Augmentation (A Deus Ex Discussion)

[VOP2288]

*note* Yes, this discussion stems from my experience within the world of Deus Ex Human Revolution. However I would ask that mods do NOT merge this with the HR thread that already exists. Why? B/c I'd like to have a separate discussion about the subject of human augmentation and let people share their thoughts/opinions/beliefs on the matter



So if you're like me you've probably been spending a good amount of time since this past Tuesday playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Aside from the beautifully realized near future world and the insanely fun and rewarding "approach situation A this way, that way, or this other way" gameplay the game does raise some moral and ethical questions and issues regarding the subject of human augmentation.

For those unaware human augmentation is, simply put, the process of replacing anything from your eyes to your legs to your arms (and everything in between) with an advanced mechanical prostheses which not only acts like the original flesh and blood version but can also grant the subject certain "perks". Augmented legs can make someone faster, jump higher, etc while augmented eyes may grant the user a kind of real-life HUD that can display information.

At the time of Human Revolution the augmentation market is fairly open and is just starting to make its way onto the world stage. The world governments have not granted it total freedom but also don't strictly regulate it. For the most part, the power lies in the hands of the conglomerates who produce these augs (like your own Adam Jensen's Sarif Industries).

While entities like Sarif Industries promote "transhumanism" and a controlled path of evolution they also want to expand their markets and grow. Other organizations and groups have risen to to try and keep these industries within varying degrees of check. Some want the augmentation market to be regulated and controlled by the government while others wish to completely reject the notion of augmentation on a moral and ethical ground (some even resorting to terrorism as a means of lashing out).

The question I pose to you all is where do you find yourself (whether you too are experiencing the game or have an opinion on the matter anyway) falling in this confrontation. Should augmentation be available to anyone, anytime as long as they have the money? Should it be something that's regulated and controlled? Is it something that is entirely "inhuman"? Is it a next stage of evolution?

Be as philosophical, detailed, and opinionated as you'd like. I actually would enjoy a nice discussion about this b/c I do find myself torn at times. I will save my opinions for a later time b/c I'm VERY tired right now and need to sleep.

[Jaketh]

I just finished the game tonight after 9 hours straight(check out my sleepy review on the review subforum) and i believe fully in augmentation. Yes it should have slight regulations but in the near future if this technology emerges from its infancy it should be not be stopped but explored and expanded on. (If the tech exists soon i plan on augmenting myself )

[Shaio]

Havent played the game.

fully believe we should be free to reshape our bodies however we wish, augment away i say, heck if an augmentation was useful enough id say make it mandatory.

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

This discussion is better suited for the Ethos forum.
Moved.

[Helm]

It would just be like a more radical form of cosmetic surgery I can't see why such a thing would be banned. Though over time the wealthy classes would probably change into a new superior human species or something, particularly if theres any genetic alteration involved.

[NotYetRegistered]

people should be free to choose but I wouldn't use augmentation because I don't really agree with it. It just seems unnatural to me.

What would be the line between human and robot? When do we stop being human?

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

I would give myself 4 more arms, and call myself the man-spider, to avoid being sued. It would be ironic, because I'm afraid of spiders .

If it's possible, no-one has a right to stop me, because it's my body.

[In3x]

people should be free to choose but I wouldn't use augmentation because I don't really agree with it. It just seems unnatural to me.

What would be the line between human and robot? When do we stop being human?

Is someone who has a prosthetic leg less human? I don't think we ever stop, but certainly technologies that could increase speed, stamina, strength or intelligence would hugely shape the way they think and act. I think being a ultra fit, insanely fast, super strong and hyper intelligent being would probably make you into a complete douchebag.

[molonthegreat]

I only see it as being positive for human evolution and people should be free to whatever they want with their bodies, I would probably wait before doing it until they fix the drug issue.

[The Dude]

What would be the line between human and robot? When do we stop being human?

There is no dividing line between a human being and a sufficiently advanced AI other than the material each is made of. So as far as moral objections go, this is a weak one and it presupposes that a line between humans and robots exists at all.

I only see it as being positive for human evolution and people should be free to whatever they want with their bodies, I would probably wait before doing it until they fix the drug issue.

