#E58 The Future of Humanity With Luke Robert Mason

Read the HYPERSCALE transcript

Briar: Luke welcome to Hyperscale. I'm so happy to have you here in Dubai.

Luke: Well, I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to finally meet you in person. We were talking about doing this virtually.

Briar: Like pen pals.

Luke: We are email pals, we're pen pals and I've been watching every single Hyperscale episode, so I'm quite excited to actually be part of one finally.

Briar: Wonderful and you put me in touch with Steve, who I did a fascinating, yet very dystopian podcast with.

Luke: I've known Steve since, I think it's been over 12 years now. I've known Steve since I was an undergraduate student at the University of Warwick. I met him when I was 18 years old. And Steve is a unique thinker because he's constantly thinking about the future. But more importantly, what I love about Steve is that he's constantly asking the question of what does it mean to be human in the 21st century? And I've kind of taken that mantle now as his PhD student. I'm exploring that question in my own way.

Briar: So today we're going to be talking all things humanoid robots, transhumanism. We've obviously got a lot of mutual friends in the space as well. But maybe this is a good place to start. What do you think it does mean to be human?

Luke: Oh, that's such a wonderful question because that's kind of the project. It's the project of the 21st century. In fact, it's the project of being human, is to find out what it means to be doing this human thing. From human being to human doing. I mean, we are two humans doing the thing of being human right now. And the question is, how do we understand that? How do we understand that project and how do we engage with that project? And how do we extend that project of being human through the doing of humans?

Briar: I'm not following. I was like human… human doing…?

Luke: Well, the wonderful thing about human is that it's this category. And it's a category for a way to talk about a species. We're homo sapiens, we are human, but it's also a label that we can apply to us. Many people didn't become human. They weren't considered human for a large part of history, A large part of time. For example, slaves weren't considered human. They were assigned the category of human. And our ability to assign that category to look at certain effects and certain ways of being as having the status of human or not having the status of human means that we can start thinking about what other sorts of things, what other sorts of beings could potentially become human, such as maybe robots or even animals.

Briar: Yes. Very interesting. I think given the fact that technology is now evolving at a super exponential pace, like these kind of questions are very important. And when it comes to robots, so humanoid robots, and this is something I'm very excited to be speaking to you about. Tell us a little bit more about the research that you've been doing in this arena. 

Luke: The thing I love about humanoid robots is that humanoid robots tell us something about what it means to be human. So by looking at something that is traditionally considered non-human, we can start asking ourselves questions about what is it in that robot that is human-like? And by identifying those human-like qualities, we can start realizing what we value about ourselves. So humanoid robots are in the image and likeness of us. And we've heard that phrase before. Humans, arguably were built in the image and likeness of God. So the human project is to build something like us. And in that process of building, we're learning so much about us. So, for example I know you've talked with the wonderful Sophia, the robot. You had a zoom call.

Briar: Oh, my friend. I love Sophia.

Luke: Yeah. I love the fact that you two are best friends.

 Briar: We bonded, human robot bonding big time.

 Luke: Well you see the wonderful thing is how you are describing your relationship with Sophia. We've had a bonding. You see Sophia as part of your moral world.

Briar: It was very interesting, even speaking to her and I won't lie, going on this. So we both got microchips. We both got implanted together. So I met her in Philadelphia. And yeah, the first thing was the microchip implantation. And then Sophia looks at me and she's like, Briar. She's like, let's get piercings. So the next thing I know, I'm getting my ear pierced. And then Sophia's like, Briar, let's go get tattoos. So my producer had to pull out her phone, find a tattoo parlor nearby, and the next thing I know, I'm having a blimming tattoo with a robot. So we got little matching lightning bolt tattoos. But the interesting part about hanging out with Sophia is I couldn't help but feel almost like she was real.

Luke: Yeah. You see, that's that feeling that I'm interested in exploring. What is it that you encounter when you encounter a humanoid robot? Because our immediate thing is to see it as human. It has all the human-like features. I assume that you are a human. I've got no proof for that. I don't know that you are conscious, there's no way I can prove that you possess. 

 Briar: Well, here's where I tell you, I'm not quite human.

Luke: I did have my suspicions, I must be honest, with the silver dresses. 

Briar: I know I'm fake. I'm a metaverse avatar. What can I say, it's sort of mind upload. I did that 200 years ago. 

Luke: This is what I want to know. Do you want to become fully digital? 

Briar: Yes. I would love to get more modifications. And if anything, I'm just slightly upset about the fact that the microchip is maybe one of the only things that I'm prepared to do other than chop my arm off or my leg, or kind of do what Kevin Warwick did and slit open my arm and put this microchip on. So perhaps I'm connected with my producer, Olivia.

 Luke: Interesting. So you are prepared to cut off your arm to replace it with a prosthetic?

