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Feb. 25, 2002 - Art Bell
01:07:09
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Prof. Kevin Warwick - World's First Cyborg
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Time Text
Good morning!
Talk about coincidences, oh my!
I've got a news story here from abcnews.com that I read in the first hour and it stopped me cold in my tracks about halfway through.
And it's because they mentioned my guest for tonight.
But we'll try and have Keith get the article up.
It's called iChip, question mark.
Technology to meld chips into humans draws closer.
It's 10 p.m.
You may not know where your child is, but the chip does.
The chip will also know if your child has fallen, needs immediate help.
Once paramedics arrive, the chip will be able to rescue workers which drugs little Johnny or Janie is allergic to.
At the hospital, the chip will tell the doctors his or her complete medical history.
And of course, when you arrive to pick up your child, settling the hospital bill with your health insurance policy is just a simple matter of waving your own chip, the one embedded in your hand.
To some, this may sound far-fetched, but the technology for such chips is no longer the stuff of science fiction.
It goes on and on.
We'll get the article posted for you.
Under the category, another, it's another paragraph down, tiny chips that know your name, the research and controversy of embedding microchips is not entirely new.
Back in 1998, Brian Warwick, a professor of cybernetics at Reading University in London, implanted a chip into his arm as an experiment to see if Warwick's computer could wirelessly track his whereabouts with the university's building.
And that stopped me dead in my tracks, because here comes Professor Kevin Warwick.
Dr. Kevin Warwick is a professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading, UK, where he carries out research in artificial intelligence, control, and robotics.
His favorite topic is pushing back the frontiers of machine intelligence.
Kevin began his career by joining British Telecom, with whom he spent the last Make that the next six years at 22.
He took his, wow, his first degree at Aston University followed by a PhD in research post at Imperial College London.
He subsequently held positions at Oxford, Newcastle, Warwick Universities before being offered the chair at Reading at the age of 32.
Kevin has published over 300 research papers and his latest paperback in The Mind of the Machine.
He gives a warning of a future in which machines are more intelligent than humans.
He's been awarded higher doctorates, both by Imperial College and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, and has been described by Gillian Anderson of The X-Files as Britain's leading prophet of the robot age.
He appears in the 1999 Guinness Book of Records for an internet robot learning experiment.
In 1998, he shocked the international scientific community by having a silicon chip transponder surgically implanted in his left arm.
A series of further implant experiments is now planned in which Kevin's nervous system is going to be linked to a computer.
I wonder what the operating system's going to be.
This research led him to being featured in February 2000 as the cover story on the U.S.
magazine Wired.
I get that, magazine.
Kevin also presented the year 2000 Royal Institutional Christmas Lectures with great success.
Kevin is now planning a new implant experiment within the next two weeks and in a moment he'll be right here.
Now, all the way to Great Britain and Professor Kevin Warwick.
Professor, welcome to the program.
Well, thank you, Doug.
Great to have you.
Gee whiz, you're in the news, huh?
Yeah, well, it happens.
Just an incredible coincidence to be reading that story in the first hour.
Actually, we did a lot of talking about it, too, so your presence here is very, very timely.
Yeah, this is the family that are getting connected with ID chips.
Is that right?
Yes.
Now, you have actually, you've implanted a chip into your own arm.
You did that when?
Well, actually a doctor did that.
It was in the fall of 98, so I guess about three and a half years ago.
That wasn't a sort of an ID type chip, but what we tried to get it to do,
as you were saying earlier, what we tried to get it to do
was to interact with the computer here in the building.
So rather than just tracking me or monitoring me, which was quite possible,
what we got it doing was opening doors for me and switching on lights and talking to me
and things like that as I moved around the building.
Did it really work?
Oh, brilliant, yeah.
There's one thing in that we didn't know because the doctor put it in place
and there was no way of testing it until we got it back to the buildings.
So it would have been, you know, life would have sucked really if we'd have got back to the building and nothing would have happened.
Who designed the chip?
Well, it was actually a commercial product.
It's quite a bit bigger than the one I think that's just been used.
And the company, it is actually an American company that built the one for us.
And they helped us out and supplied us, but they said, don't tell anyone who we are.
So we had to have to stay quiet on that one.
Oh, no kidding.
So it was an American right in the belly of the It was indeed, yes.
I think a lot of the technology we use, and for the new work we're doing, a lot of the technology we use is American or Japanese-based.
There's some British, but it's quite a bit of America in what we're doing.
All right.
This chip then would interact with a commuter, which would then... In other words, I'm going to try and understand what you had to do to get this chip, for example, to open a door for you.
Well, I'd walk around the building at particular points.
The computer, well, it knew where I was at any time in the building, but if I walked towards my laboratory, then it knew I was going towards the laboratory, so it opened the door for me.
Everybody else would run right into it, huh?
Oh, that's right.
Oh, yeah, good.
Yeah, the doors stay closed.
I was coming through the front door.
It knew I was coming in, so, and it was me, so it would give me a welcome.
I mean, it'd actually say, hello, Professor Warwick.
It's quite a formal computer.
Hopefully, it's livened up a bit now.
Isn't that a little eerie?
Wasn't that a little eerie to begin with?
It was.
I have to admit, until you do something like this, you just don't know.
And when something is outside your body like a smart card or a pair of glasses or a watch then really it's outside your body it's not you and and one of the things I found very quickly this thing inside my body I regarded it as part of me and I think people with heart pacemakers and even artificial hips apparently the story's the same but in this case the computer was doing all things for me so it was a bit
Weird.
It was as though there was this strange link between me and the computer.
What else were you able to do?
It would say hello to you?
It would open doors for you?
Oh, not a lot more.
Switch on lights at different points.
Switch my computer onto my webpage.
Tell me how many emails I've got.
A definite step up from the clap for the light, right?
Oh yeah, it's much more fun.
You just have to walk in the direction and the light comes on.
Boy, you can just think of all kinds of applications for that with regard to impressing women.
