Are cyborgs the future of humanity?

Robots are already here. They are making things easier and convenient for us. The relentless development in robotic technology is not only transforming the way we live and work, but also augmenting us to some extent. For example, wearable artificial limbs that interface mechanically with the body, giving a person additional limbs to extend their capacities beyond natural physiological levels. With new developments in neuroscience and advances in medical technology, combining biological organisms with machines is no longer the future thing. This development contributes to the growth of cyborg, a human-machine appearance with both organic and biomechatronic body parts.

Cyborgs may be portrayed as looking more like robots or common humans. Neil Harbisson, a British artist, who is known for being the first cyborg in the world with a sensor implanted in his head. He was born with achromatopsia, a condition in which a person has a partial or total absence of color vision. However, this sensor allows him to hear color by detecting the color frequency in front of him, turning it into a sound and transmitting the sound via bone conduction to his brain.

In 2017, speaking at an event in Dubai, Tesla founder Elon Musk expressed that humans must become cyborgs to stay relevant in a future dominated by artificial intelligence. His Neuralink company also expressed ambitions of technology-augmented humanity, by merging AI with the human brain. Neural lace technology is a form of brain-computer interface, facilitating a direct communication pathway between an enhanced or wired brain and an external device. Last year, Neuralink demonstrated brain-computer technology by implanting it in a live pig.

The concept of a man-machine collaboration has come a long way. In early 1843, an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe described a man with extensive prostheses in the short story "The Man That Was Used Up".

Today, we often characterize a robot with two arms, two legs and a head. But in engineering, it is not necessary. Not only the appearance, but also the brain of the robot resembles that of a human. According to Mikhail Lebedev, an academic supervisor at HSE University’s Centre for Bioelectric Interfaces, a robot can interact with the nervous system through a bi-directional interface. The nervous system can convey a command signal to the robot, and the robot through its sensors can return sensory information to the human, causing real sensations by stimulating nerves, nerve endings in the skin, or the sensory cortex itself. 

Such feedback mechanisms make it possible to restore the sensation of a limb if it has been lost. They are also essential for more precise movements of the robotic limb since it is based on sensory information received from the arms and legs that we correct our movements.

The increasing proliferation of 3D printing technology has recently led to the development of advanced prosthetics. e-NABLE, an online global community of Digital Humanitarian volunteers, use 3D printing to create free 3D-printed hands and arms for those in need of an upper limb assistive device.

Though this kind of technology will become prevalent in the future, it certainly raises various ethical questions around the reliability, security challenges, cost-effectiveness of technologies and affordability to become cyborgs.