The Singularity has virtually nothing to do with matching or even approximating human cognition, and everything to do with the unpredictable and uncontrollable impacts of superscale computing.

Read more of my perspective, Hear that? It's the Singularity coming.

Read Paul Allen's post, The Singularity Isn't Near.

Like many people these days I've been thinking about the Occupy Wall Street movement. My mind's been spinning as I try to figure out what it's all about and what the movement might actually be capable of achieving. My thinking in these early days is equal parts hopefulness to outright cynicism. As I mentioned in a tweet earlier today, corporatism survived 60 years of communist onslaught; it should have no problem weathering this storm.

Or perhaps I'm overstating the whole thing. Maybe it's just about applying fixes to a system that's gone a bit haywire. And if that's the case, then great. I wish the protesters the best of luck.

But part of my concern is that, aside from some mild reforms that may come out of all this, the overriding and highly globalized capitalist system isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It's pretty entrenched and not easily rocked. The 99% are going to have to get comfortable with being a part of the disenfranchised majority for some time to come. This isn't like the situation in the Middle East; there's not going to be an Arab Spring on this side of the ocean any time soon.

Indeed, while there's no question that Occupy Wall Street was inspired by the Arab Spring, there's significant discrepancy in the underlying causes of these two social movements.

The situation in the West stands in stark contrast to recent events in the Middle East in which a number of countries were simply working to overthrow authoritarian regimes and get to democracy in the first place. The Middle East is currently struggling through puberty. It's a part of the world that's still coming to grips with modernity and socio-economic globalization. Religious fundamentalism threatens at every corner while Western influences complicate things by working to further their own interests in a region rich with oil.

And that's another aspect that differs from Occupy Wall Street. New York City protesters are railing against the very forces who helped the Arab Spring along. The success of the Arab Spring was and continues to be driven by the support of NATO and other Western benefactors. The West is diligently working to secure the region and prevent the onset of fundamentalist regimes—and to ensure easy access to oil. All the while claiming that it's working to instil democracy. It's no co-incidence that NATO suddenly cared about the situation in Libya while other oil-poor regions of Africa and the Middle East continued to burn. The whole charade is unabashedly obvious.

Without question, AdBusters—the Canadian activist group that kick-started Occupy Wall Street—took inspiration from the events in the Middle East, particularly the Tahir Square protests in Cairo. In copycat manner, AdBusters organized a peaceful occupation of Wall Street to protest the current U.S. political leadership and its failure to prevent or address the global financial crisis. The movement's auspices have expanded significantly from that starting point and now includes such things as taxing the rich, raising taxes on corporations, ending corporate welfare and personhood status, support for trade unionism, and protecting Medicare and Social Security. Occupy Wall Street, because of its decentralized nature, has become a Rorschach test for lefties who are busily projecting their own hopes and demands onto the movement.

At the most basic level, Occupy Wall Street is a reaction to a whole host of socio-economic problems and the glaringly obvious corruption and indifference of both Wall Street traders and the politicians who back them. At a more conceptual level, however, Occupy Wall Street is a necessary manifestation that has been brought about by two fundamental short-comings of the political system in the United States.

First, the U.S. has no bona fide left wing political presence. It's a country in which the word socialism is routinely spat out as a pejorative. Contrast that with the political situation in Canada in which the country's official opposition, the New Democratic Party, is overtly socialist. And that's not to mention the political climate in Europe and elsewhere in which left wing parties carry much more clout in the political spectrum. Now, I'm not suggesting that left wing parties are the answer to America's woes; but what I am suggesting is that Americans have no political outlet to express their left-of-center demands and desires. As a result, lefties (and even some libertarians and anarchists) have had no choice but to rally around this protest movement in a sheer act of catharsis.

Second, and very much related to the first, the United States is a two party corporatocracy in which the Democrats and Republicans merely trade-off every four years or so. Democracy in the truest sense only exists in the U.S. at a very micro or local scale, while the overarching political structure (or superstructure to borrow a Marxist term), essentially works to serve and further corporate interests. The alienating effect of this two-party teeter-totter has reached a kind of boiling point, particularly now as America is mired in a seemingly endless recession and as Americans have been inspired by social protest movements overseas.

At the same time, Occupy Wall Street can also been as a mirror of the Tea Party Movement—another political spasm that's emerged on account of the rigid two party system. The left and right are clearly polarizing in the United States. The only question is whether or not they can pull the Democrats and Republicans along with them. It doesn't appear that this will be the case.