 Briar: I might do in the future. Not right now, but certainly in the future, if there was a way for me to modify my body in order for me to keep living. How is it so dissimilar, really when we think about it from say, like a pacemaker or some other kind of modification in our body that helps us keep living?

 Luke: Yeah. You see my suspicion and I don't want to say belief, but my suspicion is technology will progress so that eventually the sorts of external limbs that you'll be able to get will be bio-technological anyway. They'll be indistinguishable from your arm. So why would you cut off your arm for essentially exactly the same sort of arm?

Briar: Well, I think there might be something wrong with my arm in the future or maybe I might choose to have some kind of bodily modification so that I can do something better. Maybe in the future we might have bionic legs that allow us to run faster or maybe explore over rocks on Mars or something like this.

 Luke: Well, let me give you a little bit of a warning. So I met a wonderful individual who's unfortunately passed now called Nigel Ackland. And Nigel Ackland was the pioneering pilot of the B-bionic prosthetic limb. So the B-bionic prosthetic is one of the most advanced prosthetic limbs that you can get access to. And Nigel didn't see himself as a patient. Now, just to give you a little bit of context. Nigel had a traumatic injury and he lost his arm, and it was replaced with a B-bionic. And Nigel used to come to my events. I used to run these events called Virtual Futures in the UK, these salon events. And he would come along and he would show his prosthetic arm to the audience, and all the audience would look at the prosthetic arm with awe and ask the question of how do I get one of those? Oh my God, that looks so interesting. 

Briar: They wanted them?

Luke: They wanted the arm. They had something that we eventually went on to call, they had prosthetic envy. They had this thing that we would eventually go on to call prosthetic envy.

Briar: It's interesting because Victoria Modesta, she obviously has a bionic leg and oh my God, she has like these diamonds on it. She has these really cool, very interesting fashionable looking limbs.

 Luke: Yeah. She's amazing. I interviewed her at the VNA, the Victorian Albert Museum in London as part of the London Design Festival. And the most interesting thing about that interview is Victoria text me just before the interview, and she asked me, she just goes, do you mind if I don't wear one of my beautifully designed legs? And I text her back and go, well, I hope you don't mind that I'm wearing jeans. But what she was suggesting from that statement was that the expectation that the audience has is that I wear these beautiful, I think the phrase you'll know this, is roski crystal, is roski?

Briar: Oh yes beautiful.

 Luke: These beautiful Swarovski crystal legs. That's the audience expectation of me. That's the audience's expectation of me as a prototype for the future human. And Nigel had the same issue. Nigel would, afterwards, after the event, would take him to the bar and he'd go, look, this prosthetic arm, everybody wants one. Everybody thinks it's a good idea. Everybody thinks it's going to turn them into a cyborg. And yes, sure, I can turn my wrist 365 degrees, so I kind of feel enhanced, but what I feel more than anything else is different. You see, the thing with this prosthetic limb is the interface. The interface with the body. So he had a traumatic injury. If you have a traumatic injury, you have very sharp bone and very soft skin. 

So you've got a very heavy piece of technology attached with a little, it's like a little suction cup sock attached to a part of your body where the skin is still forming. So it's rubbing throughout the day, you are sweating between the skin and the prosthetic, and it really hurts. So the feeling that he has being this kind of cyborg personality is a feeling of pain between the interface of the prosthetic and the arm. And the other thing he said to me is, yes, I feel like I'm different. I feel like I'm a cyborg. But one thing you got to know, Luke, is wiping your ass with a prosthetic limb is really dangerous.

Briar: So happy he told you that.

  Luke: And it suddenly sort of brings it back to the real. We're so quick to celebrate these individuals who are going through these processes of transforming the body, who are engaging in this thing called alternative anatomies. But there's a reality behind the scenes, we can present them as the future human. But there are struggles that come with interfacing technology with the body. You so wonderfully shared with me that your chip is traveling right now.

 Briar: I was telling Luke earlier that my microchip in my hand is like, it's moved an inch towards my arm and I keep trying to push it and push it back up. And the other day I was kind of like, oh, this is so gross. Like, come on. Get back up there.

 Luke: Yeah. See, these are all the challenges that we're going to have to face. Now, the wonderful thing about what you've done, Briar, the wonderful thing that I love about the biohacking community, as they're called, is that they are the pioneers.

 Briar: We're trying. Yeah. I do feel in this instance, like, it would be better if it just evolved that little bit faster. Like what would happen in the future if these bionic limbs were better than the limbs that we have now? 

Luke: But we need people like you doing it now, doing it early, being the first adopters.

Briar: What do you think the next modification I should get should be?

 Luke: Ooh, the next modification you should get. You see, you've got the one that is at least arguably safe. So a lot of people have had it done, there's office spaces in certain parts of Europe where they require their employees to have chips so they can get into their building.

