Harry Parker, a former soldier, stumbled on an IED in Afghanistan, setting off a blast that would cause him to lose both of his legs. Parker now considers himself a different person — a “new body with a new identity” that is “12% machine” — after receiving two hi-tech prosthetic limbs. Cutting-edge medical technology and its ramifications for human identities are examined in Parker’s 2022 book, Hybrid Humans.

In fact, incredible technological advancements have made Parker’s current life feasible. His right knee, for instance, is controlled by a microprocessor with sophisticated sensors that can gauge the forces on the leg and guide its movements. He compares it to having another brain inside his leg. Parker wondered: Are all humans turning into hybrids?

Specifically, are we uploading our consciousness to an AI? Hybrid creatures can be found in mythology and works of fiction from many different countries, dating back long before Lewis Carroll. To move human-machine hybrids into the realm of fiction, it may have required more advanced imagination, though.

The American science fiction TV series, The Six Million Dollar Man, which was based on Martin Caidin’s 1972 novel Cyborg, features a human-machine hybrid. The term “cyborg,” a portmanteau of “cybernetic” and “organism,” was first coined in 1960 by Nathan S Kline and Manfred Clynes. It designates an organism with enhanced capabilities due to the integration of a synthetic component or technology. DS Halacy wrote of a bridge between mind and matter in his 1965 book Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman.

Stimulating brain activity

A chip that would be put in humans to simultaneously record and stimulate brain activity is being developed by Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant company. Pigs and monkeys were used in Neuralink’s earliest non-human demos. It has now received FDA approval for human testing, though not as the first company to do so.

According to Musk, the Neuralink device might be used for a variety of medical ailments, including depression, paralysis, and blindness.

However, the ultimate goal is to develop a “general population device” that may connect a user’s mind to supercomputers directly and help humans keep up with AI, as well as eventually extract and store thoughts as “a backup drive for your non-physical being, your digital soul.”

Whatever the case, are we already somewhat cyborgs? Harry Parker perceived that, and Elon Musk certainly thinks so. The first person to have a radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip implanted in his arm, back in 1998, was British scientist Kevin Warwick, known as “Captain Cyborg.” Today, pacemakers, cochlear implants, IUDs, nerve stimulators, artificial joints, implantable birth control rods, and more are present in hundreds of thousands of bodies.

Additionally included in this category by some theorists are contact lenses, hearing aids, intraocular lenses, and mobile phones. Some even claim that, for example, an arrow is an extension of our hand; the only difference is that technological advancements are now getting “more intimate.”

And a September 2018 piece by Haley Weiss in The Atlantic focuses on how microchip implants are evolving from a tech-geek novelty to a genuine health tool and that there may not be any more compelling arguments against them.

Neural implants may provide new senses and abilities that you’ve never imagined having as humans and technology become more integrated. And the scope appears to be limitless. “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him,” said the opening narration of The Six Million Dollar Man. “We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man... Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster,” it continued.

However, a lot of issues relating to legislation, technicalities, medical, political, and religious considerations, as well as cybersecurity and privacy, would undoubtedly haunt us.

And most crucially, in the face of this AI onslaught, would that “rebuilt” mankind be able to maintain its identity? And it’s not impossible that such brain chip implants may lead to the potential of “Big Brother” seizing control over us (or our minds?), which is a significant sociopolitical worry.

Debates over human-AI hybridisation would undoubtedly continue as it became increasingly real.

The writer is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata

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