It's difficult to predict what consequences, if any, these two movements will have on the political makeup of the U.S. and whether or not they'll be able to see their demands come to fruition.

Definitely interesting times.

transhumangoodness

The Singularity Summit 2011 will be held in New York from October 15-16 at the historic 92nd Street Y:

Speakers include futurist Ray Kurzweil, visionary scientist Stephen Wolfram, IBM manager Dan Cerutti, longevity expert Sonia Arrison, author David Brin, neuroscientist Christof Koch, PayPal founder Peter Thiel, MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, MIT polymath Alexander Wissner-Gross, DARPA challenge winner Riley Crane, Skype founder Jaan Tallinn, Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, economist Tyler Cowen, television personalities Jason Silva and Casey Pieretti, and robotics professors James McLurnkin and Robin Murphy.

In his influential 1993 article The Coming Technological Singularity, Vernor Vinge discussed the possibility that future technology could feed on itself, causing an "exponential runaway" in technological progress: "Developments that before were thought might only happen in 'a million years' (if ever) will likely happen in the next century." In his 2005 book, The Singularity is Near, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil used current exponential trends in technology to predict the arrival of this Singularity in the next few decades. The Singularity Summit was founded as an academic forum for discussing the "big picture" questions in industry, economics, and ethics raised by the prospect of such a profound event.

Be sure to register for the event.

Quantified self guru Seth Roberts recently attended the Ancestral Health Symposium. His take-away: The QS and Paleo health communities need each other. He basically argues that Paleo is not persuasive enough and that it desperately requires more data and experimentation to prove efficacy. At the same time, however, Roberts is excited by the prospect and makes the claim that Paleo "could change the world." He says,

The Paleo people are really pretty brainy. I mean, they don't particularly talk that way or show it off, but from a lot of the talks that I heard, I understood that there was a lot of smart thinking going on, and a lot of scholarship, and a lot of critical thinking where they don't just accept something because somebody says it.

Check out Roberts's talk at the Quantified Self Silicon Valley meetup at Stanford’s Calming Technologies lab.

Seth Roberts: QS + Paleo.

Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer has chimed in to reflect on the recent documentary, Project Nim, about a chimpanzee that was raised as a human. The endeavour was part of a science project to determine how much language, if any, a chimpanzee could acquire in a human environment. Singer believes that Nim was treated wrong and that such invasive research should be consigned to history:

Eighteen years ago, Paola Cavalieri and I founded The Great Ape Project, an organisation dedicated to the idea of giving great apes the moral status and legal protection that befits their nature. As the work of Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey, Francine Patterson, Birute Galdikas, H Lyn White Miles, Roger and Deborah Fouts, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and many other remarkable scientists have shown, chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orang-utans are self-aware beings, capable of thought, and with rich and deep emotional lives. Our idea is that the great apes, as our closest relatives, could serve as a bridge over the immense gulf we have dug between ourselves and other animals. Once one group of animals is included within the sphere of beings with rights, we hope that the extension of some basic rights to other sentient animals will be that much easier to make.

Fortunately, the idea that great apes should not be treated as tools for research – as opposed to the kind of relationship developed by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh – has made some progress since the time when Nim was sent back to Oklahoma. Experiments on great apes are now either banned or severely restricted in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and throughout the European Union.

In the United States, a bipartisan group of members of Congress is supporting legislation to end the use of chimpanzees in invasive research. Project Nim shows that even when research is not invasive, it can have a devastating psychological impact on an animal. What happened to Nim was wrong, and should never happen again.

More.

I recently returned to Toronto from my first Burning Man experience and I have to say that the trip was as close to science fiction as it gets. It was a world of alien landscapes, extreme conditions, bizarre modes of transport, and a local population right out of Tatooine's Mos Eisely spaceport. Add to that a dash of Mad Max, Dune and Woodstock, throw in some glow sticks, flamethrowers, and shiny metallic pants, and you get the picture.

More interesting than that, however, was how otherworldly the place felt from a civilizational perspective. For the week that I was at Black Rock City I truly felt like a stranger in a strange land, a foreign visitor to a place far removed from my home-world. Indeed, it didn't take long for the cogs in my brain to start churning away in reaction to all that I was witnessing. Burning Man is a fascinating event on so many levels, including its sudden emergence from the dust and the rise of an alternative society that exists in virtual isolation from the real world—albeit one that lasts for just a week each year.

