Cyborg

cyborg

Researchers used AI models based on the current neural networks (RNN) to read and accurately decode the amputee’s intent of moving individual fingers from peripheral nerve activities. The AI models are deployed on an NVIDIA Jetson Nano as a portable, self-contained unit. With this AI-powered nerve interface, the amputee can control a neuroprosthetic hand with life-like dexterity and intuitiveness. Watch the video ►Subscribe to my newsletter: http://eepurl.com/huGLT5 References [1] Nguyen & Drealan et al. (2021) A Portable, Self-Contained Neuroprosthetic Hand with Deep Learning-Based Finger Control: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.13452​ [2]. Luu & Nguyen et al. (2021) Deep Learning-Based Approaches for Decoding Motor Intent from Peripheral Nerve Signals: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349448928_Deep_Learning-Based_Approaches_for_Decoding_Motor_Intent_from_Peripheral_Nerve_Signals [3]. Nguyen et al. (2021) Redundant Crossfire: A Technique to Achieve Super-Resolution in Neurostimulator Design by Exploiting Transistor Mismatch: https://experts.umn.edu/en/publications/redundant-crossfire-a-technique-to-achieve-super-resolution-in-ne​ [4]. Nguyen & Xu et al. (2020) A Bioelectric Neural Interface Towards Intuitive Prosthetic Control for Amputees: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.17.301663v1.full Video Transcript 00:00 in this video i will talk about a 00:02 randomly picked application of 00:03 transformers from the 600 new papers 00:06 published this week 00:07 adding nothing much to the field but 00:09 improving the accuracy by 0.1 percent on 00:11 one benchmark by tweaking some 00:13 parameters 00:14 i hope you are not too excited about 00:16 this introduction because that was just 00:18 to mess with the transformers recent 00:19 popularity 00:20 of course they are awesome and super 00:22 useful in many cases 00:23 and most researchers are focusing on 00:25 them but other things exist in ai 00:28 that are as exciting if not more you can 00:31 be sure 00:31 will cover exciting advancements of the 00:33 transformers architecture applied to nlp 00:36 computer vision or other fields 00:38 as i think it is very promising but 00:40 covering these new papers making slight 00:42 modifications to them is not as 00:44 interesting to me 00:45 just as an example here are a couple of 00:47 papers shared in march 00:49 applying transformers to image 00:51 classification and since they are all 00:53 quite similar and i already covered one 00:55 of them 00:56 i think it is enough to have an overview 00:58 of the current state of transformers 00:59 in computer vision now let's enter the 01:02 real subject 01:03 of this video which is nothing related 01:05 to transformers or even 01:06 gans in that case no hot words at all 01:09 except maybe 01:10 cyberpunk and yet it's one of the 01:12 coolest applications of ai 01:14 i've seen in a while it attacks a real 01:16 world problem and can change the lives 01:18 of many people 01:19 of course it's less glamour than 01:21 changing your face into an anime 01:23 character 01:23 or a cartoon but it's much more useful i 01:26 present you the portable 01:28 self-contained neuroprosthetic hand with 01:30 deep learning based 01:31 finger control by anguian drilan ital 01:34 before diving into it i just wanted to 01:36 remind you of the free nvidia gtc event 01:39 happening 01:40 next week with many exciting news 01:42 related to ai 01:43 and the deep learning institute giveaway 01:45 i am running if you subscribe to my 01:46 newsletter if you are interested i 01:48 talked about this giveaway with much 01:50 more details in my previous video 01:52 also i just wanted to announce that from 01:54 now on all new youtube members will have 01:57 a specific role on my discord channel as 01:59 a thank you for your support 02:00 now let's jump right into this unique 02:03 and amazing paper 02:04 this new paper applies deep learning to 02:06 a neuroprosthetic hand to allow 02:08 real-time control of individual finger 02:11 movements 02:11 all done directly within the arm itself 02:14 with 02:15 as little as 50 to 120 milliseconds of 02:18 latency 02:19 and up to 99 accuracy an arm amputee who 02:22 has lost his hand for 14 years can move 02:24 its cyborg fingers 02:26 just like a normal hand this work shows 02:28 that the deployment of deep neural 02:30 network applications embedded directly 02:32 on wearable biomedical devices is first 02:35 possible 02:36 but also extremely powerful here deep 02:38 learning is used to process and decode 02:40 nerve data acquired from the amputee to 02:43 obtain dexterous finger movements 02:45 the problem here is that in order to be 02:47 low latency this deep learning model 02:50 has to be on a portable device with much 02:52 lower computational power 02:53 than our gpus fortunately there has been 02:56 recent development of compact hardware 02:58 for deep learning users to fix this 03:00 issue 03:01 in this case they use the nvidia jetson 03:03 nano module 03:04 specifically designed to deploy ai in 03:07 autonomous applications 03:08 it allowed the use of gpus and powerful 03:10 libraries like tensorflow and pytorch 03:13 inside the arm itself 03:14 as they state this offers the most 03:16 appropriate trade-off 03:18 among size power and performance for our 03:20 neural decoder implementation 03:22 which was the goal of this paper address 03:24 the challenge of 03:26 efficiently deploying deep learning 03:28 neural decoders 03:29 on a portable device using real-life 03:31 