic. But, say a pacemaker, or like a. Maybe a artificial heart, these sorts of devices. Theyve been around for some time, but dont think of those when we say bionic. tom right. Suresh i think broadly, within those restrictions, i think we capture roughly what bionic would be. Craig okay, and tom, does coming from a philosophical view point, do you see any difference between taking vitamins and having a bionic leg . Tom i remember an olympics, years ago, and dont pin me down on the year. There was a swimmer who, his country sent him to the olympics, and his entire country didnt have an olympic length pool. Hed never swam 50 meters in one stretch before. Simply having a pool, when youre a swimmer, seems to be an enhancement thats available to the wealthy. Craig theres a similar issue with eddie the eagle. Tom yeah craig the ski jumper. Tom right, right. Craig from england. Tom they didnt make a he finally reached the end of the pool. Theres always been a separation of the haves and have nots in terms of enhancements. Certainly there is this distinction between enhancements that are affixed to your body, and enhancements that are. Nutrition, for example, is a fantastic enhancement for your educational abilities. People who dont have access to Good Nutrition are goig thats not something that we can see thats attached to you thats raising you above the norm, the bell curve sort of standard. Craig okay. Tom thats more where the interest lies, at least from an ethical perspective, is again, if you were pull the general populous, everybody is going to agree that things that help bring you curve, perfectly acceptable. Things that help you walk when you havent been able to walk, or cochlear implants, we were discussing, or artificial lenses for your eyes. Where people will start objecting is when you start pushing yourself to the other side of the bell curve, past whats considered. Either whats considered your norm, or whats considered human norm. If i got a muscle implants that only made me as strong as the worlds strongest man, its still sort of cheating in some sense, right . The reasons behind the objections to these are numerous in part, religious, coming from this, i think, hold over from nature has intended for us. The purpose of evolution, or Something Like thattheres also just this notion of fairness that comes into play, and i think that the objects that are attached to you, the replacements entirely, functioning limb with a bionic limb. Somebody will at some point, but whether we object to that or not, and whether we want to call that bionics or a prosthesis is going to depend on what they can do with that on. Am i right in thinking that prosthesis and bionics are used to cover different venn diagram circles, right . Suresh yes, in the sense that prosthesis that have electromechanical capabilities would fall in the bionic side of it. Tom right, right. On this comment. If we think about examples where humans have used devices to go beyond their norm, clearly bionics of the kind that would make somebody run faster, at maybe 40 miles an hour, would examples like, think about a sunglass for example. Our eyes are not designed. Nature didnt mean for these eyes to be looking at the sun, but with sunglasses, we are able to do it. In a way, enhanced went beyond the norm, but that didnt bring up ethical issues. Im curious where do you draw the distinction . Why should a bionic, and i mean it in a i get that, but i also get that it should. Im not able to catch the distinction why a sunglasses dont bring up runs at 50 miles an hour. If could run, i dont think thats the case yet, but if happens, why. Tom again, i think part of it, honestly, as weird as it sounds, is the attachment to your body phenomenon. You can literally think of this phone that i have in my pocket as part of my mind. Suresh thats right, thats right. Tom part of my memory is here, quite literally. Suresh thats right. These, but its not attached to me. Suresh . Tom if you were to simply take whats in here, stick it underneath the surface of my skull, and give me wireless access to the internet. Suw thats. Tom suddenly, my mind has expanded to include. Actually your mind as well. Suresh right. Tom because youre online, and i can attach my thoughts to your thoughts. Suddenly, you will find a lot more objections. Craig guys, i apologize. Were almost already out of time. Fascinating conversation. Suresh, can you leave our audience with some thoughts that you t