Welcome to Black Rock City

Okay, for those who have been hopelessly stuck in a dark hole for the past ten years, Burning Man is an annual counter-cultural festival that takes place in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Yes, that's right—right smack dab in the middle of nowhere. For some twisted and seemingly inexplicable reason, over 55,000 people from around the world arrive at this place and, quite literally, construct a thriving city from scratch, only to tear and burn it all down a week later.

Once Burning Man gets underway, Black Rock City rises from the desert in the form of a semi-circular patchwork of tents, yurts, RVs, trailers, vans, kitchen sinks and anything else that can be cobbled together to create temporary living conditions in what is truly an unrelenting desert environment. The days are excruciatingly hot, the nights unbearably cold—and it's all frequented by regular sand storms just to rub it all in.

The festival itself is an intense celebration of sights and sounds in which participants, called Burners, create what is without a doubt the largest party in the world (try to name another party you can see from space!). Everything that happens in the city is a product of un-cordinated individual efforts; aside from a few things (such as the Temple and Center Camp) it's a completely self-generated event. For a brief one week period, Black Rock City erupts into a spectacular showcase of art displays, elaborate costumes, performance art, dancing, live music, and much, much more (including the racy stuff that happens behind the scenes). The event serves as a platform for Burning Man's central tenant: radical self-expression. The possibilities are nearly endless given such an open precept.

As a first time Burner, I quickly learned that no images or words could prepare me for the spectacle that is Burning Man. You truly have to experience it yourself to appreciate the scale, context and brilliance of it all. And this includes the organizational and social aspects as well. Black Rock City is a truly remarkable place when viewed through sociological, cultural and anthropological lenses. During my short time there I quickly came up with a hand-full of potential studies that could easily fuel PhD theses. It's truly a mind-expanding social experiment that's worthy of academic inquiry.


Emergent and spontaneous order

Burning Man is something every futurist and transhumanist should be aware of. Black Rock City is a model that could serve for the development of entirely novel alternative communities and societies. Indeed, the Burner term for the real world is "default society," and after a few days at Burning Man one can't help but gain a growing appreciation for what that actually means.

 Take the sheer numbers for example. Over 55,000 people are packed into an area no more than five square miles (roughly the size of downtown San Francisco). While this is a moderately impressive feat at best, it's the civility and functionality of the community that is impressive. Despite the fact that many of Black Rock City's inhabitants are simply there to party, the place remains remarkably well maintained and orderly over the course of the week. I would dare say that it's probably the safest city of 55,000 people in the world while it lasts.

A central credo of Burning Man is that each Burner is responsible for taking away what they brought in and to "leave no trace." Consequently, there are absolutely no trash cans in the city. Waste is a personal responsibility (except for bio-waste—the organizers provide porta-potties). Moreover, should any trash hit the playa (a term for the desert floor), it is immediately identified as MOOP (matter out of place) and dealt with. What's even more astounding is that, in the event that some garbage gets away, there are Burners who, completely unasked, pick it up themselves and deal with it. I met one woman who over the course of one night picked up over 65 cigarette butts without anyone asking her. A friend devised an internal rule in which she picked up an extra piece off MOOP for every piece of her own she dropped. It goes to show that, given a strong enough cultural imperative to keep the place clean, there will be enough people out of the 55,000 who will, of their own volition, deal with it themselves. Call it an emergent effect of having a strong culturally bound population.


The gifting method

Which brings to mind another indelible aspect of Burning Man: it runs on a gift economy. Money is absolutely no good at Burning Man (except at Center Camp where Burners can purchase ice and coffee—pretty funny if you think about it; talk about your basic needs). This doesn't imply a barter economy. There is no trading at Burning Man. People simply "gift" things to people whenever it is needed. Sure, given that it's in the middle of the desert and that there's only so much you can bring in and give away, this practice is fairly limited, but I was astounded at what was being offered in the city: ice cream, freezies, snow cones, alcoholic drinks of all sorts (I even had some Patron tequila at Barbie Death Camp — but that's another story), hair washing, butt cleaning station (again, you'd have to be there to understand this), and even an inter-city post office, FM radio station, and dating service. And plenty more. Basically, if there was a need for it, someone pretty much prepared for it.

 I also took part in this gift economy. As a member of FutureCamp I gave three presentations as part of my contribution to the larger community.

Gifting, it would seem, can include goods, services, and even the sharing of ideas and expertise.