Well, I don't need that.
I understand.
Still, nevertheless, watch this, and you just walk right over there.
No, you're right.
I think that was the point, though.
I mean, we showed some applications that once you link to a computer in that way, then anything the computer can do, you can kick it into life.
So you could launch missiles or serve food.
I mean, you could do anything, really.
I know that you have plans to implant a chip here in a couple of more weeks, or actually a doctor I guess will implant a chip, but this is pretty damn serious stuff.
You're going to implant this to interact with your Nervous system?
Exactly, yeah.
It is a lot more serious this time.
And it's a surgeon, a neurosurgeon this time.
In fact, there's a team of three of them.
Oh, my, my.
Where is this chip going to go, Professor?
It's in my left arm, a bit lower down.
The other one was just above my elbow.
This one is quite a bit below.
because the nerves are easier to get to and it is going to be a direct link up
to my nervous system. Which will accomplish what?
I think there's two main aspects. One is looking at helping in the medical world
seeing how we get signals from the nervous system to and from a computer
which will open up possibilities.
You know Christopher Reeve's situation where he has a break in probably the worst case in his nervous system.
Yes.
Can we get somebody like that, people like that, at least in the future to have some movement to pick up cups and things like that?
Is that possible?
I mean I think it's worth Pushing in that direction and what we're doing hopefully will help in that sort of area We will understand things a bit more can we sense essentially can we send signals from a computer?
onto the nervous system to bring about movement to cause fingers to move when the either when the nervous system is broken in Christopher Reeves case and Or in my case, it's not broken, but the computer will be, we hope, causing movement, causing muscular movement.
Now, what might we see?
In other words, might you go to the computer and move a little finger, an image of a little finger, and your little finger would then move accordingly?
That would be the sort of thing.
I mean, how dramatic are we going to be able to get movements?
But in principle, that's it, yes.
I mean, essentially, I will move, let's say, I mean, it would be more my index finger, but move my index finger.
The signals that caused that movement the electronic signals will be recorded they'll be transmitted from the implant to the computer stored in the computer which then remembers it and knows how to then issue an order to make that same movement and it goes back down onto my nervous system and will bring about the the same exactly the same all right well let's see how sophisticated it could be for example could could the computer store information
That would, oh I don't know, say you reached over and picked up a cup of coffee and took a drink and put it back down.
Could the computer, with the chip that you're going to have implanted, is it sophisticated enough to record all the movements necessary to accomplish that action?
Not the whole lot, no, no way.
I think in the future, that's the sort of thing we would be looking for, but to be honest, we're going to... The nervous fibres in your left arm, the median nerve, there's something like 10,000 nerve fibres, and we'll only be picking up information on a very small fraction of those, so I think you'd need a lot more of that.
But I would guess in the future, that's where we're going.
That would be just the sort of thing to look for.
All right.
You are experimenting on yourself.
Why?
Why not get some eager college students?
I mean, you have access to so many of them.
Why?
There's a lot of volunteers as well.
It's a big surprise.
Exactly.
Well, I want to find out myself.
I think one aspect of this is the mental side, because we're sending signals on the nervous system.
Okay, they go off to fingers and so on, but they also go up to the brain.
Now, in the simplest way, we can look at sensory input.
When you feel something, when you touch something, so we can look at recording those signals and then playing them down again.
Will it be like a phantom touch?
But what we want to do, and this is where it's not quite so medical maybe, is put different sensory input onto my nervous system.
The robots we play with have ultrasonic Inputs like a bat senses the world.
We want to try feeding that information down onto my nervous system.
I want to know what that feels like to have another sense, a different sense.
Can we make use of it?
In other words, like a sonar return?
Exactly.
Oh, exactly.
So you would know what a sonar return felt like?
Well, it actually feels like directly nervous system into the brain.
Now, that could be helpful for some immediately for somebody who's blind, not to the technology, not to repair the blindness, but to give them a different sense.
But in my case, I will be like an extra cent.
Professor, have you considered the military implications of something like this?
For example, if you could detect fine variations in sonar returns, you'd make one hell of a sonar operator for a submarine, wouldn't you?
Uh, yeah.
Yeah, well, you could probably scrap the rest of the solar... Well, all sorts of things.
All sorts of things, yeah.
I mean, moving around, of course, in the dark, you wouldn't need the same night sight and things like that.
It would... I mean, for military, sure, but lots of different applications.
Alright, do you have any apprehension?
This is a fairly serious operation you're about to undergo.
Yeah, I guess the actual operation itself.
I'm not particularly keen on operations, so I know it's something I have to go through.
I am slightly worried when we start sending signals onto the nervous system, what will my brain make of those signals?
And that's really where it is very dangerous.
We simply don't know.
All right, well, what about this aspect?
You're outright, and staying on that topic for a moment, is it possible, Professor, That you could make more of a connection than you intend.
Oh, yeah, I guess very much so.
Yeah.
Yes.
Oh, I think between me and the computer.
Precisely.
Yeah.
Oh, yes, I think very much so.
And I don't really think we know the half of it at the moment.
I mean, the whole of the science fiction idea is that of a cyborg, a part human, part machine.
And this is really looking at Well, at least my nervous system will be connected up to the computer's nervous system.
It's not quite brain-to-brain, but... Pretty close.
But yeah, it's the next step.
And yes, I think it will be very eye-opening what possibilities there will be there, yeah.
You had considered the possibility that there could be more of a connection than you anticipate right now.
And that might be a good result.
I don't know.
It could also be a negative result.
Well, for me, I'm a scientist, and it's extremely exciting.
So the whole thing, whether it's positive or negative, in a sense, is a good result, because it will be something very different.
And looking at the possibilities, I don't have any problems with giving humans extra capabilities, such as extra sensory input.
Why not?
We don't sense the world like that at the moment, but why not in the future?
And also things in the future, Can we actually connect memory chips up to the brain and get extra memory for people and so on?