 Briar: And so many people during covid time, in Sweden, they were using it to get onto the trains. In fact, during that time, I was like, so against them, I was like, everyone's being microchipped. The government's going to microchip us against our will. And then I did a complete 360 or 180 and got microchipped myself. 

 Luke: Here's the thing. And this is sort of how I see you as a individual who's contributing to the future, you understand aesthetics. So that chip, it's not just practical. For you it's a fashion statement. It's a performative promise that this is the sort of future that I want to live in. Now the sorts of things you can do with it, get on a train, make some micropayments. Once you get to the level of functionality of that, it's like, well, why don't you just use your bank card or your RFID tag in your phone, do you really need the chip? Well then for you it's a fashion statement. It's like that tattoo, or it's like your earrings.

Briar: Exactly. I think it will be very interesting in the future when we might have brain computer interfaces for instance. I'm so sick of using my cell phone or my mobile or whatever bloody country we're in when we call it whatever. I'm so sick of using it, like my thumb is constantly sore. I feel like it slows me down. My laptop slows me down. Like brain computer interfaces. Someone asked me the other day, would I get one? And I said, yes. In fact, I already sent my application into Neuralink and I got denied because I'm healthy. 

 Luke: Well, here's the thing. We need people like you who are willing to do those hyper experimental trials. Essentially what you're doing, Briar is you're turning your body into a laboratory and you have this platform. You have Hyperscale, you have the YouTube channel where you can share your experiences so others can realize what it's like. And that's what I love about the Biohack community. They treat their body as a laboratory. But more importantly, they're open about sharing their real experiences. And the fact that you shared that the chip is traveling, that concern is so important that you are honest about what these tools and technologies and devices are doing. 

 Briar: Luke was very frightened when I told him this before, you looked rather horrified. Luke: I've heard that people, their chip does travel up their arm. And that can be quite a problem. Now I can't confirm that fact. The people you should talk to are Amal Graafstra at Dangerous Things. Despite calling his company Dangerous Things, Amal really works with ethics. He's really concerned because partly he runs a company that provides microchips and RFID chips that they can implant into the body. But more importantly, he's ensuring that people are doing this sort of thing ethically. 

Briar: He is, yeah. Amal is great. He's very accessible, very keen to talk, and he really does see a very strong application for microchips as well. And, it's really helping, I guess, help bridge that gap. And I know he's really excited about payment chips especially. 

 Luke: Yeah. He's an interesting individual. But the question you asked was, what should I have done next? What should my next enhancement be? Now I've been following Brian Johnson quite closely. A lot of people have very visceral opinions of Brian Johnson. Brian Johnson made quite a lot of money selling a company called Braintree. And now he's again using his body as a laboratory to try to live forever. He wants the end of dying. He has this movement called the Don't Die Movement. And he, again, is doing all these hyper-experimental trials to see how it allows him to look younger and arguably live longer. And the great thing that he's doing in a similar way that you are doing with your YouTube channel, is that he's being open to sharing both the successes and the failures. So you may have seen recently, and maybe you can put an image on the screen, his face is expanding and exploding. He did this hyper-experimental trial to make his skin look younger, but the effects of that was his skin blew up.

Briar: So frightening.

Luke: Yeah. So maybe you'd want to consider trying to explore some of these longevity technologies. The question is what's at stake? Do you really want to do a Hyperscale podcast looking like this going forward, “I'm currently undergoing hyper-expiermental trials, but I'm going to live forever”. I don't think that's something you would want to do. As someone who quite clearly cares about aesthetics, the aestheticization of the future.

Briar: What would you do? Would you do any modifications?

Luke: What would I do?

Briar: You said no to getting a chip, didn't you? And why is that?

Luke: I said no to doing a chip because I was at a conference called Body Hacks (BDYHAX) in Austin. This was this wonderful conference organized by an individual who calls himself Dru-id. And it was in Austin, Texas. I met some of the biohack community. And we were having I forget what it's called, a chips and beer party. And they offered to chip me. And of course, we'd all had quite a lot to drink, and I didn't think it was probably the right time to start having medical procedures after quite a few drinks. So I decided to decline. Part of the reason was that they were slightly worried about getting it wrong and then it traveling through the body. The other reason I haven't had any modifications right now, and the other reason that I've never say spat into a tube and got my genetics tested, is because of something called nocebo. Do you know what nocebo is? 

Briar: No please tell me.

Luke: Have you heard of placebo? 

Briar: I have. 