It would seem that, in a land of extreme scarcity, and where gifting is the only means of exchange, people naturally fill in the gaps. And to say that there is nothing given in exchange for contributions is not entirely fair; human interaction (which is high value at Burning Man) and the satisfaction of helping others is certainly part of the equation. The desolation and harsh environment, along with the extreme scarcity of food, goods, and other creature comforts, is a strangely indelible component of Burning Man. It adds to the alien and otherworldly sense, but it also binds the community together, both in terms of shared hardship and in the increased need to look out for one another.


Maintaining order

One of the neat aesthetics of Burning Man is the seemingly invisible or complete absence of authority. Yes, there are Nevada state troopers patrolling the city, but they're largely ignored in much the same way that money is (annoying props to remind Burners that the outside world still exists). Burning Man does have a force of Rangers—a group of volunteers who walk around the city providing help and guidance when needed. But they have absolutely no authority. In fact, they won't even offer an admonition if they see a Burner doing something potentially dangerous. But they'll stick around in case help is eventually required.

Indeed, excruciatingly simple rules, norms, and an implicit code of conduct seem to be all that's required to keep it all together. Perhaps it's the limited population, short timeframe, and harsh conditions that allows for this. Or maybe it's the strict zoning rules that are put into place (bad apples don't get to come back). Burners may also comprise a highly filtered group, the demographic nature of which needs to be better determined. These are certainly important variables to consider, including the overarching question as to how far the model can be extended before a kind of critical mass is reached and it all starts to fall apart.

In fact, it does start to fall apart, but not until the last day. Once the Black Rock exodus begins, sign-posts are torn down and the civility that had previously characterized the place all but disappears. It would seem that, among the variables required for long-term sustainability, a finite timeframe is required. I strongly believe that given its current parameters (dwindling food and water supplies notwithstanding) Black Rock City could successfully function for weeks—if not months—but that a specific length of time needs to be clearly defined.

 The question of sustainability

The topic of sustainability is a concern to many Burners. The question as to how long a community like this can be maintained is a pertinent one, particularly when you find yourself in it. A central sentiment that runs through the culture is that it can't really be sustained and the best that one can do is "bring a bit of Burning Man to the default world."

I've got a different take on the matter. As a futurist who foresees such things as the end of scarcity and the complete automation of production, the idea that we can actually create a viable and permanent vacation world is an intriguing one.

As it stands, Burning Man can't exist without the resources that are provided by the Burners themselves. Consequently, it's a leech economy. Black Rock City has virtually no real economy of its own in terms of local production. Everything that exists in Black Rock City comes from the default world, whether it be material goods or even individual skills and talents. The default world, and the efforts of Burners while they're there, is the engine that drives Burning Man. The trick, therefore, is to decrease the real-world burden on the Burners themselves—and that's where disruptive technologies like robotics and fabs (desktop molecular assemblers) come in.

Alternative societies—those communities that have essentially no internal production economy and exist in relative isolation from the mainstream world—can only exist across expanded time domains as the time required for its inhabitants to work in the default society decreases.

Advanced technologies that will result in such things as increased automation will serve to enable this. Eventually, an alternative society like Burning Man could exist in perpetuity so long as the means of production in the default world comes at a zero cost. In other words, the inhabitants of alternative worlds will finally be able to stay there only once the real world can sustain it without burden.


Looking forward

There's a lot more to Burning Man than I've let on here. I've completely ignored some socio-cultural issues that I'll expand upon in a subsequent post. But let it be said that Burning Man is an absolute treasure that's worth preserving, if not expanding upon altogether. Even if the current model of Black Rock City is unscalable, it is certainly possible to create multiple versions that can run in parallel and independent of one another.

I admit that my musings here might seem quaint and even naive. Burning Man could completely collapse in the coming years should "tourists" start to dominate the city instead of actual contributors. It may even open up to corporate interests who will set up shops, a development that would completely undermine the concept. Such a development would truly kill the spirit and point of Burning Man in an instant. Or perhaps the idea of a permanent get-away place is not really a desirable or worthwhile goal. But we won't know until we try.

In the meantime, as Burning Man continues to fascinate, it's nice to dream of where it might take us.

Alex Knapp of Forbes magazine asks, "Is It Ethical to Make Animals As Smart As People?," and takes my position to task:

Dvorsky and other pro-uplift advocates have argued that we have a moral imperative to make other species as intelligent as we are once we have the means. However, given the above, one thing that should be abundantly clear is that even if we come up with a technique to create chimps, parrots, or dolphins with human-level intelligence, we are almost certainly not going to be take any current, adult animals and uplift them. Changes as profound as those needed to make those species intelligent, from the neurological to the biochemical, are going to have to be made to the embryo, if not even before that in the egg and sperm. So what happens to the animals that are left behind? They’re almost certainly not going to be able to produce offspring with their uplifted counterparts – there’ll be too many changes. Their uplifted counterparts are likely going to be a separate, reproductively-incompatible species.