I think it's well worth looking at.
What sort of computer are you going to be interfaced with?
Oh, this will be just a standard PC, a 486 type thing.
You're going to interface with a 486?
Nothing too technical, yeah.
Uh, as long as we get an internet connection, that's the only, uh... Oh, you're going to go on, oh my god, you're going on the internet!
Yeah, we're not going to tell everybody when exactly, but, uh, yeah.
Oh, that's the idea.
Professor, um, you have heard of hackers, right?
Oh, very true, yes.
That is a bit of a problem.
Why in the world would you, uh, a bit of a problem?
Wow!
I had no idea you were going on the internet.
Oh my God.
Well, it adds the element of distance.
Surprise, surprise.
Yeah, but communication, I think, is important.
What operating system are you going to be using?
I have no idea.
No idea.
Probably some early Windows system or something?
Well, yes.
Not too early, though.
Are you familiar with the blue screen of death?
Yeah.
Well, if you become... Your nervous system, I mean, that's most serious.
It becomes involved with the computer and the computer were to I experienced something untoward, uh... Yeah, that is... I think we've got shutdown procedures, which we hope would sort things out, but of course, until you actually carry an experiment like that out, you don't know for sure.
All right, all right.
Professor, we're at the bottom of the hour.
Hold it right there for a moment.
I'm Art Bell.
Well, once again to Great Britain and Professor Warwick.
Professor, we'll come back to the chips in a second.
I want to ask you about something.
In the 1950s, I remember very well because I'm a big science fiction buff, the promise of robotics.
Oh my God, by the year 2000 or even before that, we were going to be surrounded by robots that were going to be tending to our every whim and gosh, the promise of robotics has not quite unfolded worldwide the way we thought it was going to and as quickly as we thought it was going to.
What do you think has held it up?
Yeah, I think it's been different.
For sure, we've not got the sort of humanoid robots that look like us and talk like us, acting as butlers and helping.
We've not gone that route at all.
I mean, we do have a lot of technology around.
If you think around the home, there's all sorts of pieces of machinery that are helping us and doing things for us.
But It's been different.
I don't know, partly maybe a social pickup.
There are lots of different robots that we could have helping around the home in particular, but we don't seem to want them for commercial reasons or maybe they're just not fitting into society.
But it's gone a different route.
Or the technology has not lived up to the promise of Harry the Helpful Butler who washes dishes and all the rest of it.
In other words, the technology is not there yet either.
Hmm, whether it ever will be there, whether that's what we actually want though.
I think you get individual jobs that are done for humans by a piece of machinery and can be done very well and better, but getting a sort of, like you say, Harry the butler who does all the sort of things.
I don't know whether we actually need that or want that.
There are humanoid-type robots.
Honda have a humanoid-type robot, for example, that walks around and moves around physically, does a lot of things that humans do.
Probably could be made into a butler-type of thing.
Yes, but you obviously don't think it's going that way.
Instead, I see a world that you probably picture, in which we all become a race of cyborgs part man part machine or part computer more likely
right? I think there's a lot of advantages in that and the technology is
allowing that option. Yes, it's whether most of society wants it, whether most of society looks at
it in terms of an upgrade and the possibilities that something will... An upgrade
An upgrade That sounds like software, doesn't it?
Well, yeah, but I'm thinking of it in terms of both software and hardware for the human, looking at what the human can do at the moment, and saying, well, if we can do more, usually we pick up technology one way or another because it gives us an extra option, it gives us something more that we can't do.
Uh, whether we necessarily feel we need it or not, but in this case, I think the cyborg route does offer us all sorts of possibilities that we can't do at the moment simply because we're limited as we're humans.
All right.
What about the moral and the ethical issues surrounding what you are doing?
I'm not going to say what you're about to do, but certainly what you're about to do, but what you've already done.
I mean, what kind of controversy is surrounded what you've already done and what you're about to do?
Yeah, they are enormous.
I think on the one hand, you get the positives that anything you can do with technology linking up to the human body, if it helps somebody that has a problem, then that's a good thing.
We're talking about movement, somebody who can't move their arms or legs because they
have a break in the nervous system.
Okay, allow for some movement.
That is a positive.
The big ethical questions come when you're saying, all right, let's take a regular person
and increase their capabilities, give them abilities that they haven't got at the moment.
Then there are, well, do we want that?
If so, who wants it?
Who can get it?
If you can't get it, then you get social divides coming in and so on.
We really are talking big things here.
If we can look to a future where you have an implant to your brain that gives you extra
memory capabilities or perhaps more so, gives you the ability to communicate by sending
signals from your brain to somebody else's brain, which we have to see as a technical
Which would be done, accomplished through a computer interface, right?
You go, we're back to that one again.
It would be though, right?
Sure, sure.
In other words, from your chip to the computer to another person's chip.
Yep, yep.
That's right.
So it's literally thinking to each other.
I mean, all the basics are there.
There are basic research results that indicate that all of that is quite
possible in some form or another.
So you're looking at completely changing the way that humans communicate.
Now that is a big question, but it's a difficult one.
Should we go the route?
Shouldn't we?
Some people maybe say, no, that's not the right way we should go.
Others, well, fine, if we can do it, let's try it.
Let's see.
You would be in that category, obviously.
I'm in the category that says, well, let's have a look at the moment.
Scientifically, let's look and see what's possible.
But I really think there are... These questions are far, far greater than the whole genetic questions that perhaps people are talking about.
They're tinkering at the edges of humanity.
This is really looking at changing it completely.
Yes, oh yes, it is.
Even potentially destroying it, I guess, if we're looking at cyborgs.
Why do you say that?
Well, I would tend to think that humans are in the position we're in on Earth compared to other creatures, perhaps because we're more intelligent than anything else going.
And if we're looking here at creating a cyborg with extra memory capabilities, better communication abilities, that maybe can think in many dimensions, which humans are limited to three, and so on, we're looking at a cyborg as perhaps being far more intelligent than a human.