applications 03:32 towards long-term clinical uses of 03:35 course there are a lot of technical 03:36 details that i will not enter into 03:38 as i am not an expert like how the nerve 03:40 fibers 03:41 and bioelectronics connect together the 03:44 microchip's designs that allows the 03:46 simultaneous neural recording 03:48 and stimulation or the implementation of 03:50 software and hardware 03:51 to support this real-time motor decoding 03:54 system you can read a great explanation 03:56 of these in their papers 03:58 if you'd like to learn more about it 03:59 they are all linked in the description 04:01 of the video 04:02 but let's dive a little more into the 04:04 deep learning side of this insane 04:06 creation 04:07 here their innovation leaned to 04:09 optimizing the deep learning motor 04:10 decoding to reduce as much as possible 04:13 the computational complexity 04:15 into this jetson nano platform this 04:17 image shows 04:18 an overview of the data processing flow 04:20 on the gesture nano 04:21 at first the data in the form of 04:23 peripheral nerve signals 04:25 from the amputee's arm is sent into the 04:28 platform 04:29 then it is pre-processed this step is 04:31 crucial to cut 04:32 raw input neural data into trials and 04:35 extract their main features 04:36 in the temporal domain before feeding to 04:39 the models 04:40 this preprocessed data correspond to the 04:42 main features 04:43 of one second of past neural data from 04:46 the amputee 04:47 cleaned from all noise sources then 04:50 this process data is sent into the deep 04:52 learning model 04:53 to have a final output controlling each 04:55 finger's movement 04:56 note that there are five outputs one for 04:58 each finger 04:59 to quickly go over the model they used 05:01 as you can see it starts with a 05:03 convolutional layer 05:05 this is used to identify different 05:06 representations of data input 05:09 in this case you can see the 64 meaning 05:11 that there are 05:12 64 convolutions made using different 05:15 filters 05:15 so 64 different representations these 05:18 filters are the network parameters 05:20 learned during training to correctly 05:22 control the hand when finally deployed 05:25 then we know that time is very important 05:27 in this case since we want fluid 05:28 movements of the fingers 05:30 so they opt for gated recurrent units or 05:33 gru to represent this time dependency 05:35 aspect when decoding the data 05:37 grews will allow the model to understand 05:40 what the hand was doing in the past 05:41 second 05:42 what is first encoded and what it needs 05:44 to do next 05:45 what is decoded to stay simple gru's are 05:49 just an improved 05:50 version of recurrent neural networks or 05:52 rnns solving computational problems 05:54 rnns had with long inputs by adding 05:57 gates to keep only the relevant 05:59 information 06:00 of past inputs in the recurrent process 06:02 instead of washing out 06:04 the new input every single time it's 06:06 basically allowing the network to decide 06:08 what information should be passed to the 06:10 output 06:11 as in recurrent neural networks the one 06:13 second data here 06:14 in the form of a 512 features is 06:17 processed iteratively 06:19 using the repeated gru blocks each dru 06:22 block 06:22 receives the input at the current step 06:25 and the previous output to produce the 06:27 following output 06:28 we can see gru's as an optimization of 06:30 the basic recurrent neural network 06:32 architecture finally this decoded 06:35 information is sent to linear layers 06:37 basically just propagating the 06:38 information and condensing it 06:40 into probabilities for each individual 06:42 finger 06:43 they studied many different 06:44 architectures as you can read in their 06:46 paper 06:47 but this is the most computationally 06:49 effective model they could make 06:50 yielding incredible accuracy of over 95 06:53 percent for the movement of the fingers 06:56 now that we have a good idea of how the 06:57 model works and know that it's accurate 07:00 some questions are still left such as 07:02 what does the person using it 07:04 feels about it does it feel real does it 07:06 work 07:07 etc in short is this similar to a real 07:10 arm 07:10 as the patient himself said i feel like 07:13 once this thing is fine tuned as 07:15 finished products that are out there 07:17 it will be more lifelike functions to be 07:19 able to do everyday tasks 07:21 without thinking of what positions the 07:23 hand is in 07:24 or what mode i have the hand programmed 07:26 in it's just like if i want to reach and 07:28 pick up something 07:29 i just reach and pick up something 07:31 knowing that it's just like my able hand 07:34 for every functions i think we will get 07:36 there i really do 07:38 please just take one more minute of your 07:40 time to watch this short 07:41 touching video where the amputee uses 07:44 the hand 07:44 and shares his honest feedback 07:50 is it pleasurable playing with it oh 07:52 yeah 07:53 it's just really cool like this is this 07:58 is crazy cool 08:00 to me these are the most incredible 08:02 applications that we can work on 08:04 with ai it directly helps real people 08:07 improve their lives quality 08:09 and there's nothing better than that i 08:11 hope you enjoyed watching this video 08:13 and don't forget to subscribe to the 08:14 channel to stay up to date with 08:16 artificial intelligence news 08:18 thank you for watching and as he just 08:20 said in the video 08:21 i will say the same about ai in general 08:24 this is 08:24 crazy cool