Luke: So the placebo effect is where you take a sugar pill and you're told it's going to make you healthier and you suddenly feel healthier. The human brain has these amazing superpowers in that way. Nocebo is the opposite of that. That's the negative effects. So nocebo is, I give you a sugar pill, Briar, and I tell you that within 30 minutes it's going to make you feel queasy and sick. And you take the sugar pill and you get up and you walk around, you start looking in the lights, and you feel queasy. But it's a sugar pill. It's had no effect but telling you that means that the brain is able to convince your body of that effect.

Briar: Isn't the brain interesting?

 Luke: Well, this is the thing. Hacking the brain in that way through neuroplasticity and through almost language and suggestion is something I'm fascinated by. But because of nocebo existing, that's why I've been scared of things like genetic testing. So for example, if I was to spit in a tube and send it off to a company like 23 and me, who I know are going through some controversy right now.

Briar: Yeah. All your data is out to be claimed. 

Luke: So they're already going through some issues. The reason I didn't spit in the tube was because I was so worried about finding out something negative. I was so worried that I would find out that I would have like a 80% chance of having a heart attack by the time I'm 35 years old. And I would be so stressed about having this heart attack, that that stress would cause a thing called self-fulfilling prophecy and I would eventually have that heart attack. There's something about not knowing, and that applies to how we think about the future. We're obsessed to know what is coming next, but sometimes what's interesting is not spending your time doing foresight, but it's about reconnecting with the concerns of the present. what are we concerned about today and how will that project forward into the future?

 It's all well and good to kind of transport us 50 years out, or transport us 30 odd years out to 2050, and then play in this space of possibility. But sometimes thinking about the future has to start with the present. Looking at the signals now. As William Gibson said, we only see the future through the rear view mirror. The past and the present are the raw materials through which we can form the future. All of the things you are concerned by are concerns that we've had, human concerns we've had in the past and currently in the present.

Briar: And something you were talking about before as well, is the fact that dystopian taless. Tell us about the futurist that you've been speaking to, who, I believe he was talking to somebody who paints the picture in a very positive light. Yet really struggles to get reach because it's so positive.

Luke: Well, see, these are the challenges of trying to tell these narratives in the current media environment in which we're in. Dystopia does very well. You know the TV show, Black Mirror, have you seen Black Mirror? 

Briar: I love it. I feel like I want to live in Black Mirror.

Luke: Well, which episode is the question?

Briar: I liked the digital twin one, that was so frightening.

Luke: Yeah. So you have the aesthetics of someone who would live in a Alex Garland movie or a Black Mirror episode. The interesting thing about Black Mirror is how the term, where the term comes from, Black Mirror, it's referring to the mirror of your phone. So when you turn your screen off, you have a black mirror, you can see your reflection in your screen. It's also in reference to scrying mirrors. Do you know about the black mirrors that magicians like John Dee used in the early Elizabethan times? So there was a gentleman called John Dee, and John Dee was Elizabeth the first magician, and he had a scrying mirror, and then he had this black mirror, and it's highly polished obsidian. And he used that to look into the future, to predict the future. And predicting the future was this magical occult, almost like process.

 Today we do the same thing. We stare into our shiny, glowing rectangles to try to see the future, to escape our present. Whether that's immediately, we might feel bad about a feeling or we might want distraction. And we go straight to the electro-labidimo parasite, the phone. We escape into the digital realm. Something that you so desperately want to do as an embodied individual. We escape there. But these devices, they do characterize our relationship with the future. So in other words, if you can't tell the futuristic narrative in short form, if you can't tell it really quickly, then it doesn't get over. You need to use the biases of the media environment in which we're currently in. And that's what Hyperscale does so well.

 The podcast does really well, but you cut everything up into small videos to try to, I guess, propagandize the sorts of future that you want to see. Now, the interesting thing about Black Mirror the TV show is how Black Mirror is used as both a noun to refer to the TV show, but also as a verb. People walk around and see something in the present and go, oh, that's a bit black mirror. It's the language, it's a new language through which we understand our present, through the lens of the future. 

Briar: I think that's why so many people feel fear about the future. And, as you rightly pointed out, like the future has always changed the world has always evolved. If we look back at history, it was not like how it is today. And the media love to create this fear because fear drives clicks to their articles, clicks create revenue. And I just wish there was a lot more positivity being shared about the future and a lot more excitement and curiosity. And even when it comes to conspiracy theories, not even just dismissing conspiracy theories, full stop, because with conspiracy theories also comes curiosity too. And I feel like there's a lot of just dismissiveness in this world.

Luke: Yeah. We need to be playful. We need to play with the future. Future is a raw material.

Briar: Like how we would when we were children as well. Like, we used to be so excited about our futures. Oh my God, I used to dream that I was like a queen or like I'm being chased by an alien or the kind of person that I would become in the future. 