And therefore you say, who's actually going to run the show?
I don't think super intelligent cyborgs are going to listen to what humans have got to say all the time, are they?
Well they're not perhaps going to think it's going to be perhaps as we think of some poor fellow with an IQ of 35 and if we consider how we look at somebody with an IQ of 35 and how we react to them socially and every other way then then yes.
Exactly and we're looking at here the possibility I mean if you just take the extra memory capability or or having a chip which can do a lot of The mathematics for you, a lot of math functions, you outsource them.
In effect, providing a coprocessor for the brain.
Exactly, exactly.
So you're looking at a creature that was a human, but now has been upgraded, and what would they think of humans?
Okay, if there's only one or two of them, they're probably experimental, but if we're looking at several thousand of them...
It becomes a very big ethical question.
It certainly does.
And so how do you deal with these questions when you speak with your students and you're on this issue of the morality and ethics of this?
What do you say?
Well, I guess as scientists, you face the question, we don't know what's around the corner yet.
We can speculate and do so in a serious scientific base, but we really don't know.
Is it possible to have extra memory clipped on?
We don't know yet.
Nobody's done it.
So I feel to stop now because of worries and say, well, this might happen, that might happen.
We don't really know.
There might be lots of positives.
I feel it is worth looking.
It's worth finding out.
Because when you do look outside the box of the present way of considering life, you don't know what you're going to find.
We're only looking and talking at the moment based on what we know.
If we actually look outside the box, put a bit of extra memory on, life may be very, very different.
Well, it would create, for one thing, classes of people.
In other words, those with substantial extra memory would be in a class all by themselves.
And with the way our system works here in the West, they would have advantages that would put them
at the top of the heap nearly immediately.
Yeah.
Oh, yes.
Very much so.
Yeah.
So there'd be the information rich and poor, the storage and memory rich and poor.
Yes, which would probably diversify things much more than they are now, or in a different way anyway, to the way
they are now.
I mean, what do you have...
Just a question there to you.
In my possession here is a little chip which I can simply inject and there you go, you've got extra memory capabilities.
Would you go for it?
Inject, huh?
Well, I'm trying to make it nice and simple and look a few years ahead.
I appreciate that.
With the implant I had in 98, I had to have a bit of surgery.
Now, the family that are going to have this is the ID implant.
It's a much simpler thing.
It's a grain of rice.
It's much smaller.
Four years, three and a half years, the technology has moved on.
So if we're looking now, a memory chip, maybe 10 years time, simple injection, and it's there.
I'd have to think about it, but the odds are pretty good that I would want the advantage if it was relatively safe and gave me a big advantage.
Yeah, sure.
I'll be honest with you.
I guess I'd go for it.
I mean, I think most people would.
And ethically, should we stop now?
Because some people may go for that advantage.
I don't think we should stop now, but we should at least look and see Could it be possible?
Just as a matter of simple curiosity, you said you're going to use an old 486 to interface with.
Why not a Pentium 4 2GHz downtown rip-em-tear-em fast machine?
To be honest, I think it doesn't matter which... The interface is all sorted out, so the actual computer is really the one that's nearest me.
To be perfectly frank.
But the technology in terms of what we're using, is in a sense not such a critical thing.
So as maybe being a trifle, a little bit flippant, the actual terminal can be a very, very simple thing.
It can be even simpler than that, an old-fashioned note.
It could be a dummy terminal, right?
It could be a dummy terminal, yeah.
It's just serving as a pickup point, and an entry to, as a storage device, and as an entry to the Internet.
But again, you know, you know, Professor, Again, the unknown quantity here is when you actually attach to the nervous system, you can't truly be sure how much of a connection you're going to get and you really, really could get a lot more of a connection than you anticipate.
Now I don't know what the consequences of that might be.
How much time have you spent thinking about that?
Yeah, we don't know.
You can look at it physically and some of the first experiments we'll be doing is finding what we've actually got.
The nervous system has The motor nerves are the ones that cause movement.
It has sensory nerves when you're feeling things, including pain, and there's a whole lot of research that we want to do in that area.
But it also contains a lot of signals that you can link with emotional signals when you're angry, when you're shocked, when you're excited.
Signals appear, distinct signals, on your nervous system.
Uh, and hence, one aspect that is very much unknown is if we start recording those signals and start playing them back, what effect will that have?
Exactly.
Uh, press F1, the professor gets pissed off.
Press F2, the professor has an orgasm.
I mean... Exactly.
I mean, it's wild.
Press F2 again.
That's not so outrageous, is it?
Oh no, not at all.
Not at all, no.
No, because they're just...
Mental states mental and physical states and we're looking here at changing those states whether we can do it in any of those things in terms of the arm implants Maybe maybe not but certainly in terms of brain implants later on.
All right, I guess I I can see what you're about to do.
I what I I'm not so sure about is hooking up to the internet now Why have you decided to do that?
I mean after all I You can you can certainly experiment locally with as you
point out Nothing more than a dumb terminal why expose yourself to
the possibility of somebody? Oh my God a Connection on the internet, I mean what what what will you
do?
Will you have somebody in New York move your arm, or what's the idea?
Well, I'm hoping for a trip over to New York myself to be honest, but it's not that's what we're looking at yeah
I mean, for me, the communication possibilities here are perhaps the most exciting of all.
Oh, yes.
The possibility in the future of people thinking to each other.
It'll put radio out of business, but what the hell?
No, wait a minute.
We never say what the hell about that.
It would, wouldn't it though?
Yeah, of course.
But this is looking at a basic thing, a signal from a terminal across the internet to the nervous system.
So it's looking at causing changes on the nervous system across the Atlantic.
So essentially then, streaming thoughts.
Well, ultimately, yeah.
I mean, we'll be just streaming feelings as far as our experiment, but thoughts, that's what we're looking at future-wise, yeah, of course.