From Amputee to Cyborg with this AI-Powered Hand 🦾

We touch our phones an . That’s about 1 million touches per year. What does this mean, if anything, for the future of our species? average of 2,617 times per day “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” This anecdote from was written at a time before the automatic bread slicer (of ‘best thing since sliced bread’ fame) had hit the market. The Sun Also Rises Despite this, it might also still be the best analogy for the technological encroachment we are all experiencing day on day. Gradually and then suddenly. In 1970 Alan Toffler published a book by the title of “Future Shock” that described “the social paralysis induced by rapid technological change.” Their shortest definition for the term is a personal perception of “too much change in too short a period of time.” If there was any time in history that this concept applied perfectly I would suggest it is as we are at the critical juncture of technological pervasiveness and let’s just be honest about it, some of us are going to get left behind. right now However, this note is not designed as a warning, or to strike fear into our already vulnerable psyches — but rather as an opportunity to recognise that we are currently living in the biggest societal upheaval of all time and we should all be consciously aware of our shifting landscapes as the merging of animal and machine is well underway. The rate of technological improvement might seem like it’s accelerating, and that’s because it is….some even suggest . exponentially As the analog and digital worlds maelstrom into one, so to have we become a hybrid of both states. A combination of the tactile and the conceptual, a hybrid of the instinctive and the programmable. Our reliance on technology means our gadget dependency is no longer a novelty of convenience but has more accurately become an extension of ourselves. : we touch our phones an . Consider this average of 2,617 times per day That’s about 1 million touches per year. We no longer need to remember esoteric details like formulas or capital cities, because our phones have access to the greatest repository of data in human history. A rectangular extension of our brains that has total recall of information (pending wifi) to make us all more cultured, intelligent and aware. But is this reliance a cause for concern? Or is it just the most recent example of our species incredible adaptability, a hyper-modern form of symbioses? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Terminator 2 (let’s be honest, the best film of all time). A Cyborg Manifesto For the purposes of not getting too abstract, let me define what I mean by Cyborg. When the term was coined it was short for “cybernetic organism”, in terms of a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts. My definition is closer to a symbiotic relationship whereby it’s hard to determine where the separation lies between our online and offline selves. I am not proposing this as a new thought, duality is a theme as old as thought itself, however, in the framework of the digital world that we live in it has never been such a . literal discussion We are not fighting the robots, they are becoming us. Many articles from some of the biggest tech authorities have been published with similar titles to this one in recent years. But most of these are future-looking or focused on a particular aspect of our technological reliance. I want to explore the evaporating lines between the animal and the machine. At the 2017 ‘ Elon Musk had the metaphysical quote of the conference. Superintelligence: Science or Fiction?’ “We’re already a cyborg.” Elon Musk He continued; “You have a digital version of yourself, a partial version of yourself online in the form of your emails, your social media, and all the things that you do. You have more power than the president of the United States had 20 years ago. You can answer any question, you can video conference with anyone, anywhere. You can send messages to millions of people instantly. Just do incredible things.” So if we are already Cyborgs, when did it happen exactly? and should we be concerned? Ray Kurzweil: The Hyper-Alert Cyborg One man who has long been concerned with the rate of improvement with machine learning is Ray Kurzweil. In 1990, before most even had a home internet connection, Ray had already published a book titled which set out to warn us of the dangers of machine learning and artificial intelligence. The Age of Intelligent Machines Kurzweil argued that the creation of humans through evolution suggests that humans should be able to build something more intelligent than themselves. Although it wasn’t until 2005 when he published did his message really start to hit home in the consciousness of masses. The Singularity is Near “The first computers were designed on paper and assembled by hand. Today, they are designed on computer workstations with the computers themselves working out many details of the next generation’s design, and are then produced in fully automated factories with only limited human intervention.” Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near Deep blue and Gary Kasparov. According to his law of accelerating returns, the pace of technological progress — especially information technology — speeds up exponentially over time because there is a common force driving it forward. That force is evolution. So to put that in perspective we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate). As Kurzweil ominously puts it, “technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.” Evidence of this rapid development is everywhere, and one of the most famous cases is Deep Blue. In New York in 1997, world chess champion Garry Kasparov faced off against Deep Blue, a computer specially designed by IBM to beat him. The Deep Blue victory has since entered into the cultural lexicon as a major milestone in the advancement of AI. When he lost, Kasparov claimed some of Deep Blue’s moves were so intelligent and creative that they must have been the result of human intervention. With our current understanding of machine learning and most relevantly pattern recognition, we understand that Deep Blue beat Kasparov not through intelligence as we know it, but through brute force computing power. Deep Blue was capable of evaluating 200 million positions per second and could search to a depth of between six and eight moves to a maximum of twenty or even more moves in some situations. Kasparov was not outthought, he was simply outgunned. A simple Google search for “chess simulator” will produce a piece of significantly more powerful than Deep Blue, such is the progression of machine learning. free technology This should not be surprising that in a game that has a bounded setting and limitations on the moves available that a computer could be infinitely more capable than a human at processing any possible combinations of moves. This is obvious, but this doesn’t mean we have reached the dawn of the robotic overlords — to improve to new heights of comprehension. it means an opportunity has presented itself that we can learn from new methods and strategies that were previously unexplored As Kasparov put it, “AI will help us to release human creativity. Humans won’t be redundant or replaced, they’ll be promoted.” He continued; “I lost [chess] but I survived, and I thought if you can’t beat them, join them. From now we on we have no choice but to work with machines and make the best algorithms.” By the time the Google Brain–powered software took on the Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol in 2016, the landscape had shifted again. AlphaGo In the second of five games, AlphaGo played a move that stunned Sedol, placing one of its stones on the far side of the board. “That’s a very strange move,” said one commentator. “I thought it was a mistake,” said another. Fan Hui, a seasoned Go player who had been the first professional to lose to the machine six months earlier, said: “It’s not a human move. I’ve never seen a human play this move.” Bitcoin, cryptography and the rise of digital money A few days ago I saw this Tweet, and it gave me pause. It was this tweet that was the inspiration for me to write this post. Not that it was saying anything that I didn’t already know, but the way it framed the wider narrative made me see the forest for the pixelated trees. “They (digital assets) are being built for the machines.” It is one of the creepiest sentences I have read in a long time. What makes it even more piercing is that it is not hyperbole, it is entirely accurate. Bitcoin is being created as a currency that will power the digital world. The native currency of the internet. The record of these transactions will be held simultaneously on thousands of computers, secured by customised computers solving complex mathematics, written in dialects of encryption completely indecipherable for humans. No wonder so many people have difficulty coming to terms with Bitcoin as a viable currency. Encryption, cryptography, consensus, protocol, hashgraph, and many others are all words that have come into my vernacular in recent times because they are critical to understanding network design, especially as it relates to designing blockchains. I am essentially teaching myself to speak computer. Learning to understand the protocol of the network or ‘the official procedure or system of rules governing one network’ to speak and interact with another. Decentralisation is one of the central ethos of Bitcoin which mean that these transactions are happening without a central authority, and with that, an enormous set of computers are solving complex mathematical problems to verify transactions and transfer wealth across borders using a form of encryption that obfuscates the identity of the sender and receiver. Machines are talking to each other, in their own language, and transferring wealth, by-passing currency controls in the process. Even with its crash from all-time highs, the BTC market cap is still the same size as the international art market. Bitcoin was proposed in 2009, Sotheby’s was founded in 1744. Digital assets aren’t the only substantial disrupter to the global financial markets, which are after all the apex of capitalism — performance before tradition. J.P. Morgan estimates that 90% of current equity trading volume today comes from “trend-following” traders (quant, index, ETFs, futures, and options-related strategies) whose trading decisions are often driven by algorithmic or programmatic trading systems rather than fundamental reasons. “Over the last few decades, trading floors around the world have fallen silent, as people are replaced by banks of computers that trade automatically.” James Bridle, The Guardian. Again just with the Chess example, of course computers are better than humans at processing trading opportunities in real-time. However, this does not mean that robots or even complex algorithms will be running banks anytime soon, as the patterns they will recognize in impossibly large troves of data will help us to understand markets in ways we have not yet discovered. Just as it already has with Chess, and Go. I have not seen it said more succinctly than by Asita Anche, head of systematic market-making at Barclays in London; “It’s not humans versus machines; it’s humans versus humans who have been augmented with machines.” Electronic Music and 3D Limbs To be painfully literal, computers are affecting us in much more obvious and human ways then quant trading, games of intellect and disrupting financial markets with digital assets. Music business blog extraordinaire Digital Music News has published some interesting graphics based on Google’s new analysis of topics. The graphs show the measured interest in musical genres from 2005–2015, and every analyzed genre is down except for electronic music, which went sharply up, especially since 2013. Interest in rock, hip-hop, classical, jazz, blues, metal, and disco is all sharply down since 2005. We literally prefer to listen to music created by machines (synthesizers, drum machines, samplers, Roland TR 808) in concert with humans over music made from traditional instruments played by humans. Same too in the medical fields where 3D printing has made prosthetic design and production incredibly more affordable for those that are missing limbs. In fact, an engineer in Australia named Mat Bowtell designs and makes cheap prosthetic limbs that he . sends to people for free His designs have been downloaded more than 1,000 times, saving people an estimated $6.5 million. “If you give something worth $100 to someone then it’s only worth $100, but if you give it to them for free it becomes priceless.” He is able to fund his project through the relatively modern form of project funding known as Crowdfunding, by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet. Summary Technology and people are not competing, nor are we separate from each other. The lines between animal and the machine are blurring beyond comprehension. Machines are better at things like processing data, remembering and recalling information, identifying patterns, lifting heavy objects, and moving with precision. Humans are better at tasks that involve creativity, abstract thought, and uncertainty. However, no solution is not improved by the combination of both hemispheres. A symbiosis of the digital and analog worlds. Collaborating with AI systems, we can augment and amplify many aspects of work and life. This collaboration will not be a conscious decision, and our cyborg reality is already here. Time is nigh that we start to embrace it consciously.