So the adults will be just as they are, living lives as they did before. Which means procreating as they did before – and that leads to a problem for uplift advocates. Namely, for example, if we uplift chimps, do we let the adults procreate? Well, letting chimps continue in an “un-uplifted” state seems to defeat the purpose of uplifting them to begin with, right? On the other hand, if we sterilize them, we’re dooming a species to extinction for no reason other than we don’t think they’re smart enough. I’d argue that we wouldn’t have the right to to sterilize them and cause them to go extinct, and I can’t think of a good argument on the other side. So now we’re trapped in a bizarre ethical paradox that begs the question of why there’s a moral obligation to uplift in the first place. Given that the alternative is to essentially doom a species to extinction, I think it’s safe to argue that an “uplift imperative” doesn’t exist.

Absent that obligation to uplift other species, then I’d argue other ethical factors outweigh pursuing the project in the first place.

Read more.

Great article by Michelle Hutichinson over at Practical Ethics: Creating Non-Human People. Blurb:

John Locke thought that what it meant to be a person was to be rational and to have a continuous stream of consciousness. In theory, an animal of any type could be a person. In that case, if we induced in a non-human primate enough awareness and human-like behaviour they would be a person. What would be problematic about doing so? One possible answer is that it might not be possible to tell when a primate became a person. However, that doesn’t sound like a compelling reason against a modifying a primate in a way which makes them more like a person. We could decide whether it is worse to treat a person as if they weren’t a person or vice versa, and then err on the side of caution in our treatment of the resulting animals. In that case, it might not matter whether we knew precisely which were people and which were not.

However, perhaps the writers of the report were not worried about the uncertain status of the non-human primates, but about the fact that whether they were in fact people, or just close to being people, it would be wrong to test on them. If that is the case, it’s experimenting on these animals which should be illegal, not producing them.

While no reason has yet been found to think that modifying non-human primates such that they are people is in itself wrong, various bad consequences might ensue. The awareness they gained might allow them to realise that they have been exploited, or increase their suffering in some other way (particularly if they were kept confined in the research facility). On the other hand, we usually think that our lives are greatly enriched by the awareness and understanding we have of the world around us, so perhaps theirs would be too.

Over the past several years a good number of "futurists" and all-out naysayers have systematically worked to undermine and dismiss the potential for radical change to occur in the not-too-distant future. While I've always been more a fan of concepts than time-lines, there is little doubt in my mind that a number of disruptive technologies that have been predicted in the past few decades will eventually come to fruition.

But it's suddenly become very fashionable to poo-poo or sweep-aside the pending impacts of such things as the looming robotics and manufacturing revolutions, the rise of super artificial intelligence, or the migration of humans to a postbiological form. My best guesses as to why include the arrogance of the now (i.e. "we currently live at the most special of times and things will never change too significantly"), distraction (i.e. "there are other more important issues that require our attention"), fear, denial, weak imaginations, and just plain ignorance.

Here's a quick overview of what's coming down the pipe—developments that will forever alter what we currently think of as normalcy and the human condition:

• Artificial superintelligence: Recursively self-improving expert systems endowed with significantly greater-than-human intelligence, capacity, and reach; the end of human primacy on the planet; an extinction risk and potential existential paradigm changer.
• Molecular nanotechnology: Manufacturing and materials construction at the molecular scale; the complete re-thinking of engineering and manufacturing; the rise of molecular assemblers (i.e. "replicators" or "fabricators") and the end of scarcity; the advent of molecular-scale robotics; the threat and promise of self-replication; and a serious existential risk.
• Robotics revolution: Hyper-automation and massive unemployment; the grim potential for robotic warfare/terrorism and the rise of machine ethics; the unpredictable impacts of the convergence of robotics with artificial intelligence; robots that can self-replicate, swarm, assemble, create emergent effects, self-organize, and repair; a potential existential risk. 
• The ongoing biotechnological revolution: Enhanced and modified humans (i.e. cyborgs, genetically altered humans, postbiological beings), indefinite lifespans; regenerative medicine; advanced psychopharmaceuticals; the ongoing diminishment of corporeal importance (including possible mind transfers) and extended personhood; transgenics and animal enhancement.
• The ongoing communications revolution: Noosphere/global brain (where human minds are interlinked with our communications technology and the internet).
• The political and sociological impacts of these disruptive technologies: The demise of privacy and the rise of the surveillance state; the further diminishment of civil liberties and the onset of neo-authoritarianism. 
• Megascale engineering: Assuming humanity will survive this far: The graduation of humanity to Kardashev I and Kardashev II civilizations through the advent of such things as the Dyson Sphere, Jupiter Brain and Matrioshka Brain; the onset of technogainism, remedial ecology and the reworking of Earth's entire ecosystem (including weather control); the permanent retiring of Darwinian processes on the planet. 