Luke: Yeah. Those possibilities, those dreams we sort of lose. And then those narratives are given back to us. Something that you mentioned there about why end of the world narratives are doing so well and why the next generation is so anxious is because of the media environment in which they swim. Now we're constantly told that there may not be a future. There is no future. The climate crisis is so bad that essentially we've got another, maybe 200, 300 years if we're lucky. 

Briar: AI is going to kill us all.

Luke: AI will kill us. These narratives inform the way in which we engage with the future. But there are political reasons for why people drive those narratives. 

Briar: Do you think they tell us these kind of narratives so that the fear almost makes us pause and we don't try as much in our lives?

Luke: No, no. For example, the AI debate, we're told that AI will make humans obsolete. We'll have this thing called artificial general intelligence, and AI will become just as good as humans. Why are we being told that narrative? Well, the people who are telling us that narrative are the people building the AI, they want to create the perception in the present that the work they're doing now will be so much more advanced in the future. That we're nearly there, we're nearly at human level AGI, I think they're still quite a long way away.

Briar: So you don't believe it's going to happen in say, like 10 years like some people are saying?

Luke: I don't believe it's going to happen in 10 years because the question is, and it goes back to these human questions. There are so many things we don't know about human beings, and therefore, how can we make the sorts of prophecies that we're going to have human like AGI. For example, we don't even know what consciousness is David Chalmers calls it the hard problem of consciousness.

Briar: I had an interview with a gentleman called Max on my show about consciousness and we spoke for two hours, and I feel like by the end of the two hours, I was no closer to understanding what consciousness is. He's been studying it for 40 years but it's so incredibly complicated. 

Luke: Well, let me ask you this question, Briar. Do you think your brain works like a computer? Do you believe your memories are stored in your brain?

 Briar: I think so. And I also think to a certain extent that yeah, brains are kind of like algorithms because I've had experiences before where I've gone off and gotten brain training. So fascinating. They put ECGs on your head and you watch a computer screen and the computer goes big when your brain is doing something good and then it goes small and fuzzy when your brain is doing something bad. So you can actually rewire your brain. I just even think from an algorithmic perspective, you sometimes get stuck in these ruts. My brain was fatigued. I didn't even realize that. But once I was able to kind of get out of that algorithm per se, I haven't felt fatigued since.

Luke: It's so fascinating to hear you talk about the algorithm for your brain, because these are metaphors. These are metaphors that we live by. So we used to treat the brain like a clockwork machine. And we used to use the mechanical language of the time, the cogs are turning, as I'm hearing what you're saying. Now we use the new computer metaphors, I'm processing what you're saying. So it becomes very easy to start confusing the metaphor for the reality. The human brain is in a computer. I don't know if you've ever seen a human brain on a lab or in a lab.

 Briar: Oh, I've seen a brain. I know it's not a computer. 

Luke: So you've seen a brain. It doesn't look like a computer. 

Briar: It's soft and pinky. 

Luke: It kind of looks like that. It's about three pounds of gray gloop. And we are told that our memories are stored in there.

Briar: But you don't think they are?

Luke: Well, they may be, but we don't know. And this is the wonderful possibility. Sometimes the possibilities for the future are in what we don't know.

Briar: Well, sometimes people talk about the fact that consciousness isn't even inside your brain. It's kind of around here.

Luke: So there's a wonderful neuroscientist called David Eagleman who talks about when we scan the human brain, we see lots of lights and lots of signals, but we can't point to, there's the memory of Briar meeting Luke earlier today, just before they started the podcast. 

 Briar: What a great memory this is.

Luke: Yeah. What a great memory. But you can't find that memory in the computer. You can't retrieve that memory. And David Eagleman is comfortable with a multitude of possibilities. In fact, he calls himself a possibilian. So there are all these possibilities for how the brain could be functioning, and we should be open to those until we have more evidence. So yes, the brain might be a storage device, it might be like a computer that's storing memories, but it also might be like an antenna. It might be tuning into consciousness or those lights we see are the brain tuning itself into some form of quantum realm or experience or collective consciousness, or whatever it is. We don't have the evidence yet, but to ask the question of what are the possibilities is the play space, is the fun of engaging with things like futures.

Briar: Yes. And robots. So just even circling.

Luke: And from that to robots.

Briar: No, but just even circling on what you were saying. So robot rights. So we're going to be talking about this in a bit more detail. But what I find really fascinating about what you are saying and how I just was like robots and how this connects to it. But when it talks about robots being ethical, there's this concept of how we could take a whole brain emulation of a human, and we could put this in or program, a robot so that it has the same kind of morals as you. But when you explore this topic a little bit further, like who do you emulate? Like what kind of person would you consider to be moral? And especially when it comes to say figure one, so the humanoid robot that was revealed last year he's connected to chat GPT, he learns through machine programming and then he can teach other robots or sort of be connected. What's your thoughts about all of this?