Nothing is exclusively positive so undoubtedly there will be downsides. What will the consequences for say, athletics? We will need some strong rules and regulations to decide what falls under fair play and what doesn't. And how far do we want this to go? Our current imagination, as shown in fiction, appears to stretch no further than simply making limb-shaped and limb-sized augmentations to function as our old limbs except better. But why limit ourselves like that at all? If we can find out how to adapt the human body with mechanics at will, why not go all the way? Fourteen eyes, eight arms, tank treads for legs? How far do we want this to go?

[Shneckie]

I think aygmentation should be regulated to a strict degree. It should be mainly used for medical purposes or aesthetic purposes. Any thing that could potentially give someone improved performance that surpasses human capability should be strictly controlled.

[Gordon Freynman]

It would have to be strongly regulated to stop it from getting into the wrong hands, but other than that I can only see augmentation being a positive, especially in the field of medicine.

[VOP2288]

For my own opinion:

I find myself more leaning towards the idea of regulation. As with modern plastic surgery, augmentations in the HR world appear to be quite costly (both in the up-front cost and the cost of maintaining regular medical attention given the fact that the body begins to reject the augmentations) - not everyone can afford to undertake such a transformation. Thus I believe that such a situation like Helm described would happen: the social divide between the rich and the poor would grow even larger - those with wealth would augment themselves while the poor would remain entirely human. The wealthy would now not only enjoy the kind of rewards that come with having money but they would also by physically superior to those without augs.

Another reason I would support regulation would be augmentation's effect on the crime world. If criminal syndicates and organizations start outfitting their people with advancements to commit violence/theft/extortion/etc more effectively what does that mean for the world? Obviously the only way in which to combat this would be to augment law enforcement agencies and personnel. That however opens a whole new can of worms b/c what right would the government have to order people to become augmented? To give up pieces of themselves for the sake of doing their job.

Lastly I believe it should be regulated due to the great amount of unfairness that would occur. Those with augmentations (i.e. those that could afford them) would be given more opportunities than someone who remains human. Augmentated employees would be selected over non-augmentated ones, augmentated athletes would perform better than those without augs, etc etc. Anything and everything you've worked for, achieved, etc wouldn't mean a damn thing anymore. Someone who maybe spent their lives working hard and making sacrifices for the sake of their academic performance through college and medical school wouldn't be able to hold a light to some rich kid who got off the couch one day, forked over the money, and got an augmentation that makes him a perfect brain surgeon. Unless augmentations were affordable for everyone, safe, and universally accepted in society there would be a massive disparity in the realm of "fairness".

So yes, I believe it should be regulated.

There is no dividing line between a human being and a sufficiently advanced AI other than the material each is made of. So as far as moral objections go, this is a weak one and it presupposes that a line between humans and robots exists at all.

I disagree vehemently. There is a massive difference between an AI and a human that goes beyond what's on the surface. A human is birthed, grows, shapes its own physical appearance, decides it own route in life, makes friends, falls in love, has emotions, experiences pain, can have faith or spirituality, has a family, etc. An AI is capable of appearing to have these things (emotions, experience, etc) but in actuality what it's thinking (if it even thinks at all) and what it knows are simply the result of its programming.

Fourteen eyes, eight arms, tank treads for legs? How far do we want this to go?

So you'd totally be ok if that chick in your avatar pic had 12 eyes, 5 arms, and a mechanical lizard tail huh?

[The Dude]

I disagree vehemently. There is a massive difference between an AI and a human that goes beyond what's on the surface. A human is birthed, grows, shapes its own physical appearance, decides it own route in life, makes friends, falls in love, has emotions, experiences pain, can have faith or spirituality, has a family, etc. An AI is capable of appearing to have these things (emotions, experience, etc) but in actuality what it's thinking (if it even thinks at all) and what it knows are simply the result of its programming.

We are no different. Chemical stimuli in the brain control the majority of our urges and impulses. Do you experience yourself as a person with free will? Because when I started seriously reflecting on the actual freedom of my decisions I found a lot of my dispositions were governed not actually by what I would refer to as my will (whatever does one refer to with that word anyway?) but a lot more by neural processes that the entity I refer to as "myself" has no control over. We are just as much the result of a specific arrangement of commands as a sufficiently advanced AI would be, the only difference is that our commands are biochemical and those of an AI would be digital.