Oh, you believe you're going to be able to stream feelings?
Well, yeah, of course.
To what degree?
Well, that's what we'll find out.
Certainly, remote control movement to a certain extent, we hope.
and certainly remote sensory feelings.
Yes.
I mean, it sounds a bit crazy, but it would be quite possible
if somebody walked into the room here, and I'm in New York,
that I would get to feel it in New York.
I never did.
So, that which would seem to be fairly straightforward, I would hope very much that that would be something,
yes, we're going to achieve that.
This is incredible.
It's incredible that you would take this leap, this chance, this...
You must be a very, very adventuresome person.
Oh, from a scientific point of view, it's so exciting, because you get a lot of the stories of science years and years ago, this was discovered, that was, and people say, oh, it's all, all the excitement's gone.
To hell has it gone.
I mean, it's, we're out to get a new, a whole new life in front of us.
It's the most exciting time ever for science.
Over the next, oh, say, 20 years, where do you think this could go?
From where you are today, about to do this implant in 20 more years, where could it go?
Well, I guess on the... I think one big aspect, you talked about robots before, intelligent machines, intelligence in computers, I think in the next 20 years we're going to see that start to become comparable to humans, the human form of intelligence, and therefore I would see the possibilities of upgrading human intelligence within the next 20 years as being pretty straightforward.
Yeah, the brain connections, I guess.
Wow, that's fast.
But I know that as fast as we're moving with computers, if the biological aspect develops, have you had to get permission from people to do this, or are you your own master here?
No, we need ethics approval, and yes, we've got that for this particular operation.
Yes, I mean, you'd need it for each particular trial, and this one, we have approval for this operation with me.
Yeah, we've done all the paperwork, we've got the technology ready to go, we're just, the surgeon just got to set a date, essentially.
If no approvals were required, and you could forge ahead as quickly as you want, you had volunteers willing to allow brain surgery or whatever else, I wonder what could really be done today.
Oh, enormous.
Yeah, there's certainly no shortage of volunteers.
Many, many from the United States through emails.
Some of them maybe you feel these are crazy people, but I think many of them are very, very serious people who want to see what is possible out there.
And I admire their I'm in the middle of the technology, I've had lawyers, all
sorts of people, even one or two TV radio presenters, dare I say, who are saying, I
would like to be a subject, I would like to be part of this research.
Really?
Oh yeah.
If no approval were required and you could become, you know, virtually, I don't want
to say Dr. Frankenstein, but you understand what I mean?
If you operated under a totally free hand and could operate on brains, you could do some pretty wild stuff even now, couldn't you?
Oh yeah, yes, yes, yes.
I think the sort of things of controlling emotions and the communication issues, I think Today we could look at some of those things.
Professor, hold on, we'll be right back.
Speaking with a very, very well-credentialed professor in Great Britain, Professor Kevin Warwick, he's got several books.
I, Cyborg, with a release date of August of 2002.
Other books?
QI the quest for intelligence in the mind of the machine is yet another book and you can check them all out on my website imagine you might want to uh hearing what's sharing tonight we'll get back to the professor in great britain in a moment Now, I realize, uh, Professor, this is very far, uh, a far distant possibility, but, uh, Joe, in Los Angeles, California, I get these little computer messages, uh, I have to look at a screen, unfortunately, but I get these little, uh, computer messages as I do the program, and, uh, he says, you know, couldn't you eventually, just like in the movie Brainstorm, record or playback, for example, a death experience?
Yeah I mean it's amazing that he says that because I got asked the other day a slightly different question and that was with hooking my nervous system up to another person's nervous system and then they die.
So you would be getting some of the feelings at least and if you have a brain to brain link up you could certainly experience somebody else's death as it happens in real time.
I mean you would probably feel different I guess.
You wouldn't be dying yourself and so on.
Are you sure?
Well, we don't know until we do it, is the question with this.
I mean, you'd feel something, but I mean, what it feels like with somebody's nervous... This is a wonderful topic to speak about, isn't it?
But somebody's nervous system slowly switching down and closing off.
I mean, it's not... For most deaths, I guess, it's not an instant thing as it's often portrayed in the movies, but it's over a period of time.
And what that would feel like, I mean, it would be really weird.
Yes.
And you cannot know for certain that your brain might not interpret the signals in a more sophisticated way than you might imagine and follow suit.
Well, that's right.
You never know.
The whole suggestive idea is what your brain would make of it, because it's something that it would not have experienced before.
And what your brain's about, largely, is dealing with things based on what it's experienced before.
That's the whole basis of learning and education, what you do in certain circumstances.
And in this case, it would be receiving signals and relationships between signals that probably wouldn't mean an awful lot to it.
So it would make a best guess What to do what it means I guess and and therefore you you really couldn't be it would be a hell of a risk to Take as a scientist it would and and here's another one for you Let us suppose that you have a rather sophisticated link to a computer.
Yep, which is on the internet yeah, and Just by accident your why are you married?
Yeah?
Uh-huh your wife's doing a little surfing and you get some email and she opens an attachment that says I love you and and And then where are you?
I'm talking about viruses here.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Well, let's go a bit more on this, because the plan of action, as long as everything is okay with my implant, and we need to get approval for it and everything, so it's a little bit downstream, but as long as everything is okay with my implant, then my wife, her name is Irena, she has agreed that she is happy to have one too.
Oh, really?
His and hers, yep.
Yeah, which I'm...
Well, I'm delighted about, but also, you know, it's not forced to in any way, of course.
Well, now, how'd you pull that one off?
I mean, did you go in, listen, hon, I've got this idea?
Exactly, exactly.
Really?
Well, well, I think she's sort of pulled along by the excitement of the whole experiment,
and it depends on how mine goes, as long as everything is all right.
So there's a lot of ifs and buts.
Mine has to be okay and medically it's working all right and there's no physical problems but really what we want to do is to send signals from nervous system to nervous system, yeah.