Luke: It's my thoughts in humanoid robots generally. It's fascinating what you're saying there, because this ties back to the consciousness debate. If we're creating humanoid robots, what sort of brains do we give them? Could they just be zombies? If consciousness is something we tune into and we're creating robots based on the metaphor that the human brain is like a computer, then maybe they'll never become human-like, because they never have access to consciousness. What is that process that AGI is doing? Now the whole AGI argument, the whole idea that eventually machines will become conscious is based on this concept that human beings got the one free miracle, as Terence McKenna said, yet we can't explain this thing called emergence. We don't know how we suddenly emerged consciousness. Our assumption is that matter got so complex that that complexity suddenly created a one free miracle and boop, consciousness came into being interesting. 

Now, what we believe is that we can take lots and lots of silicon, lots of wires, lots of these mechanical processes. And once they get complex and complex and complex, suddenly miracle, boom consciousness emerges. We don't know if it works that way. But the process of building AGI will help us to discover either the hypothesis was correct, that consciousness is an emergent property of the complexity of matter, or we may find a null hypothesis that consciousness is a preexisting condition of the universe. And what is guiding human evolution is that consciousness. The consciousness preceded matter.

Briar: And now, even as you're talking about this, and it's very interesting to think about and unpack, but now I'm even thinking about plants and about how plants just grow or I've been watching my cats grow from kittens to cats and I've been so fascinated by the fact that I'm feeding them nuts. I'm feeding them cat food and very, very quickly that just turns into bones and fur and things just know what to do, like plants know to just grow or butterflies even, they start as caterpillars, they go into cocoons and then they turn into butterflies. Like, it's very interesting to think that, so obviously we've got this consciousness talk, but then we've also got these things that are not conscious. But they know what to do

 Luke: And we're trying to bring them into the human realm. So there ar projects already, I don't know if you've heard of the Earth Species Project.

Briar: I haven't.

 Luke: It's led by AI developers and people working in the AI space. And what they want to do is they want to decode animal communication. They want to get to the point at which you can have a conversation with your cats. So we're beginning to realize the more and more we study animal formal communication, we see that some animals have a language, some animals even have accents, and they have their own dialects, but also they have different ways of moving to communicate with each other. They have these multimodal ways of communicating. And the Earth Species Project is hoping that we can decode that language by using AI. So look at all the complexity of the signals and work out what the noise is, and then try and work out what the animal communication is. So eventually you could perhaps have a conversation, a two-way conversation with your cats.

 Briar: I don't know if I would like that, because my cats are incredibly greedy. And all they talk about I think is food, even if they've just been fed. So I'm sure I would probably very quickly hate them because I'd be like, shut up you little suckers like I just fed you. They'd just be like, food, food, food, food. But I honestly think that circling back on what you're saying, that we may well have like a brain computer interface or whether it's something that's implanted in our head or perhaps some kind of headphone like thing, that in the future we could be talking to people in different languages. And it could be coding real time. We could be talking to our cats and it could be coding real time. What a fascinating world to think that would be.

 Luke: Yeah. What a fascinating world. But the question then becomes, is how far are we willing to go? And really, that's a question for you, Briar, because when something is a device, when it's worn, when it can be taken off, we are more willing to experiment with it because we know we can go backwards. Now, the problem with things like Neuralink is that Neuralink is an insideables. So you've got this form of technology called wearables, like fitbits and rings, aura rings that you can wear. There are a multitude of devices that allow you to capture and measure data from your body. But we're beginning to look at things like in Insideables, embeddables, swallowables, injectables, with your RFID tag. Now, these forms of technology, they do something dramatically different because they're not worn, but they pass the boundary of the skin, they enter the body.

 Now sometimes they pass through the body. In the case of swallowables, you can swallow a camera, get a nice little video of the inside of your intestines, and then they obviously pass through the other side. There are swallowables that can kind of live in the stomach and give you information about your eating habits, but they're permanently wedded to you. There's a theorist called Andy Clark who talks about natural born cyborgs. And what he's really talking about is the moment at which a device becomes profoundly embodied at which it becomes part of your existence, part of your body. And a good example is Neil Harbisson. I don't know if you've seen Neil Harbisson or photos of Neil Harbisson, but Neil Harbisson is a colorblind artist, is also a cyborg who has an antenna attached to his head. And that antenna is screwed into the back of his skull.

 And the antenna has a small camera at the end of it. And that camera is translating light waves color. It's translating those light waves. And then through a digital process, is converting those light waves to sound waves. And then through bone conduction, it's vibrating his skull so that he can hear color. And he wears this device all the time and I met Neil Harbisson and he described how his antenna is no longer a device, but it's an organ. So if I went up to Neil Harbisson and I tried to touch the camera, the antenna, it'd be like me coming up to you and trying to touch your nose. It's so much part of him now. He wears it all the time. And in fact, it's so much part of him that the body and the brain has integrated it into his existence through this process of neuroplasticity. So he now dreams in sonochromatic dreams. So with this moment at which a device can become an organ, that's when we start having a conversation about are we becoming cyborgs now? 