And Then We Were Cyborgs

So Why Are We So Scared of Cyborgs? Consider this: 79% of smartphone users have their phone on or near them for 22 hours a day ( ). My cell phone is practically glued to my left hand, and yours is too. Increasingly, we view the device, and the access it brings, as an extension of ourselves. I don’t have to remember the pythagorean theorem or the capital of Turkey; Google’s got my back. My 5x3 inch pocket-sized external brain makes me smarter, more worldly, and more connected. IDC With a cell phone, we’re basically cyborgs. And yet, we’re collectively terrified of cyborgs. As artificial intelligence continues to improve, and technology in general speeds along at an accelerating rate, many headlines these days prey on fears of a robot-controlled future. Take this one from : The Guardian Or this one from : CNN While it may bait clicks, robot fear-mongering misses the point entirely — . it will not be us vs. them, because they will us, and vice versa become Our interdependence with our cell phones is just one example of how the line between robot and human will continue to blend until a point when the two are indistinguishable. I’m willing to bet on a future where “cyborgs” will become the norm and “artificial intelligence” will simply be known as “intelligence”. To drive the point home, let’s look backward at the invention of writing. According to (see? Google has my back), writing was “conceived and developed independently in ancient (in ), around 3100 BC, and in by 300 BC”. Before then, all knowledge had to be stored in someone’s single brain. After writing took hold, knowledge could be transferred and held outside of oneself — voilà, the first “external brain” was created. Wikipedia Sumer Mesopotamia Mesoamerica I like to picture Max the Mesopotamian teen spending all of her Saturday afternoon poring over intricately carved hunks of rock, reading tales of ancient Gods and gory battles, while Mesopotamian mom looks on in fear that Max has been lost to technology. Now picture Max the Mesopotamian teen looking up to see a 13 year old from today who shows Max how to snap a selfie and duck-face while wearing the dog ears filter. Max would be terrified, no? Yet, we know that the 13 year old today is no less human than Max. Each form of technology is just an aid. The same logic will hold for future iterations of humans, and we should only be afraid if we’re not being updated to the latest model. Updating is part of the adaptation process — it’s beyond just making friends with machines, or regulating them, it’s with them that will dictate our future success. integrating In the next 5–10 years, we will witness our integration with of a lot of next-gen cyborgs. Here are a couple that I’m most excited about: Exoskeletons Companies like and are creating artificial supporting structures that enable human bodies to act in super-human ways. While Terminator-esque military applications do exist, the more exciting use cases will impact our industries and our health. In an industrial application, any manual job that requires heavy lifting — in plant floors, logging etc — could be made more efficient by the introduction of an exoskeleton suit. In healthcare, all the possible walking aids out there like crutches, walkers, canes, and wheelchairs could one day soon be replaced by exoskeletons. Ekso Bionics ReWalk Robotics Neural Interfaces While brain-computer-interfaces (BCIs) have roots as far back as 1924, we’re starting to see the rise of super advanced devices that collaborate with the human brain to augment our functionality. is one such company with an ambitious goal: “to expand the bounds of human intelligence” through neuroprosthetics; brain augmentations that can improve mental function and treat disorders. — helmed by real-life Tony Stark, Elon Musk — is racing Kernel to that future through its vision for “high bandwidth and safe brain machine interfaces”. In ’s words, they are creating “wizard hats for the brain”. Kernel Neuralink Tim Urban If brain-implanted chips feel a little too sci-fi for you, look no further than , a New York based startup that, according to investor , “uses state-of-the-art signal detection and machine learning to read your neurons” through pulses in a small wrist-band — no surgery required. CNTRL-labs Josh Wolf As cyborgs become the norm and the lines blur, we will continue to grapple with the notion of what makes us human. I seek comfort in my favorite Kurt Vonnegut short story called “Unready to Wear”. In the futuristic tale, all of the characters no longer inhabit bodies, but rather little blue light-filled orbs that zip and zoom around in concert with one another. Once a year, in a cheeky ode to their ancestors, the people march in a “body parade” where fleshy suits are rented out on hangers and donned through the streets while people bemoan the creaky, clumsy limbs they’ve been lucky enough to leave behind. Like Vonnegut’s characters, it’s not our flesh that makes us human — it’s the same essence that binds Max the Mesopotamian teen to today’s cell-phone toting 13 year old — whatever is contained in that little blue orb. Call it a consciousness or a soul, but either way, I’m not afraid of the rise of robots or becoming a cyborg myself. I am only afraid of the alternative — what happens if humans don’t ? adapt Wouldn’t it be much scarier to end up as the last analog objects in an increasingly digital universe? Please note: Views are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer

I’m a Cyborg; You’re a Cyborg

Written by Jason Merkoski, Founder, Be Forever Me This article was originally published the to Be Forever Me blog on 1/26/16 We are on the brink of an evolution of personal storytelling and lifecasting experiences — moving them from the limited domain of life hackers and research scientists into broad mainstream consumer acceptance and use. I believe that new consumer technology is already changing course from making our lives less human, and making them more human than ever before. Data streamed and captured in real time from increasingly miniaturized wearables is going to enable us to have our most authentic life stories automatically captured, without us ever having to write or edit a word, or shoot a photo or video ourselves. Now, we’re entering a new age of personal narrative, where our stories are immediately accessible and searchable, enduring and permanent, engaging and inviting, revelatory and emotional. My Love Affair with Wearable Consumer Technology With my iPhone, wearable Bluetooth microphone, Microsoft Band, Narrative camera, and GoPro — I go about my day like a discretely accessorized cyborg — at least in comparison to the earlier mentioned pioneers. My personal interest is to use these 5 devices to help me capture everything I can about my life, the people I care about, and the world around me -digitally and as automatically as possible, everyday. With its 12 sensors, I can use my Bluetooth-enabled to tap into my biology and the world around me. I use it most often to wirelessly transmit my sleep habits each night to my iPhone, which I keep under my mattress. I have an app on my phone that monitors how much I toss and turn while I sleep and is sensitive to pressure changes in the mattress. Microsoft Band I wear a Bluetooth microphone that looks like a stylish silver dog tag around my neck. As I go about my day, it’s faithfully recording what I have to say, and periodically uploading the recordings to the cloud. I never have to think about it or do anything to initiate actions. As long as I talk, it records and whenever I pause, it pauses. My is a cool device that I ordered over two years ago on a Kickstarter campaign. It’s a simple unobtrusive pin you wear on your shirt lapel or collar. The tiny built-in camera automatically takes a picture every 30 seconds, from my perspective, at whatever I’m looking at. Narrative Clip camera And of course there is my trusty . Normally used by rock climbers, surfers, and extreme sports enthusiasts, I use my it for more plebian purposes — taking videos of me throughout the day. I set the camera up on one of four tripods I have throughout the house, and talk about whatever comes to mind. If I go outside on the hammock, I bring the GoPro with me. If I go jogging, I’ll mount it on a headband so it can get a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding terrain. If I go for a drive on my motorcycle, I have a mount where I can aim it at me as I drive. GoPro Now We Are All Citizens of the Data-Sphere While the two terabytes of data that I personally create with these devices every year might place me a bit on the cutting edge, the rest of the world is not all that far behind. The rise in adoption of cameras and audio recorders, biometrics and life-logging devices has increased by at least 50% year over year. That means that more people are using these kinds of devices to capture data about themselves. This data embodies their personal stories, streamed and published to the Internet. Everyone will be generating personal data on a massive scale sooner than you realize. And it will all happen automatically, without you having to lift a finger. As we all become ‘digital data natives,’ new technology-driven capabilities will be important to bring order, meaning and value to the data of automatically generated videos, photos and audio clips. What will distinguish this phase of the evolution of digital storytelling and life capture from earlier efforts will be in the layering in of deep context to enable meaningful search, retrieval and interaction — now and for generations to come. These include: Automated meta-data tagging of recordings will enable deep indexing far beyond manual tags. Algorithms will be used to perform ‘context-mining’ in the background to add an entirely new layer of nuance and engagement to our personal data and story dashboards. Search and interaction will be driven by voice control with conversational search delivering a fundamentally different experience than old text based search. Social and psychological change is also accompanying technology change when it comes to wearable consumer technology. This is especially true in relationship to attitudes about privacy that are evolving over time, supported by the increasing miniaturization of technology. People are becoming more forgiving and accepting when it comes to what is more clearly about self-recording and documenting than something that once felt more like spying. Over time, we may even develop a whole new set of social cues for when we encounter someone with a wearable. Of course that changes again when we are all wearing them. The Near Future Is About Humanism, Not Narcissism These technological and social changes are all making things really interesting for those of us who care deeply about the use of consumer technology in personal digital storytelling and the recording and preservation of narratives and memories. I wake up every day inspired to be helping to create a world in which we can spend our time living authentic life stories and not waste it curating and editing them into false personas. So much of this change is being driven by advances in today’s emerging wearable consumer technology that provides the ability to gather stories (data) in an unobtrusive manner with a more fluid and natural recording experience. This then actually enhances, rather than disrupts, daily life. I’m also excited to look at future ways that we will soon be able to take the huge silos of data automatically generated from all of these devices and create the dashboard of our lives. This is going to be a world where our stories are about humanism and not narcissism. Consumer technology and creative people are going to make that possible.