When you approach the surgeons about this and you show them what you want to do, Yeah.
What kind of reaction did you get at first?
Well, I guess we're working as a team here, and you've got the two sides to it.
My side, my interests are perhaps more on the scientific, the cyborg side, whereas from the surgeon's point of view, I guess he's looking pretty clearly at, can we get some results from this that will help People with disabilities, perhaps, we can do.
So we're all getting something out of it in one way or another.
Theirs is perhaps more short-term or immediate.
But there's all sorts of what they're looking at helping with bowel control, helping with spinal injuries, all sorts of things that they're looking at.
This will contribute in that field.
So you found rather immediate enthusiasm from the surgeons?
Yeah, yes, oh yes, I think because this can do it.
The fact of taking an able-bodied person and getting results where we can We can actually look at what it means.
I think it opens up an awful lot.
If you're taking a person with a particular disability, often they are unique.
They are the only person with that particular problem, and therefore results don't necessarily map across to anybody else.
Whereas for me, the results that the surgeons get, that the research team get,
will hopefully map across to the vast majority of other people.
So it's a big difference.
Well, if we imagine a human computer interface, a sophisticated human computer interface,
and then we imagine the internet and streaming, then we can easily imagine streaming
instead of watching television or going to the movies, you could literally live somebody else's life.
Live somebody's life who was doing something incredibly dangerous, or incredibly sexy, or incredibly something or another.
You know, the same kind of drama you get on the tube, with the exception of the fact that you would literally be part of it, feeling everything they feel.
Right.
And that's the amazing thing with the brain.
Yeah, you can fool it into, chemically, it's hallucinations.
Or chemically, it's what drugs, a lot of drugs do.
Yes.
The only difference here is it's looking at doing it electronically.
Yes.
Which the brain is electrochemical.
Most in the western world, most of our medicines, most of our, well drugs and so on, have been chemical to now.
This is just merely looking at taking the electronic side of things.
And so, in a way, it's not such a big deal.
But because... But in another way it is.
I mean, you said earlier, it'd be the death of radio, it'd be the death of TV and movies also.
Now... Well, it'd be different, certainly.
Yeah.
Very different.
So different that there would... Wouldn't there be the danger of a total immersion human addiction to this?
Oh yeah, I think that is a big worry.
research on chimpanzees, not my own research I hasten to add, but research on chimpanzees
where they have been allowed to stimulate excitement, as it were, literally press a
button to give themselves excitement by direct electronic signals to the brain. Then what
they have tended to do is to just go for it, to go for the short term fix and to deal with
everything else. Chimpanzees are not too far removed from humans.
A percentage or two I think. Yeah, so I think it's the sort of thing if
humans could do that then it would be, well, very different, but yeah, it's a whole different
Well, you know, if you look at our drug laws, both those here in the U.S.
and I guess those pretty close... Yeah, not too different.
Not too different.
We generally legislate against a lot of drugs, perhaps Perhaps because they provide escapism, because they are anti-productive.
In other words, people tend to sit around on their butts, taking trips and such.
Now, this would be that times 1,000.
So, if it's anti-productive, if the productivity of a nation would suffer because of it, like the Chinese suffered with the drug problems they had, and then Don't you see the possibility of laws that would immediately come down against this sort of thing?
Oh, and I think it would be right.
We're talking here on the negative side.
And with any technological change, or with most technological changes, you get potential negatives but you get potential enormous positives.
And the enormous positives we're talking about here would be electronic medicine.
again most of the medicine in the western world so far is chemically based
but the possibility of having electronic signals to get rid of your headache
let's say or to keep you slim or to stop somebody becoming pregnant
electronically electronically electronically And already there are electronic implants treatments in place for things like Parkinson's disease, epilepsy is being studied.
So there are some pretty serious situations that are already where there is a considerable
amount of success.
So opening it up for perhaps more everyday problems such as headaches and so on, yeah
okay we have potential enormous positives there.
Maybe instead of smoking cigarettes you can take an electronic signal which gives you
the same effect but without the same side effects.
you're looking at potential enormous positives.
Only if they make a mouse you can hold between two fingers.
Well, somebody will, I'm sure.
So you've got enormous positives cropping up potentially, but as you said, with the sort of cyber narcotics,
I don't know what else you'd call it, the sort of drugs that are electronic drugs
rather than chemicals, you've got enormous potential negatives as well.
And that would be the possibility of hooking yourself up to the internet and downloading a piece of software
that makes you high.
I think it's a...
Or it takes you through a pornographic experience.
Yeah, sure, sure.
I mean, all of these...
So something this powerful is going to have very powerful good possibilities
and very powerful bad possibilities, right?
Exactly that.
And the big question is, should you stop the good ones because there are potential bad ones?
I mean, at the moment, I think it's still, realistically, it's still early days.
We need to, from a scientific point of view, we need to have a look and see what might be possible,
what not.
We can't really say, oh, this is extremely dangerous, we shouldn't go that route, because we don't really know enough quite yet.
Well, right, right you are.
Professor, with this chip that you're about to attach to your nervous system, what are the range of possibilities from the low side to the high side?
Well, movement is one thing we want to look at, remote control movement and studying the signals that go with Moving fingers and the wrist and so on.
Extra-sensory input.
We want to look at ultrasonic input directly onto the sensory side of my nervous system, which feeds directly into my brain and hence... Ultrasonic input?
What do you mean?
Well, literally, with the little robots we've got here, they have ultrasonic sensors very much like the ultrasonic sensors that a bat has.
But it's not a sense that humans have.
It's something like 40 kilohertz, which is twice or more than twice the frequencies that humans will hear sound at ultrasound.
And so we're going to feed the output from those sensors down onto my sensory nerves.
So then when you were adjacent to anything like a wall, a window, or anything solid, or a chair, you would feel a sensory feedback from that?
That's right, I would get a feeling.
and the big questions are how will my brain be able to adapt and cope to that new type
of input that it means something very different.
Wow.
