Lifeboat Foundation

Another week, another exoskeleton on Kickstarter.

A Shanghai-based startup called Hypershell is trying its luck with an AI-powered exoskeleton that promises to take a big load off the next time you’re on a hike or run — and they say it’s even small enough to fit inside a backpack.

But the jury is still out on whether it’s anything more than a sci-fi-looking fashion accessory. To anyone thinking of backing, all the usual caveats about crowdfunding apply — it might not work at all, nevermind well, and it’s not uncommon to receive nothing at all.

Nita Farahany, professor of law and philosophy at Duke University, has written a new book, The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology (Macmillan), which explores how our lives may be impacted by the use of brain-computer interfaces and neural monitoring devices.

Farahany argues that the development and use of neurotech presents a challenge to our current understanding of human rights. Devices designed to measure, record, and influence our mental processes—used by us or on us—may infringe on our rights to mental privacy, freedom of thought, and mental self-determination. She calls this collection of freedoms the right to cognitive liberty. IEEE Spectrum spoke with Farahany recently about the future and present of neurotech and how to weigh its promises—enhanced capabilities, for instance, including bionics and prosthetics and even a third arm —against its potential to interfere with people’s mental sovereignty.

Author, Nita FarahanyMerritt Chesson.

When people suffer spinal cord injuries and lose mobility in their limbs, it’s a neural signal processing problem. The brain can still send clear electrical impulses and the limbs can still receive them, but the signal gets lost in the damaged spinal cord.

The Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE)—a collaboration of San Diego State University with the University of Washington (UW) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—is working on an implantable brain chip that can record neural electrical signals and transmit them to receivers in the limb, bypassing the damage and restoring movement. Recently, these researchers described in a study published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports a critical improvement to the technology that could make it more durable, last longer in the body and transmit clearer, stronger signals.

The technology, known as a brain-computer interface, records and transmits signals through electrodes, which are tiny pieces of material that read signals from brain chemicals known as neurotransmitters. By recording brain signals at the moment a person intends to make some movement, the interface learns the relevant electrical signal pattern and can transmit that pattern to the limb’s nerves, or even to a prosthetic limb, restoring mobility and motor function.

A team from Korea created more flexible neural electrodes that minimize tissue damage and still transmit clear brain signals.

Electrodes placed in the brain record neural activity, and can help treat neural diseases like Parkinson’s and epilepsy. Interest is also growing in developing better brain-machine interfaces, in which electrodes can help control prosthetic limbs. Progress in these fields is hindered by limitations in electrodes, which are relatively stiff and can damage soft brain tissue.

Designing smaller, gentler electrodes that still pick up brain signals is a challenge because brain signals are so weak. Typically, the smaller the electrode, the harder it is to detect a signal. However, a team from the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology in Korea developed new probes that are small, flexible and read brain signals clearly.

A paralyzed individual controls a neuroprosthetic without daily recalibration.

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The Six Million Dollar Man is an American science fiction and action television series about a former astronaut, Colonel Steve Austin, portrayed by American actor Lee Majors. Austin has superhuman strength due to bionic implants and is employed as a secret agent by a fictional U.S. government office named OSI The series was based on the Martin Caidin novel Cyborg, which. was the working title of the series during pre-production.

Continue reading “The Six Million Dollar Man Opening and Closing Theme (With Intro) HD Surround” »

We had a wonderful group of international and interdisciplinary speakers at Saint Mary’s University on March 31 to April 1, 2017. They all took time out from their very busy schedules to come to Halifax to discuss robots and artificial intelligence at the Cyborg Futures Workshop. Academics from literary theory, digital culture, anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, robotics, and evolutionary biology, along with students and the public, convened for a lively discussion about technologies that are impacting us all.

This workshop is part of a larger SSHRC-funded project–Where Science Meets Fiction: Social Robots and the Ethical Imagination–that is about shifting the conversation about robots and AI, which has been animated by fiction but dominated in the real world by the military and industry. Opening the discussion up to wider social and cultural contexts–from the impact of technology on human relations; to non-human animals, the environment and trash; to racism, imperialism and misogyny; to automation, labour and capitalism; to killer robots and the military; to the problematic collapse of science and fiction—this workshop considered both the infrastructure currently being laid that is forcing us down a troubling path and imaginative alternatives to it. What follows cannot possibly do justice to the richness and complexity of the talks, so please click on the hyperlinks to listen to them.

Human Cyborg — We’ve all seen Cyborgs in Hollywood blockbusters. But it turns out these fictional beings aren’t so far-fetched.

Human Cyborg (2020)
Director: Jacquelyn Marker.
Writers: Kyle McCabe, Christopher Webb Young.
Stars: Justin Abernethy, Robert Armiger, John Donoghue.
Genre: Documentary.
Country: United States.
Language: English.
Also Known As: Cyborg Revolution.
Release Date: 2020 (United States)

Continue reading “Human Cyborg | Documentary | Transhumanism | Neuroscience” »

HUMANS in the next 100 years could be part-machine, part-flesh creatures with brain chips and bionic limbs and organs in a vision of “cyborgs” once described by Elon Musk.

Men and women born around 2100 could live in a world very different to ours as humans may be totally connected to the internet and meshed together with artificial intelligence.

Mobile phones would no longer be needed — as everything you now do with your smartphone will now be done with a chip in your brain.