James Hughes, the executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, is featured in Slate's article, Think Faster: A review of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes-style research into brain boosting:

In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, James Franco plays a scientist who discovers a genetic engineering treatment, delivered via virus, that prompts the brain to repair itself in the sick and boosts brain power beyond base line in the healthy (at least, in healthy apes). In the real world, though, that sort of therapy is still relegated to mouse experimentation. According to James Hughes, the executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, genetic therapy is still a field with more promise than successes. It can be dangerous, as is portrayed in the Apes prequel: In 1999, Jesse Gelsinger, an 18-year-old who suffered from a rare metabolic disorder, died as a result of a gene-therapy trial, and the field is still grappling with that failure.

Brain-computer interfaces, such as implants or "hook-ups," represent an alternative path for neuroenhancement. Linking your brain to a computer chip may conjure up sci-fi nightmares of a USB slot behind your ear, but it's not quite that far-fetched: Technically, the cochlear implants that allow some hearing-impaired or deaf people to hear in a limited fashion are brain-computer interfaces, as Greely points out. But Hughes speculates that brain-computer interfaces for better cognitive skills are probably at least 30 or 40 years out. "Even if we don't have nanobots in your head, we might have simpler ways of, and perhaps noninvasive ways, of hooking the brain up to external media and doing things we can't quite imagine yet," he says.

So any blockbuster neuroenhancer is still in the lab, or just a twinkle in a scientist's eye, at the moment. But those in the field are already preparing for the ethical and societal ramifications. Some, like Greely, urge the public—and physicians—not to be too squeamish about giving healthy brains a little boost. "In a world in which human work spans and life spans are increasing, cognitive enhancement tools—including the pharmacological—will be increasingly useful for improve quality of life and extended work productivity, as well as to stave off normal pathological age-related cognitive declines," he and colleagues argued in a 2008 Nature commentary.

Wired recently published an article titled, "Seven Creepy Experiments That Could Teach Us So Much (If They Weren’t So Wrong)." Among their picks is the creation of an "ape man" that would come about through cross-breeding a human with a chimpanzee:

The premise:
The great biologist Stephen Jay Gould called it “the most potentially interesting and ethically unacceptable experiment I can imagine.” The idea? Mating a human with a chimp. His interest in this monstrosity grew out of his work with snails, closely related species of which can display wide variation in shell architecture. Gould attributed this diversity to a few master genes, which turn on and off the shared genes responsible for constructing the shells. Perhaps, he speculated, the large visible differences between humans and apes were also a factor of developmental timing. He pointed out that adult humans have physical traits, such as larger craniums and wide-set eyes, that resemble infant chimpanzees, a phenomenon known as neoteny—the retention of juvenile traits in adults. Gould theorized that over the course of evolution, a tendency toward neoteny might have helped give rise to human beings. By watching the development of a half-human, half-chimp, researchers could explore this theory in a firsthand (and truly creepy) way.

How it works:
It would probably be frighteningly easy: The same techniques used for in vitro fertilization would likely yield a viable hybrid human-chimp embryo. (Researchers have already spanned a comparable genetic gap in breeding a rhesus monkey with a baboon.) Chimps have 24 pairs of chromosomes, and humans 23, but this is not an absolute barrier to breeding. The offspring would likely have an odd number of chromosomes, though, which might make them unable to reproduce themselves. As for the gestation and birth, it could be done the natural way. Chimpanzees are born slightly smaller than humans, on average—around 4 pounds—and so comparative anatomy would argue for growing the embryo in a human uterus.

The payoff:
Gould’s idea about neoteny remains controversial, to say the least. “It got a lot of scrutiny and has been disproved in many ways,” says Daniel Lieberman, a Harvard professor of human evolutionary biology. But Alexander Harcourt, professor emeritus of anthropology at UC Davis, regards neoteny as “still a viable concept.” This forbidden experiment would help to resolve that debate and, in a broader sense, illuminate how two species with such similar genomes could be so different. Its outcome would take biologists deep into the origin of the species we care about most: ourselves. Let’s just hope we can find a less disturbing route to get there.