We’re All Cyborgs Now, and That Is OK…

“When will we be able to jack our brain into the Matrix, to experience a virtual reality indistinguishable from reality?” is a question I get asked a lot. I think a lot about the answer. To be honest, I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime, but that’s OK since something even more futuristic sounding is likely to happen instead. The human brain is an incredibly complex system even the most advanced neuroscientists haven’t come close to fully understanding it. Feeding a virtual reality into your brain that feels real requires us to completely understand the entire language the brain operates with. Just as we have deciphered ancient languages by studying the limited pieces of evidence we have left of them, eventually we’ll get there, but not any time soon. So the notion of feeding a computer signal directly into your brain in order to replace your reality truly is science fiction for now. What is our reality exactly? Your reality as a human is entirely constructed upon the data that your input devices receive. Your eyes are sensors that translate what you see into electrical impulses and feed those into your brain. Your ears are sensors that translate sonic waves into electrical impulses and feed those into your brain. In a way then, we have sensors plugged directly into our brain. already So perhaps, Instead of attempting to reverse engineer the complex inner workings of the brain, we need only decipher the much simpler data feeding into it from our senses. Last year we had the first (it’s still very crude — the patient can only see edges & rough shapes). Nonetheless, it proves that we can replace our organic sensors with electronic substitutes. And like every single electronic device on the planet, it will get better, smaller and faster over time. So, it’s entirely plausible to think that many years from now we might have bionic eye implants that surpass their organic counterparts. successful bionic eye implant Which brings us to a very interesting proposal : if you could have your eyes removed and replaced with Bionic eyes that give you perfect vision, night vision mode and a zoom function, would you do it? If you could replace your ears with microphones that have increased range, perfect pitch, and a much wider frequency range, would you do it? If you could replace your nose with a sensor that gives you bloodhound levels of smell, would you do it? And if you did it, how would that change you as a human? Your entire reality is based on the collective data gathered from your sensors. What happens if these sensors suddenly are able to detect a wider range of data? What effect would that have to your brain? What effect would that have on you, as a person? Are you still human? Are you superhuman? I think, long before we plug computers directly into our brain, we will replace our limited organic sensors for better electronic ones. Long before we “plug into the matrix” we will become cyborgs. And experiencing a virtual reality that’s indistinguishable from reality is pretty easy….for a cyborg. In the next 100 year, we humans are close to leaving the organic era behind us and by doing so unlock a future so unimaginable: it’s thrilling and scary at the same time.

Are you ready to become cyborg?

Cybernetic organisms, or “cyborgs” for the breath-savers, are creatures which have organic body parts as well as mechanical elements. The terms like “creatures” and “organisms” can mean either animals or people or both. In the case of the Animal Kingdom, scientists have already altered insects and other small creatures into controllable cyborgs, manipulating their movements. The sheer concept of a mechanized device controlling anything’s movements, let alone anyone’s mind, can be found alarming to certain people, myself included. Some futurists and scientists genuinely think that a century from now the majority of humanity will be implanted with computer chips in order to link the human brain with an AI of some kind. In effect, these miniscule computer chips would be a fantastically convenient form of . brain-computer interfaces These implants could potentially allow the patients to communicate via an updated version of mental telepathy. Such is one of the very points made by Jeff Stibel in his article “ .” Stibel proceeds to mention a few more legitimate concerns about the futuristic installment of a standard human computer chip. Forbes Hacking The Brain: The Future Computer Chips In Your Head One of his worries is regarding the possibility of one’s memory actually being hacked, even deleted. I hope humanity’s posterity has the sense to consider some sort of a backup drive for people’s memories. But think about it: People, world leaders and foreign scientists for example, who would have had a difficult time talking to one another previously, could now communicate flawlessly and breathlessly. There would be no language barrier. In addition to being able to solve many communication problems, the mini brain-computer interfaces would be a medium which could have the capability to boost creativity and problem solving. On the flip side of this notion, such computer chips could also become a means of manipulating our brains in a different fashion, the way scientists have manipulated small organisms. Again, if someone’s mind could be “hacked,” the question of someone else being able to control it would likely come up. Someone with devious motives or an AI gone amok taking control of someone’s brain is a dissettling idea, one I hope no one ever has to explore. But if such a seizing of the human mind were possible, it would remove a vital element of what makes people human: our free will. We choose whether we go left or right, what time we get up in the morning, what we plan to do during our day. If modified into cyborgs in the future, the choices human beings would make might not be their own. A billion questions arise out of this computer chip scenario. “Would a person who has been even be aware of it?” — for example. hacked Or, in regards to a much more likely mishap, “What if a person’s computer chip was accidentally damaged or malfunctioned of its own accord?” What would happen to a person in this situation? Would it be life-threatening? Would the human body be able to survive in the absence of a perfectly functional chip? The list does, by all means, go on. But time is a gift to be spent in moderation. In conclusion, a physical merging of man and machine has its ups and downs. But I’m afraid the downs have it on this one. There are a good deal of moral as well as logical flaws in the concept. And these must first and foremost be examined.