There are a lot of misconceptions we have about who we are, and every day we misrepresent our human existence by misleading language. You say that we have things such as emotions and experience, but in the end these terms are vague and ambiguous. When we say for example that we are happy, what are we really saying? What are we referring to, other than a vague nondescript sensation that we have so far been incapable of accurately describing? Our best attempts at descriptions have been nothing but collections of other equally vague words that may just aswell be synonyms.

The point being here that we cannot convincingly argue that an AI could not have the experiences and emotions that we have, if we don't even really know what these experiences and emotions are? That is, what they are constituted of.

So you'd totally be ok if that chick in your avatar pic had 12 eyes, 5 arms, and a mechanical lizard tail huh?

That was sort of exactly my point, so you misunderstood my intent there. There's a sort of common sense limit to what we want augmentation to be, but inevitably there would be nutjobs that would want to push further and try more. Do we really want people running around that have outfitted themselves in such manners that they couldn't reasonably be called human beings anymore?

At any rate, as far as augmentations go, its something I both welcome and am cautious about. Would I get prosthetics like in Deus Ex if they were available? Hell yes. If I lose a limb for whatever reason you bet I'm getting it replaced. Am I in favour of all sorts of neural augmentations that allow our brains to perform better? Yes. But we have to have a clear guideline within which we want to operate. I consider myself a transhumanist, with focus on the humanist part. The aim should be to transcend as humans, not to transcend human existance entirely.

[VOP2288]

We are no different.

We are. Sorry but I can forsee this as being something that the two of us will never totally agree or understand one another on. Sure, you can compare how the human mind operates to how an AI would be programmed and function but I believe them to still be entirely different from one another.

There are a lot of misconceptions we have about who we are, and every day we misrepresent our human existence by misleading language. You say that we have things such as emotions and experience, but in the end these terms are vague and ambiguous. When we say for example that we are happy, what are we really saying? What are we referring to, other than a vague nondescript sensation that we have so far been incapable of accurately describing? Our best attempts at descriptions have been nothing but collections of other equally vague words that may just aswell be synonyms.

Perhaps our inability to formulate words and express these complex emotions is something that makes us human?

That was sort of exactly my point, so you misunderstood my intent there.

Oh I didn't misunderstand you. I was making a point and answering your question regarding that tid-bit. The reason why most people will not go all out in such a manner as adding robotic octopus arms and 7 eyes is b/c no matter what we, as humans, will still generally find such aesthetic changes to be....unattractive.

[The Dude]

We are. Sorry but I can forsee this as being something that the two of us will never totally agree or understand one another on. Sure, you can compare how the human mind operates to how an AI would be programmed and function but I believe them to still be entirely different from one another.

Way too early in the discussion for such concessions Unless you're simply trying to get rid of me, of course. But you can be honest in that case and no offense will be taken. I'm curious as to why you believe them to be different? Leibniz' Law is a very helpful tool in this: if A and B share all the same properties, they are equal. So in this case, if a synthetic mind and an organic mind possessed the same level of intelligence, on what do we base the belief that they are somehow still different?

That there would exist a difference in species is clear as day. Artificial intelligence would not be human intelligence and there would be differences in how an AI would approach a situation and how a human would. Nevertheless, the idea that our intelligence is so magically elusive that it could not be artificially replicated seems ludicrous to me. Either the underlying foundation of the workings of our mind are all exclusively material, or they are possessed of something mystical that we are incapable of mimicing. I very, very much doubt that the latter is true. And if it is not true, then necessarily we should be able to recreate our level of intelligence by mimicing the processes required in whatever way we are capable of doing so.

Perhaps our inability to formulate words and express these complex emotions is something that makes us human?

Just as your average computer's inability to run Battlefield 3 at full settings is something that makes it a computer? I don't think that what we can't do should be in any way held as indicative of our nature. Consider that we are a very advanced lifeform with very little understanding of exactly what we are. We have to reverse engineer ourselves as we go in order to form any understanding of what we are and that is precisely what thousands of years worth of philosophy, then theology, and then science have attempted to do.