Performance artist Marion Laval-Jeantet has injected herself with horse blood plasma as part of an artistic project called "May the Horse Live in Me" that seeks to explore trans-species relationships. She prepared her body to accept the horse blood plasma by getting injected with different horse immunoglobulins over the course of several months:

These foreign animal antibodies were injected in progressively larger amounts to allow her to build up tolerance in a process that she referred to as “mithridatisation,” after the Persian king of Pontus, Mithridates VI, who supposedly built up an immunity to poison by regularly consuming small doses of it.

Earlier this year, after months of preparation, she was injected with horse blood plasma, which contained the full spectrum of immunoglobulins without provoking an allergic reaction.

As part of the performance piece she also wore a set of stilts with hooves on the end to feel at one with the horse. She walked around with the donor horse in a “communication ritual” before having her hybrid blood extracted and freeze-dried.

She explained to Centre Press that the whole process made her feel “hyperpowerful, hypersensitive and hypernervous.” She added: “I had a feeling of being superhuman. I was not normal in my body. I had all of the emotions of a herbivore. I couldn’t sleep and I felt a little bit like a horse.”

Art Orienté Objet has a long history of working in the bioart space, having created other pieces including Skin Culture, which uses bioengineered skin as a canvas for animal-shaped tattoos.

Check out the video:

Via.

This was published last year: The ethics of using transgenic non-human primates to study what makes us human by Marilyn E. Coors, Jacqueline J. Glover, Eric T. Juengst and James M. Sikela.

Abstract:

A flood of comparative genomic data is resulting in the identification of human lineage-specific (HLS) sequences. As apes are our closest evolutionary relatives, transgenic introduction of HLS sequences into these species has the greatest potential to produce 'humanized' phenotypes and also to illuminate the functions of these sequences. We argue that such transgenic apes would also be more likely than other species to experience harm from such research, which renders such studies ethically unacceptable in apes and justifies regulatory barriers between these species and other non-human primates for HLS transgenic research.

Very cool article in The Atlanic: The Science of 'Planet of the Apes': Could Simians Get Scary Smart? Excerpt:

...there's some eerie validity to the on-screen science. The technique used to treat Alzheimer’s in Rise, for example, has been tried in labs. Scientists can engineer what amounts to a genetic delivery system—a virus sent out to the brain that infects neurons with desired genetic material. Once the transfer is made, those genes can change or improve cognitive functioning.


This has been done experimentally, says Dr. Lary Walker of Emory’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center. But usually on mice; never on apes. And the results aren’t quite as extraordinary (or quick) as those seen in the movie. “The idea that the next day, they’re going to be Einsteins—or that at any point they’re going to be Einsteins—is not going to happen,” he says.


Like Franco’s character in the film, Walker is an Alzheimer’s researcher. He spent a portion of his 25-year career in the pharmaceutical industry before returning to academia. While he brushes off any comparisons between him and the movie's protagonist, he gives the Rise filmmakers some credit for their nods to reality. "They did their homework," he says. "But when you take it in aggregate, it all tends to fall apart. It had elements of good science, but in the end, it was science fiction with the accent on fiction."

And this:

Nature magazine published a report last year suggesting that non-human primates with sections of human DNA implanted into their genomes at the embryonic stage—through a process called transgenics—might develop enough self-awareness “to appreciate the ways their lives are circumscribed, and to suffer, albeit immeasurably, in the full psychological sense of that term.”

“That’s the ethical concern: that we would produce a creature,” says bioethicist Dr. Marilyn Coors, one of the authors of the Nature report. “If it were cognitively aware, you wouldn’t want to put it in a zoo. What kind of cruelty would that be? You wouldn’t be able to measure the cruelty—or maybe it could tell you. I don’t know.”

Although Walker doesn’t know of anyone doing research to enhance cognitive function in apes, and Coors knows of no transgenic apes, Coors points out that scientists theoretically have the technical capability to produce them.

It’s been a while since I’ve been so excited about a science fiction movie. But can you blame me? Rise of the Planet of the Apes (hereafter abbreviated to ROTPOTA) is the first feature film that I can remember that explicitly addresses a number of topics so near and dear to my heart—namely biotech, transgenics, enhancement, non-human personhood, and animal welfare. Admittedly, I went into the theatre expecting more spectacle than cerebral stimulation, but I'm happy to say the film offers considerable food for thought.

