In my
last article, I discussed the creation of a robot athlete whose skills within
certain athletic processes in a game were superior to those of humans. I am talking about the basketbot named CUE
that has almost a 100% success rate in shooting baskets. We as humans are tempted to identify with a
complex behavioral entity that demonstrates such superior skill in an activity
that we value. A concern was expressed
here that such identification with the robot basketball player, particularly as
it becomes fully mobile and becomes a complete basketball player, will lead to
psychologically blurring together with the robot, which can be very dangerous
to a person maintaining a coherent sense of self and strong organic bonds with
other people.
But
one thing saves the person from complete robotization. This is that the person never becomes the
complex behavioral entity, the basketbot, with which he identifies. He never becomes a basketball playing
robot. He remains distinctly human.
There
is a new robotic invention with roots in two other sports that tends to blur
away this separation between robot and human.
It is still in a prototype stage, but it threatens to totally transform
the worlds of skiing and snowboarding.
Basically, it consists of two braces, one for each leg, that together
act as a kind of partial exoskeleton, a kind of smart shock absorber that
anticipates the moves of the skier or the snowboarder with its sensors and
adjusts itself accordingly. These braces
are attached to both the person’s thighs and to his boots. The power source is carried in a light
backpack.
The
purpose of this exoskeleton is to help a person to be able to last longer in
the actual performance of his sport and also to be able to decrease pain. The legs get support in their movements so
that the activity is not so strenuous. It
sounds, on one level, like a reasonable idea.
But I believe there are ramifications in the use of such an exoskeleton
that go beyond helping a person extend his skiing or snowboarding experience. The question is do we want a person to use
for recreational purposes a robotic exoskeleton where, in effect, he will merge
with the exoskeleton he is using in his mind and become part-robot. Notice that I added the phrase for
recreational purposes. Exoskeletons are
being used to help paralyzed people to move and walk again. As much as I am against using robot
technology in the lives of average people, morally I would have great
difficulty not making it available to people experiencing paralysis, now that
the technology is available. It is the
lesser of several evils for paralyzed people to become part-robot in order to
at least partly escape their paralysis.
The problem is that exoskeleton uses are going to multiply into all
sorts of recreational applications for people who aren’t paralyzed. Skiing and snowboarding are just a beginning.
Is
this going to be one of the first robotic inroads that allow people to
experience themselves as cyborgs? A
complex behavioral entity that is part human and part robot. Granted that a person is only strapped to the
robots by leg braces and not truly blended together with them. But the physical advantages of keeping these
leg braces strapped on are going to seem so seductively desirable. A skier will be able to avoid painful skiing
and will have greater endurance. Within
certain parameters, he will seem almost superhuman, impervious to mortality.
Of
course, on the other hand, whatever he is able to achieve as a skier using
these robotic leg braces will be tainted by the notion that what he is
accomplishing is not done solely by his own efforts and his own skills. It can sort of be compared to a cyclist who
normally rides a bicycle but decides to expend less energy by riding a tricycle
instead. It is easier to ride a tricycle
than a bicycle. It also doesn’t
challenge a person to make a meaningful organic imprint through the skill of
good bike-riding.
The same
kind of thing can be said to be true with using robotic braces for skiing. A person will be able to ski longer and with
less pain, but also with less of a challenge.
The experience will be more bland, more vacuumized. It will not contribute in any meaningful way
to his life narrative. It will be less
of a rich vibrant experience. We need a
little discomfort, even a little pain, mixed in with our enjoyable experiences,
in order to challenge us to turn them into memorable imprints.
And
then, of course, there is the matter of what using robotic braces does to our
heads. Blurring our sense of self with
robotic parts does give us a strong sense of physical boundaries, a strong
physical sense of self-definition, which contributes to a false sense of
immortality. And such a false sense of
immortality eases the internal pressure on a person to try to make and preserve
meaningful organic imprints that can contribute to his surrogate immortality in
preparation for death.
Although
robotic braces can create greater external self-definition, internally it
contributes to fragmenting the sense of self.
A person is no longer an organic whole.
He has an organic part and a robotic part. And this affects the sense of self. He no longer has a fully coherent sense of
self. And, by extension, he no longer
has a fully coherent consciousness.
Which means that, on a certain level, he no longer feels coherently
alive.
Too
much help of the robotic kind ends up numbing people and subtly crippling the
human narrative. This is something we
should keep in mind as we become increasingly bombarded by new opportunities
for robotic extensions of our being.
Particularly, when these robotic extensions are not being used for basic
survival as with paralyzed people and are being used for recreation and to
increase the opportunity for a kind of immortality, we should be very careful
about embracing this technology, literally and figuratively – a technology
which has so many unforeseen side effects for people.
© 2018 Laurence Mesirow
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