And that's precisely what makes us human (read: that is what demonstrates that we use those faculties which we have labelled as characteristic of humans): our relentless drive at understanding ourselves and the world around us. In a way, it's a survival mechanic: the better we know how the world around us responds to what we do, and how we respond to the world around us in turn, the better we become at adapting ourselves (this loops back into the ethics of transhumanism: adaption of the human body for purposes of increased performance. When it becomes a greater burden than a blessing, a line's been crossed). So the last thing we should ever do is settle for an inability as something that endearingly bestows on us a presupposed character, ie something that we get told we are.

Oh I didn't misunderstand you. I was making a point and answering your question regarding that tid-bit. The reason why most people will not go all out in such a manner as adding robotic octopus arms and 7 eyes is b/c no matter what we, as humans, will still generally find such aesthetic changes to be....unattractive.

Oh, right. Of course. Well, you're probably right about that though I've always liked to think that there will be at least some who throw all social norms overboard and go out on a limb regardless, no matter the situation or context.

EDIT: Also, seriously, knock it off with the 40K bollocks. There's a whole subforum dedicated to fanboying, this thread however has the potential to generate a really interesting discussion. Don't derail with this non-philosophical idiocy about the God-Emperor and whatever else again. As much as I love 40k, let's not pretend that it's somehow capable of generating a debate that goes beyond which space marine legion is the best.

[Ozzmosis]

Well that's the difference isn't it? Religion in Warhammer is undeniably true, due to the plethora of worldly signs and obviously blessed priests (not to mention actual appearances from the gods themselves)
Here in our universe, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that any 'god' is at all necessary!
And about augmentation... It's basically the same argument as genetically engineering humans - the rich will enhance themselves and the poor who stay mundane humans will be discriminated etc etc (it's like GATTACA!)

[VOP2288]

Way too early in the discussion for such concessions Unless you're simply trying to get rid of me, of course.

Oh no I'm not trying to get rid of you - I'm just pointing out the obvious here ahead of time - I highly doubt either of us is going to change the other's mind no matter how many back and forths we go haha.

So in this case, if a synthetic mind and an organic mind possessed the same level of intelligence, on what do we base the belief that they are somehow still different?

Given your views you may find this silly but bear with me. I'm not much of a religious person however I do possess a sort of belief in spirituality and the existence of something within humans that makes us inherently different from all the other life forms which inhabit our world. Call it a soul if you'd like. In that line of thought then it would be impossible for an AI to possess such spirituality and a soul. You may be able to program it to believe it has a soul and believe in chosen religious/theological ideals but it will never truly be able to replicate the spirituality of a human being.

To expand on a previous comment about experience - an AI and human differs quite a lot in this regard. As you made mention above we, as human beings, learn from and act accordingly to our environments. Depending on how our surroundings react to our presence we will alter our own actions to best fit the situation and keep with us this knowledge. Thus, as a species, our intelligence, routines, actions, attitudes, beliefs are unique from one another depending on our environment whether it be as significant as comparing Mongolian pastoralists to European farmers or comparing your own life and lifestyle to one of your own friends down the street. We are learners and we adapt.

An AI on the other hand cannot possibly do this.

An AI is yet again programmed to think and act a certain way. Once the "on" switch is flipped it is what it is. It's intelligence, actions, and beliefs are the result of hard-coded data bestowed upon it by an individual or a group. An AI does not learn or shape it's intelligence and beliefs based on the world around it. No matter what environmental pressures are applied to it it will act according to its programming. Depending on the amount of detail put into the programming, the AI will certainly be able to react to different stimuli but the effects of this stimuli will not be absorbed (as they are with humans).

This sort of leads me into another topic: choice. I don't believe an AI can be blessed with the idea of choice that we humans possess. Common sense would assume that an AI would be programmed to react to certain stimuli a pre-determined way or possibly a set of pre-determined ways (if the stimuli changes). Once the stimuli occurs the AI will carry out the best method in order to deal with it.

An example: an advanced AI controls a chemical facility. One day a leak occurs. The AI is programmed with the proper intelligence and ability to seal off the leak and thus save the facility (knowledge and power given to it by it's human creator). However an unfortunate individual becomes trapped within the zones possibly contaminated by the leak. The zone in which the individual is trapped has not been contaminated yet but could eventually be and thus it is programmed into the AI that it must be sealed off in the event that the leak spreads.