Cybernetic Organisms: The Difficulties of Compatibility Between Man and Machine

Imagine to be able to execute amazing tasks in some impossible places, like working on the surface of the moon in cyborging devices assembled there and experiencing looking to earth, will that be possible? If we try to make an observation about the changes in our advanced technology, we tend to feel that it will not be that far before witnessing new business coming to reality, business that was only possible in SF. I like the idea of cyborg and I asked myself how a start-up for “cyborging” will be like? Inspired by the “Singularity is Near — ” that I consider the bible for Technological Singularity, I imagined how would be a start-up in cyborging. Ray Kurzweil Like any product, your cyborg product require a story, basically you have to talk about your product what is the purpose, what do you expect it to achieve, this in a good length shouldn’t be more than a short paragraph. This product require some honest questions and answers from your side, you have to be honest with yourself: What are my intentions with this product? What will be the profit? (I don’t know what will happen to the concept of Money, the concept of money is bound with the individuality of humans, it will stay for sometimes until it is replaced with something else) Regulations Knowing the fact that cyborg technology involve extension of human being’s physical and cognitive abilities, that connects and merges directly with the biological side, raises important ethical considerations and concerns, and also have implications on the view of human nature. I will not be surprise to see that very strong lobby of anti-cyborg will come and the only way to win is to push always upfront the benefits of the new concept or technology, the world of business will be a combination of strong alliance of technology-business lobbies that have no geographical borders and I will not be pessimistic if I said investing inside such atmosphere will be not easy, we may solve issues regarding environment but we will not be able to solve issue related to so called guardians of ethics against the avant-guard of business-technology. Investors I imagine in 50 years time it is possible that we witness a major change in the way economy works, venturing will be based on much more calculated process that run based on “Oracle prophetic algorithms”, by that time investors have no gut feeling anymore, it is all about analytic and speculation of big data of market and customers trend, expecting trends before they happen, there will be no shortage of finance, but maybe a lot trend manipulation, all will be about the creative mind and meetings demands and expectation of a much more hungry consumers, appetite for goods will rise, a new appetite based on enjoying the new consumerism experience, consuming virtual goods, feeling the data. Hiring By the time we reach the level where investing in cyborg, new skills will appear and new employee may come to the market; the artificial brain, customized brain (processing system if you want me to make things easy) I believe that will be the new skills, individuals hiring their artificial brain to more than one place at the same time with no conflict of interests, basically it is a system that is in the could, propriety of the individual much more like a server but it is not, an investment where a person feed the brain with necessary process and data that will enable to brain to perfect specific process in a specific domain. the person will be free from the contact to the management, he or she are just responsible-owner of the hired skills residing in the artificial brain. The making The easy part of the making of a cyborg is to stop thinking of a cyborg like a replacement to the body, cyborging will be an inject the volunteer with billions of neurobots as i like to call them (nanobots), track them by holographic mapping until they reach the brain of the consumer, start to pair the the signatures of the neurobots, by the end a mapping of the brain will be processed by application determine the full connection of the consumer and the next part which to come: The machine. The final result In 50 years time the distance between man and machine will be short to the point to think that it is part of the human life, what ever we created was always an extension of us, we will start to experience a whole workforce of machine that achieve tasks remotely controlled by a mix operator of bio-crowd-computing system and non-biological-brain monitored by biological “brains” that could be artificially “born”, you could imagine anything, any device, the aim is the preserve the human continuation or maybe that is life. When you reach this line, you look how naive this article, but all dreams are, until they become reality and turn to nightmares which are the unexpected variables that fall from equations, and those variables that will lead to dream of a better horizon.

Start-ups on the moon

The Noonification: The Future of War According to RAND; Cyborgs and Genetically Enhanced Supersoldiers  (1/12/2024)

What’s to become of these ‘supersoldiers’ once their service has ended? Cyborgs and genetically enhanced “supersoldiers” are projected to be the , according to a recent RAND Corporation report. warfighters of the future Published on January 2, 2024, the , “ ,” highlights advances in human-machine systems, along with AI and synthetic biology as being among the technologies that will be used to engineer the future warfighter. report Plagues, Cyborgs, and Supersoldiers: The Human Domain of War According to the report, these technologies will give rise to seemingly where soldiers will be able to control machines using their thoughts, along with the ability to genetically modify warfighters, so that they will be able to survive in “the harshest of combat environments.” telepathic capabilities “Given the rapid advancements brought about by the 21st-century biotechnology revolution, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, and advanced human-machine systems, we see a complex, high-threat landscape emerging where future wars are fought with humans controlling hyper-sophisticated machines with their thoughts; the military-industrial base is disturbed by synthetically generated, genomically targeted plagues; and the future warfighter goes beyond the baseline genome to become an enhanced warfighter who is capable of survival in the harshest of combat environments” The (IoB), which refers to an ecosystem consisting of interconnected devices that can be worn, ingested, or implanted, is one way in which warfighters of the future are projected to become cyborgs. Internet of Bodies The authors note that “ .” IoB and related technologies present a variety of potential opportunities to warfighters. For example, the US Army is running studies to determine whether wearables can help with soldier wellbeing and fitness. Australian researchers have shown that military robot quadrupeds can be steered by brain signals collected and translated by a graphene sensor worn behind the ear of a nearby soldier On the positive side, “Combining IoB data with advanced machine learning (ML) and AI algorithms can potentially enable tremendous advancements in health care, particularly precision medicine.” However, the IoB also comes with grave risks in terms of , intelligence gathering, privacy, and targeted attacks that can essentially hijack the brain of the user and cause unimaginable harm. cybersecurity As (BCIs) become more prevalent, the report warns: brain-computer interfaces “If this technology were hacked, a malicious adversary could potentially inject fear, confusion, or anger into the commander’s brain and cause them to make decisions that result in serious harm” The authors go on to explain that this type of brain hacking is already considered a threat and that “ .” several organizations based in China were found to ‘use biotechnology processes to support Chinese military end uses and end users, to include purported brain-control weaponry’ and, because of this, these entities were added to the Department of Commerce’s Entity List to restrict trade with those organizations While brain hacking is discussed in the context of military environments, the same technology is increasingly becoming more commercially available for the general public, including the workplace. For example, speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in January 2023, Dr. Nita Farahany from Duke University explained: “We can pick up and decode faces that you’re seeing in your mind — simple shapes, numbers, your PIN number to your bank account” https://twitter.com/TimHinchliffe/status/1616114732536303619?embedable=true “Artificial intelligence has enabled advances in decoding brain activity in ways we never before thought possible,” said Farahany. “What you think, what you feel — it’s all just data — data that in large patterns can be decoded using artificial intelligence,” she added. And the devices to decode the human brain don’t have to be as invasive as a brain implant. The devices can be as non-invasive as a “Fitbit for your brain.” https://twitter.com/TimHinchliffe/status/1616107080259100672?embedable=true Another type of IoB risk, according to the recent RAND report, “ .” derives from information security issues with IoB-collected data For example, “A security vulnerability in the Strava app reportedly allowed unknown users to identify and track the movements of Israeli service members inside military bases, even if users limited who could view their Strava profiles,” and “In 2023, it was reported that the Strava app might have been used to track a Russian submarine commander who was killed while jogging.” In a similar vein, US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) director Catherine Marsh said back in 2021 that the as “a growing source of data that can be collected to learn intent.” US spy community was increasingly looking to Internet of Things (IoT) devices “ ,” said Marsh. Developing these new sensors and detectors, as well as thinking about clever ways to collect multi-modal data to reveal what our adversaries are attempting to hide from us is at the very core of what our collection programs are aimed at doing Moving beyond the IoB and cyborgs, another way in which the warfighter of the future is projected to become a “supersoldier” is through genetic engineering, specifically genomic enhancement. According to the recent RAND report, genomic enhancement refers to “ .” the process of isolating and using accessible genomic information or treatments to alter a trait in the human body or the environment to enhance resiliency at a micro (individual) or macro (societal) scale The authors predict that “ .” potential near-future genomic enhancements of key warfighting traits could be the ability to function with less sleep, more physical stamina, and improved breathing capacity This recent report echoes another RAND entitled, “ ,” which outlined the technological potentials of this controversial transhumanist research. report from 2021 Technological Approaches to Human Performance Enhancement For example, the report from 2021 notes that “ ,” and “ ” were all potential applications for genomic editing. adding reptilian genes that provide the ability to see in infrared making humans stronger, more intelligent, or more adapted to extreme environments As , “If successful, .” I reported over two years ago these ‘people’ would have the potential to never tire and think smarter, move faster, jump higher, see farther, hear better, hit harder, live longer, adapt stronger, and calculate quicker than any other human being on the planet If and when humans become fully integrated with machines on a large scale, where will the technology end and the human begin? On the last day of the World Economic Forum meeting in 2020, a discussion about “When Humans Become Cyborgs” attempted to tackle some of the very large ethical questions surrounding bodily integrity and digital ownership of cyborgs. Ilina Singh, professor of neuroscience and society at Oxford, that one of the major concerns from military officers was a sense of ownership and bodily integrity. told the Davos crowd Military officers were concerned over many issues, such as: Do I own my own implant? Does my implant become part of me? What happens when I leave the military? Who pays for my implant? Does my implant get removed? Do I get to keep my implant for life? Does my implant get upgraded? Who pays for that? In the same discussion, National Academy of Medicine president Victor Dzau told the Davos elites that using brain-computer interfaces to augment humans beyond their natural capabilities was crossing the ethical line. “I think you’re in pretty safe ground when you use these technologies for the purpose of curing disease, treating disease, or at least addressing impairment,” he said, adding, “ .” I do think you start crossing the line when you think about enhancement and augmentation What’s to become of the soldiers and government agents that have been genetically edited with superhuman powers once their service has ended? What advantages or disadvantages would people with have compared to the rest of humanity? godlike abilities This article was originally published by on Tim Hinchliffe The Sociable.