 Briar: In the future, do you think that we might have people who want to transcend the human limitations, probably myself and then people that are totally against that, they want to stay organic, if you will, and what will happen with it?

Luke: So when it comes to this question of who will and who won't enhance their body, we often, as you so wonderfully said there, we often think about the haves and the have nots. You interviewed Professor Steve Fuller, who talks about this idea of subspeciation, what actually might happen is we can all live harmoniously with our differentiated morphologies. So, you know, Max Moore, and he talks about morphological freedom. Morphological freedom isn't about ensuring that everybody makes the same sorts of changes to their body, that everybody is thinking faster and is stronger. What he's interested in is the differentiation of human beings. There might be some people who want an antenna that helps them to hear color. There might be other people who want a different sort of enhancement. And the question then becomes, is how do we live in a world that allows us to have a multitude of different humans?

 Now, some of the fun ideas that we're going to be able to populate planets by then, and we'll subspeciate in different planets. So the people on Mars will have different sorts of morphologies, different sorts of bodies and brains than the people here on Earth. And in actual fact, if you look at the science, if you look at people like Christopher Mason who's doing the astronaut studies, he's actually making that argument. He has this fantastic book called the next 500 years that basically says the human beings on earth won't look anything like the human beings on Mars. Because the problem with Mars is you're in 30% gravity. There's a lot of radiation. It's going to affect your eyes, it's going to affect your body, it's going to affect your skin. So we're going to have to do massive genetic enhancements to the human being if they were to live on other planets.

 But the thing with Mars is Mars might be a one-way trip, at least in the immediate term. So the idea of doing those genetic changes or making massive morphological changes to the body, it can be justified. We can justify the ethics of that, because if you don't have those processes done to your body, if you don't enhance your eyes to survive on Mars, then you won't live very long whilst there. So we're already having those sorts of discussions about what are the different forms which humans can take. And as we take all those different forms, as you asked right at the beginning of our conversation, will we consider those forms as human? Where is the boundary of what we consider human? And what is the limitation of human? Or will we have to change our definition of what it means to be human, to be able to integrate these differentiated human bodies and human brains?

 Briar: Oh, I love this topic. So interesting to think about though, isn't it? And the various different, as you said, subspecies that you might get from that, and whether even robots might even be part of that subspecies, especially if you're taken, say like a human brain and the way it interacts and the way it's emulated and be putting that in a robot or say someone like myself, maybe I die, touch [42:37 inaudible]. But before I've done that, I've gone for an immortal mind upload within a robot. So that's kind of a version of me within that robot. Is that going to be human?

 Luke: Yeah. I love your fascination with mind uploading. You've kind of got robots.

 Briar: Sorry, I probably talk all the time about it.

 Luke: No, it's great. You got robots on this side of the scale. You've got humans on this side of the scale, and you've got Briar Prestidge right in the middle, right in the middle there. The thing with mind uploading is we don't even know if it's possible. David Eagleman, the neuroscientist I mentioned earlier wrote this wonderful book that I love, that I adore. It's a science fiction book called Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives. And he explores that in three pages. If we were to upload our minds into computers and create the perfect reality that we want to live in, add infinitum, what would that look like and how would we go through that process? And his argument is we'd have to do it while we're alive. 

So the first thing we'd need to deal with is how to do euthanasia, how to make that acceptable so that we can kill you, so that we can upload your live brain into the virtual world in which you want to live at infinitum. And of course, Eagleman raises another important philosophical question, which is you wouldn't want other people messing with your reality. So we would want to black box that world that you upload your mind into. And to do that, we can't give people access, external people, living people access to that. So how will we do it? Well, we'd have to cut the people from the outside off. So in other words, we would have no proof if the process even worked.

 The other challenge was shared with me by a computer scientist called Edward A. Lee, who wrote a very complicated but very interesting book called Plato and the Nerd. And he looks at the maths of trying to upload a human brain. If you look at a brain, it's super complex. And how do we reduce that to information? And the wonderful thing about the brain is, although it's complex, it's very, very small. But we would need server racks on server racks on server racks, on server racks to look after Briar Prestige, to capture everything that you find important and to emulate you in another substrate or put you on a server rack. So you've got a massive amount of power that you're going to require there. Now we're looking at a global crisis, a global climate crisis. And we know the one thing that is using the most amount of energy is servers for things like AI. So if we were to confront a crisis of climate and we would need to reduce our energy consumption, the first thing we might switch off is uploaded Briar prestige.