The AI would not possess choice here. It's programming would not allow it to take the risk of opening the zone for the sake of the trapped individual - whether or not the zone has been compromised yet. The AI will not care if this individual is someone's wife/husband, it will not care if he/she has children at home, it will not care if he/she was about to finish paying off their mortgage. It will care about what it's been programmed to care about: sealing off zones of the facility in the event of a chemical leak.

A human on the other hand has choice. A human can make the choice of "damning it all" and opening the doors - possibly spreading the leak further. An AI will do what's it programmed to do and will not deviate from its programming no matter what. An AI would not make exceptions here and there. It will act and act accordingly. It may approach a situation in different ways but the end result will always be the same.

Just as your average computer's inability to run Battlefield 3 at full settings is something that makes it a computer? I don't think that what we can't do should be in any way held as indicative of our nature.

As odd as it might sound I do think that some of our flaws is what makes us characteristically "human". Would you not agree that an advanced AI without such flaws would appear and act differently from you and I?

We humans are flawed. We make poor choices, we make mistakes. As unfortunate as that might be it is something that makes us "human". I would believe that an advanced AI would not be able to make mistakes or make poor decisions. Why? B/c, honestly, why would someone create something that could potentially harm itself or carry out actions which derail from its programmed purpose?

Consider that we are a very advanced lifeform with very little understanding of exactly what we are. We have to reverse engineer ourselves as we go in order to form any understanding of what we are and that is precisely what thousands of years worth of philosophy, then theology, and then science have attempted to do.

That right there is another difference between humans and an advanced AI. Humans seek answers to questions ranging from "what should I wear today?" to "why are we here?" An AI would not have these. It would know where it came from, what purpose it serves, and how to react/respond to different stimuli. It possess the answers from the get go while humans seek the answers to their questions over the course of their lives and sometimes they find them and sometimes they don't (and it's experiences like these which shape them as individuals).


Lastly, there's no doubt in my mind that an advanced AI would be superior to humans. And it's that distinction that also supports my point. While humans have their own tiers of inferior and superior within their own species I think it's safe to say that an advanced AI would be leagues above our most "superior" offerings - a rift so significant as comparing apes to humans. That being said - since we do not consider apes to be human then we cannot accept an advanced AI that looks, feels, and seems human.

EDIT: Also, seriously, knock it off with the 40K bollocks. There's a whole subforum dedicated to fanboying, this thread however has the potential to generate a really interesting discussion. Don't derail with this non-philosophical idiocy about the God-Emperor and whatever else again. As much as I love 40k, let's not pretend that it's somehow capable of generating a debate that goes beyond which space marine legion is the best.

Seconded - take it elsewhere boys. Lest I become an unfortunate dick and start reporting 40k-related posts.

[Banzai!!!]

Way I see it if it was intended for us to have robotic limbs and physical enhacements wouldn't we have come into existance with such things in the first place?

Also some of you mention how it would be good as it would help with medical science and help those with missing limbs but I think it's quite naive to think that such technology would not be given and used by the military.

At the end of the day what is the point of augmenting yourself trying to live longer etc when eventually we will all die anyway. By augmenting yourself all you are doing is prolonging the inevitable at the cost of becoming more machine.

Now some of you might ask whats wrong with machines? and i agree currently there's nothing wrong with them but if we were to augment ourselves we may end up causing the singularity to happen where machines are able to think for themselves to the point where they are given the choice to kill.

Thus the real question is Should we give the choice for augmentations/machines the choice to take life away and are we just asking for our species to be destroyed by such devices?

[The Dude]

Oh no I'm not trying to get rid of you - I'm just pointing out the obvious here ahead of time - I highly doubt either of us is going to change the other's mind no matter how many back and forths we go haha.

Fair enough. At the very least though, consider where I'm coming from.

Given your views you may find this silly but bear with me. I'm not much of a religious person however I do possess a sort of belief in spirituality and the existence of something within humans that makes us inherently different from all the other life forms which inhabit our world. Call it a soul if you'd like. In that line of thought then it would be impossible for an AI to possess such spirituality and a soul. You may be able to program it to believe it has a soul and believe in chosen religious/theological ideals but it will never truly be able to replicate the spirituality of a human being.