The Future of War According to RAND; Cyborgs and Genetically Enhanced Supersoldiers 

RAND অনুযায়ী যুদ্ধের ভবিষ্যৎ; সাইবোর্গস এবং জেনেটিকালি এনহ্যান্সড সুপারসোল্ডার

Die Zukunft des Krieges laut RAND; Cyborgs und genetisch verbesserte Supersoldaten

El futuro de la guerra según RAND; Cyborgs y supersoldados genéticamente mejorados

L'avenir de la guerre selon RAND ; Cyborgs et supersoldats génétiquement améliorés

रैंड के अनुसार युद्ध का भविष्य; साइबोर्ग और आनुवंशिक रूप से उन्नत सुपरसोल्जर्स

RAND による戦争の未来;サイボーグと遺伝子強化されたスーパーソルジャー

RAND에 따르면 전쟁의 미래; 사이보그와 유전적으로 강화된 슈퍼솔저

O futuro da guerra de acordo com a RAND; Ciborgues e supersoldados geneticamente melhorados

Будущее войны по версии RAND; Киборги и генетически улучшенные суперсолдаты

RAND'a Göre Savaşın Geleceği; Cyborglar ve Genetiği Geliştirilmiş Süper Askerler

Tương lai của chiến tranh Theo RAND; Cyborgs và siêu chiến binh được cải tiến về mặt di truyền

兰德认为战争的未来；机器人和基因增强超级士兵

It seems that the auto-battler craze is here to stay. In January 2019, a Chinese game studio called Drodo created a custom game mode called Dota Auto Chess for the much-hyped and well-known esports MOBA title Dota 2. Everything else became history:  The genre, called “auto battle chess”, has exploded and gained a life of its own as hordes of players wholeheartedly embraced the concept globally, spawning multiple titles with the same concept. It's addictive: Who wouldn't want to conquer the world with automated characters and strategies that come to life in full 3D? Well, it's now coming into the world of the blockchain in a resounding way. Cyborg Legends is an auto-battler game that features eight races with differing appearances, abilities, and skillsets. Players get to choose between multiple P2E and PVP modes, which means that there's a lot of potential replayability! What does Cyborg Legends promise to do? Cyborg Legends promises to do be a P2E/NFT game that is accessible on any device, anywhere from the world at any time. They also promised players that they would only have to push the buttons when needed, which is a far cry from the endless grind of traditional MMORPG games. What does Cyborg Legends have going for it thus far? One salient point that any player could appreciate is the fact that the NFTs are compatible with OpenSea, LootEX, and NFTrade. This means that even if the game never launches at all, players could still trade their cards as NFTs on the open market - and they have already fetched prices beyond their original mint rates at this point in time, . even though the game is not out yet as shown in the activity tab for the game on OpenSea As a result, the game is basically "rug pull-proof" due to the fact that its most basic product, the hero NFT, is already an asset that isn't controlled by the developers themselves. Being a rug pull-proof game is a huge advantage, especially in an environment where turn out to be . much-hyped P2E gaming projects outright scams Another salient point is the fact that the developers have always communicated their intentions on all their official channels in a timely and easily understandable manner. This is a key element for games in the P2E gaming space that is vital for creating a diverse, wide-reaching, and long-lasting community. The final salient point is that the game's development still continues at a reasonable pace, which shows that the developers and their partners are committed to bringing a quality blockchain game to life. What is the prognosis for Cyborg Legends? Given that there are millions and millions of people out there who are fans of the said genre, Cyborg Legends is a promising title for the near future. Here's to hoping that the development phase goes smoothly...and that the game's public build is shipped out soon!

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