Wouldn't that have a tremendous application for the sightless?
Oh yeah, exactly.
Exactly, yeah.
We have to see how well it can work, but exactly that is a potential immediate positive application.
And there again we're into positives and negatives.
Positive to help people who are blind, negatives because suddenly we're giving potential for
people to have extra senses.
Yes.
No, because if we can do it with ultrasonics, which is what we want to look at, then can
we do it with infrared and x-ray and ultraviolet, all the sort of signals that humans can't
sense at the moment, can we in the future?
So in other words, actually, to begin to see in different spectrums than we presently can?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, just think, if you could sense the world in x-ray, you'd get a job in an airport, no problem, wouldn't you?
Yes, you would.
But the point is, we don't know what that might mean.
It might open up a whole new world that we hadn't imagined, if you can sense the world in different ways.
Or may not want.
Or may not want, yeah.
Now, of course, you sequester yourself.
You know, you're very high up academically and you sequester yourself with colleagues and a lot of supporters.
What kind of feedback do you get From people who read about the research you're doing and are frightened by it.
Do you get a lot of that?
To be honest, no.
Most of the scientists, a lot, are very excited about it.
Particularly the students here.
Oh, yes.
No, no, no.
I understand.
The students and your colleagues would be excited.
But when it gets into the mainstream press, as it now is with this ABC News article, and I'm sure many others, then you probably start to get other feedback, don't you?
Well, I have to be honest, the vast majority of it is either questions, people trying to understand more what it is we're doing, or support, saying, wow, this is great.
Like you were saying earlier, that maybe we haven't gone as far as we thought we would into the science fiction type of future that people were predicting.
And yet, I guess to a lot of people, that's exactly what we're doing here.
We're actually taking a You know, it's a bit like Blade Runner or Terminator or something.
We're creating cyborgs, in a way.
So, for some people, I think, well, you're actually doing it.
This is great.
But, I don't know.
It's less than 1%, I would say, from... And it is more people that have a particular religious feeling, I think, that... Yes.
...question, perhaps, what I'm doing.
And it is difficult to get most of the emails that I've had in that way.
I don't know, it's difficult to see the logic that they're coming from, but maybe that's just me, I'm biased, I don't
know.
Well...
But it's very few, very few.
You know all about the Mark of the Beast and so forth, right?
Yeah, quite a few pointed that out, yeah.
Well, you know, that is in fact rather graphically described in the Bible.
I think Mark's beast buying and selling and all the rest of it.
And that's what this article talks about.
You know, just passing your hand over something and you've you've made your purchase or paid for your item or whatever.
That's that's about here now, isn't it?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, we have the technology now and it's starting to take off in a sense.
I mean, that was my 1998 implant.
So I scientifically moved on from that.
But now it seems other people, families are starting to get that sort of technology.
It's interesting to see a few years downstream, the technology improves and people take it on board more and
accept it, perhaps philosophically accept it more as well.
There's a movie about to come out called AI, Artificial Intelligence.
Oh yeah, the Spielberg one.
And I know that you're in this field a little bit and I would like to ask you about this.
I watch computers double in speed every 18 months, whatever it is, and so we're rapidly going down a highway that is going to take us, I'm not sure where, but it seems to me at some point there is a possibility that computers would become aware of self.
Oh yeah, no question.
Cyborgs is one of my interests, robots is the other and here at Reading we build a lot of robots and when you see a computer as a brain of a robot and the robot moves around and interacts with the world and changes what it does and learns and adapts There's no question in my mind that the robot, the computer, is aware of itself if it's sending out signals in a different way to a human.
But nevertheless... Yeah, perhaps.
Alright.
Hold on, Professor.
We'll be right back.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
When we get back, I want to talk about that.
Computers becoming self-aware.
They're beginning to make their own decisions and how far we might be from that.
Okay, very quickly, back to artificial intelligence.
Professor, how would you define consciousness?
I'm avoiding the question for a moment because I think there's human consciousness, which is a, I think, philosopher's query over that.
What exactly does it mean?
And then, of course, you've got the consciousness in, say, a rat or a cow.
Are such creatures conscious?
I would think, yes, they are, but in their own way.
And when it comes to a machine, which is probably the big question, such as a computer, again, I feel, yes, it can be conscious, but in its own way.
And that would probably be a very different way than a human.
It would depend on how that machine individually was sensing the world around it and what it could do in and around the world.
Human consciousness depends on how we sense the world.
I don't have infrared consciousness and things.
It's more in terms of the way I sense the world.
Well, of course, our manner of sensing the world is tempered or influenced by our emotions, which Peter would not necessarily be burdened with or have the luck to have, depending on how you look at it.
My emotions mean something to me as a human.
Yes.
A machine may well have its emotions.
But they would mean something very different.
Physically, it probably would be sensing the world in a different way.
It would feel things differently.
It's electronic signals, not electrochemical.
What pain would mean to it probably would be something very different to what pain means to me.
So I think it's such a different spectra you're looking at, so it's very difficult to say.
Perhaps, but computers could very quickly become More powerful intellects than human beings, yes?
Oh, that certainly, I feel, and most likely will be, yes.
I think just because they're different.
Does not mean they're worse, and even if we look at consciousness and say, well, a machine can't be conscious in the same way, or it's not likely it's going to be conscious in the same way as a human, that doesn't mean at all that intellectually it's going to be inferior.
Yes, but isn't our natural tendency as humans, if we regard a machine as more intelligent, capable of making more rational decisions, not influenced by these ragged old emotions that we are burdened with, To begin to turn decision making over to machines like that for humanity, right?
Well, very much so.
I think it's what we are doing in a lot of sectors.
The military sector is going that way.
A lot of the financial decisions, yes, we're deferring more and more because not only can the machine do things physically that we can't do, but the The decisions are much better.
Yes, much better, yes.