Question: if an AI to believes it has a soul, how does it differ from a human who believes he has one? Let me put it like this: are you not an AI who has a soul? Since if the workings of our brain can be reduced to stricly material explanations, however complex those explanations may be, then what is the real difference between an intelligence that we call artificial, and a human mind? Are they not both the same, except that they came about differently?

To expand on a previous comment about experience - an AI and human differs quite a lot in this regard. As you made mention above we, as human beings, learn from and act accordingly to our environments. Depending on how our surroundings react to our presence we will alter our own actions to best fit the situation and keep with us this knowledge. Thus, as a species, our intelligence, routines, actions, attitudes, beliefs are unique from one another depending on our environment whether it be as significant as comparing Mongolian pastoralists to European farmers or comparing your own life and lifestyle to one of your own friends down the street. We are learners and we adapt.

An AI on the other hand cannot possibly do this.

An AI is yet again programmed to think and act a certain way. Once the "on" switch is flipped it is what it is. It's intelligence, actions, and beliefs are the result of hard-coded data bestowed upon it by an individual or a group. An AI does not learn or shape it's intelligence and beliefs based on the world around it. No matter what environmental pressures are applied to it it will act according to its programming. Depending on the amount of detail put into the programming, the AI will certainly be able to react to different stimuli but the effects of this stimuli will not be absorbed (as they are with humans).

A few presuppositions to tackle once again.

AI cannot learn and adapt because they are programmed to think and act is what you argue. Simply following a script however is not intelligence, even though a sufficiently advanced script may give us the appearance that it is. True intelligence is a constant synthesis: a freeform joining and separating of existing concepts and ideas to produce new ones. That is why intelligence grows over time: the more there is to synthesise, the more advanced the ideas a brain produces.

So when we are talking about AI, we are talking about a true intelligence like ours, though one that did not just happen to come about but was purposefully engineered into existence.

Now imagine the following: if an AI understands the world around it by crafting digital code that represents physical stimuli and sensory information, then would it not be the case with a truly intelligent AI that the moment it would come up short in a certain situation and find itself without the digital language required to properly represent the situation presented to it, it would start to synthesise older pieces of data until something is created that sufficiently allows the AI to overcome its hurdles?

And is that not exactly what we also do? You may know this process by another word: believing. All our actions are based upon the underlying belief that we what we do adequately corresponds with what the world requires of us. And the moment it doesn't, we are forced to search our memory to find new and creative solutions. Do we have to postulate entities such as souls or divine sparks for this to be a process that makes good sense? No, we don't. And that's when Occam's Razor kicks into effect: do not unnecessarily multiply the amount of entities required for an explanation to work.

But let me try and challenge you further: neuro and digital science have been hard at work the last few years to digitalise human brain signals. That is to say, there are already those applications that function as a link between the human brain and other hardware. We can control physical objects, such as a medical exoskeleton that has been in development for a few years now, literally with our mind by thinking those things that translate into the proper digital input that the suit needs to move a joint. Now this is all very minute in a certain way. The neural signals that get digitalised are tiny in comparison to the entirety of our brain activity. But let us suppose that now that the way has been found to adequately perform this translation, we will one day be able to map a complete and functional human brain in digital language. And then we recreate from that digital language a completely artificial brain with all the same functions as ours.

Then we cast this digital mind, as we should probably now call it, into a physical shell, say a series of prosthetics linked together by a single highly advanced skeleton with a nerve system, ie equipped with the wiring to send digital signals wherever they need to go. Now this digital mind in combination with his completely artificial body is capable of not only controlling his body as he should, but also thinks and reasons like a human being would.

Is this creature, in the truest sense of the word, somehow less than a human simply because it does not possess a socalled soul? That over time it would start to experience the world in a different fashion is of course inevitable: it may at first consider itself to be a human being but because of how actual human beings respond to it it will soon enough learn that it is something else entirely and adapt its expectations accordingly. Given enough time, that will eventually translate into a sense of identity that likely radically differs from ours. But the point still stands: in every sense of the word would this creature be our equal: it can do all the things that we do, because it is born from literally our own human body as a template.

I owe you a response to the topic of choice as I'm not able to give it to you right now. It's a very interesting topic in its own right and I may even start another thread for it. For now I'm leaving it at this as I am short on time.