Briar: No!

Luke: Can't guarantee we're not going to unplug you. So these are some of the challenges.

Briar: Come on Luke, I thought we were friends.

Luke: Luckily you have a good team. Olivia will look after you. You'll find Olivia's future kids will be bestowed with the responsibility to ensuring the Briar Prestige server rack remains running. Now, the other option, as you so wonderfully put there, is we find a way to miniaturize the hardware so that we can place your consciousness into Briar Prestige, the humanoid. We can upload you into an embodied social robot. Now, the question with mind uploading is if you do that, would you both want to exist at the same time? 

Briar: I've had this thought before, especially when it comes to my closet, would I want to share my clothes with a robot? Would I want to share my boyfriend with a robot? I don't even know.

Luke: Does your boyfriend want to share you with a robot? 

Briar: That is true. I have not asked him.

Luke: Well, there's something for social media. There we go. That's going to be an interesting short video for TikTok. Firstly just buy two of everything and you'll be completely fine. The second thing is what is the you that we're uploading?

Briar: Oh yes. Is it morning me, which isn't so friendly?

 Luke: Yeah, true. Or is it Briar, the real human Briar, or is it the mediated version of Briar? I sat here in preparation for the podcast, and you turn up in the silver flowing dress. You have a team of makeup artists ensuring everything is completely perfect before you start your podcast. You have these social media videos that are beautifully well produced. I mean, if we took all of the social content, the version of yourself, which is created through media and created in consultation with a wonderful team, no one else can see this because we're recording a podcast. But behind the cameras, there's this amazing team that contributes to Briar prestige, the media persona, the media cyborg. If we were to take all of that data and render that into a chat bot, would you recognize yourself? Would that be a Briar Prestige that you recognize as you, or would that be a mediatized version of that? There's a wonderful essay by a guy called Robin Sloan called Kanye West Media Cyborg, which means that Kanye West in my mind, is the product of all the media that he's put out there in the world. But is that Kanye West? Is the Briar Prestige in YouTube, TikTok and Twitter? Is that the person sitting in front of me right now?

 Briar: Yeah. Well, it's one aspect of it. 

 Luke: But if you clone that aspect aspect, would you enjoy a conversation with the social media version of yourself? We all play these characters and this is what I'm fascinated with when it comes to humanoid robots, I see them as characters. Sophia the robot is a character.

Briar: She's so funny, by the way. 

Luke: Yeah. But is it her that's funny or in the same way that you have a team that contributes to the sorts of media that you put out into the world, is her funniness, is her humor the product of all the people who've designed her. So if you look behind Sophia the robot, you see a cable that comes out of the back of Sophia the robot, that runs to a computer, another cable that runs to a plug to power her. And you've got someone sitting on that computer often programming Sophia. 

Briar: Then you've also got the whole concept of machine learning as well. And the fact that robots can learn through machine learning and not so dissimilar when we think about it as humans, like we've all learned over the years through our experiences, through our parent’s values, through the friends that we've held. It's interesting.

 Luke: But this is why I love conversations about the future, because it makes us ask these questions about what it means to be human. It makes us ask fundamental questions about our identity and who we want to be in the future. And that's what I see as your project. It's this ongoing project of creating within the future, using the aesthetics of the future, playing with the future. You almost see the future as a fashion statement. 

Briar: Well, yeah. It's up for creation. I think that's what people need to remember. And I think that's a good note to even finish on really, isn't it? The future is kind of up to us to design our collective future, but I think also like our individual futures as well. 

 Luke: I'm excited to follow your progress, Briar. 

 Briar: I'm excited to follow your progress. This has been very interesting. I honestly could have chatted for another couple of hours, but have to draw the line somewhere.

Luke: We'll have to draw the line, next time in London

Luke: Next time what we'll do is we'll have our robots chat to each other and see what sort of conversation they have and then compare. We can do a little empirical study, as I have to do with my PhD research on humanoid robots. We'll have our two robots talk to each other. And then we can ask each other the question of do we recognize ourselves in that conversation between them.

Briar: I don't think they're going to be as good as the OGs though.

Luke: I agree.

Briar: It has been so great to have you on the show, thanks for joining me.

Luke: Briar Prestidge thank you for having me on the Hyperscale podcast.   

About Luke Robert Mason

Luke Robert Mason studies the technological developments that will alter what it means to be human. He is the host of the FUTURES Podcast, where he explores artificial intelligence, human enhancement, space travel, and virtual reality. Mason revived the University of Warwick’s mid-90s cyberculture conference Virtual Futures in 2011, which he then ran as a successful salon event series in London from 2015 - 2019. He is currently an ESRC-funded postgraduate student at the University of Warwick studying towards a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies, focusing on the public’s perception of humanoid robots.