Well then, isn't there some danger that if a machine were to acquire more intelligence than ours, and we bestow upon it the ability to make decisions, it will start to make decisions that it considers perhaps even for our own best benefit, but not a decision that we would necessarily make.
In other words, they could become dangerous to humanity.
I think almost surely if they're looking for, it wouldn't take long for the decisions to be for the best of the machine in its own right, therefore that could be Most likely it would be against humans before too long.
That was my book, In the Mind of the Machine, which was out in 98, I think only in the UK, so I think people in the US have not had the pleasure of spending evenings reading it, but that's really what that was about, looking realistically at how that is quite likely to come about going the way we're going.
So the decisions then would begin to shift toward the machine's self-interest or preservation?
Exactly, yes, exactly that.
And simple examples that point in that direction would be in the military domain and the financial domain, those sort of sectors where you can see the shift going in that way quite clearly.
But I think not in the science fiction Ideas have been more the sort of Arnie Schwarzenegger's self-contained machine that goes off and does this.
I don't see it in that way.
I really see the network as being quite a critical central focus point.
It's perhaps more the sort of Star Trek, Borg type of thing is more the way I guess with an intelligent network with Smaller beings, machines that operate to and from it.
But with the military using machines of this sort in applications regarding arsenals, nuclear weapons, all the rest of it, if a machine began to show a great deal of self-interest, it would very quickly become an antagonistic situation, a worrisome situation for humans.
Oh, gosh.
There was a movie I'm remembering where a machine finally decided that humans had become too big a threat to it.
Oh, yeah.
And it began to act truly in its own self-interest, using our own weapons against us.
Well, I mean, there are now a lot of military machines that are at least semi-autonomous.
Fighter planes that are actually being built.
the x-thirty six mcdonald douglas the x forty five boeing are human pilotless fighter planes
for example and uh... there were various things tried out in the the recent afghanistan situation
so i don't know but but there is just looking at flying and attacking uh... without a human
pilot on board uh... it's a simple well very small step to say all right well we'll get the
human out of the pressing the button in the first place because the machine can make the
decision better It's a very small step in that case.
And then the decision is completely taken by the autonomous fighting machine, whatever it happens to be.
Who do I actually take out?
Who not?
And who's the enemy?
And who's not?
I mean, I just see unintended consequences.
Well, yes, exactly.
It may take some mistakes, some problems, some situation where somebody is killed or
a whole group of people are killed where that was not the human intention but it's clearly
the machine's intention based on its own experience and so on that would raise people's awareness
to it.
But whether it would because most likely there would be something of a cover up as to what
has gone on.
I doubt if we'd ever get to hear fully what the situation was.
Speaking of unintended consequences, there was a robot that I'm reading about in here,
Roger, the half marathon robot.
Roger's run would have been the first time it says a robot completed a foot race but
Roger had a problem.
Well, this is where, I mean for our students we like to give them sensible projects, sensible
shall we say a task rather than just getting them to do some project that sits on the shelf
after it's finished.
We give them a challenge and what we challenge the students to do was to create the world's
first half marathon robot.
So this was a robot to do a half marathon with humans.
It's a very popular thing I think in the US and the UK.
And so they built the robot and how it was operating was essentially tracking me on an
infrared signal.
So I was running in front of it wearing a bum bag with an infrared transmitter on the
back and Roger, which is what we called the robot, had an infrared receiver on the front.
Uh, no, because it was England, we thought it was likely to be raining for the half marathon, so the students made sure the electronics was watertight.
And just in case it was sunny, they gave Roger a little peak cap.
We had to get permission to enter it in the race and everything and make sure it didn't go bumping into people.
But what actually happened on the day of the half marathon, uncharacteristic for England, it was a very sunny day.
And because the sun is a wonderful transmitter of infrared, Now, the students had programmed the robot to stay two meters, six feet, six foot behind me, trying to keep that distance all the time.
So I went faster, Roger went faster, I went slower, Roger went slower.
Sure.
On the day of the half marathon, very, very sunny, Roger followed me for about one mile and then caught sight of the sun and went hurtling off towards the sun.
Uh, because it was picking up the infrared as fast as it could go.
So Roger was running for the sun?
Roger was running for the sun, trying to get...
Six feet away from the sun, essentially.
Which he never was going to do.
Which it would have been a world first, I think.
But no, it crashed into the curb and that was the end of it.
We had students crying and things like that.
Roger was essentially dead.
Roger was dead.
So we didn't get the world's first half-marathon robot after all.
It remains to be done.
But we did get the world's first robot with an athletic injury.
Indeed so.
Well, yes, but Now, if you translate those unintended consequences to hooking up a chip to your central nervous system, yay, Professor.
Yeah, well, you never know.
I mean, are we going to see you out there headed for the sun?
Oh, well, yeah, maybe.
You just can't.
Until you do something in science, you just cannot predict completely what is likely to happen.
It's not going to be you and your wife on his and hers operating tables at the same time.
You're going to have the operation first, correct?
That's right, yeah.
I see.
serious. It's not going to be you and your wife on his and hers operating tables at the same time.
You're going to have the operation first, correct? That's right. Yeah, I see. So your wife will have
an opportunity to view how it goes. That's right.
She doesn't like the look of it.
We really want to send signals from nervous system to nervous system.
When we're doing that, okay, there's the basic communication, but perhaps the most exciting thing is the more emotional type of signals I don't know.
and shock, pain, if we send a pain signal from my nervous system to her nervous system,
will she feel, she's a woman so she probably won't feel anything, whereas I'll be in extreme
pain, will it be different?
We don't know.
And of course if she is looking out the window and she sees an attractive young man and starts
to get excited, then I'm going to know about that.
So, but will I make up?
Oh my God.
What will it mean to me?
Have you two discussed that at all?
Well, of course.
I mean, young men don't do it for me, so it shouldn't be, but it's what I will feel.
We've discussed it, yeah, but we don't know what the feeling will be from person to person.
Boy, you're really ready to take some possible leaps here, aren't you?
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