This movie explored two primary themes, one of which is new to the franchise, the other being a staple of the series. Specifically, I'm referring to (1) intelligence augmentation and its empowering and civilizing effects and (2) the ongoing perils of in-group thinking and tribalism.

In terms of the latter theme, ROTPOTA held true to the original 1968 film which largely served as a metaphor for contemporary social ills like racism, bigotry, elitism, class struggle and, of course, animal abuse. What made ROTPOTA particularly fascinating from a stylistic perspective, however, is that it turned the original movie on its head by showing apes being prodded by tasers and locked behind cages—a clever inversion of the original film's clever inversion. This was done quite effectively and it brought about a sense of pathos for the chimps—enhanced or otherwise.

Okay, this is the part where I start to introduce some plot points and spoilers. But don't let that stop you from reading on if you haven't seen the movie—I don't think it'll detract from your experience.

Uplift and away

In ROTPOTA, the reason for animal enhancement is somewhat glossed over; it's a plot device that furthers the story and serves to explain the ascendancy of the apes. It happens because scientists inadvertently augment chimp intelligence while testing out a potential cure for Alzheimer’s disease. It was a kind of happy accident. But as a result, the film never properly addresses the ethics involved. Consequently, the "ought or not" in regards to uplift is never fully articulated or fleshed out. And in this sense the movie feels a bit incomplete.

That said, the underlying commentary about how intelligence can serve as an empowering and emancipatory force was very much at the forefront. The film’s protagonist, the enhanced chimp Ceasar, used his cognitive gifts to overcome his predicament—that being his confinement to an ape shelter in which he was forced back to a primitive existence and abused by both the staff and other chimps.

Indeed, the scenes in the shelter were some of the most poignant, bringing to mind such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Truman Show. Reminiscent of the apes in 2001, Caesar was caught between animal savagery and civilized potential. And like the outer boundaries of the giant studio in The Truman Show, the walls of the sanctuary were a giant illusion that presented a false sense of freedom. Though painted with trees and skyscapes, the walls were a hard boundary, a metaphor for limits, constraints, and oppression. The shelter offered Caesar a glimpse into what life would be like in the natural state—a life filled with mind numbing brutality and devoid of any potential.

It was only until Caesar successfully took charge of his tribe (a classic case of brain over braun), uplifted his primate brethren, and outwitted his detainers that he and the other apes were able to escape. It was intelligence augmentation as a force for liberation. Moreover, Caesar introduced to the pack a kinder, gentler way of being. It was important to him that they work cooperatively in their struggle for freedom and mete out as little violence as possible. In this sense, uplift was portrayed as a force for increased benevolence and enlightenment.

Us and them

In terms of the second primary theme, that of tribalism and prejudice, the film demonstrated the dangers of ‘us and them’ mentalities and how it gives rise to alienation. It was through the exclusion, isolation and exploitation of the chimps that humans caused a sense of in-group tribalism to emerge among them.

Caesar, who was raised by humans, could initially relate to his human family. But as time passed and as he came to understand his situation, he felt more and more unsure about his place and identity. Forced to wear a leash when out in public, Caesar wondered if he was more of a pet than a person. His alienation grew complete after he was abandoned and abused in the draconian ape shelter. No longer willing to relate or even associate with humans, Caesar organized an escape along with the other apes and sought refuge outside the human community in the Redwood Forest.

Indeed, Caesar's hand was largely forced on account of his poor treatment. Tortured, neglected, and ridiculed, he became increasingly radical. The division between the apes and the humans, he believed, was far too inalienable—he had to act. What made this particularly obvious to Caesar was that his human handlers were not just unwilling to recognize and acknowledge his intelligence, but they were clearly threatened by it. As his orangutang comrade indicated through sign language, “Careful. Human no like smart ape.”

Interestingly, I feel that this is a prevailing fear among many of those who oppose animal uplift.  The worry is that humanity could lose its exalted place at the top of the food chain. Creating human-like intelligences would force us to acknowledge the personhood of these animals. We'd have to find a way to live alongside them. Moreover, they may eventually supercede our own abilities, which would pose a potential scenario reminiscent of the original Planet of the Apes story.

But as ROTPOTA suggests, it doesn’t have to be this way. Exclusion and indifference gives rise to tribalism, and when gone too far, it creates radicalism. The ultimate take-away from this movie is that it’s through the abandoning of in- and out-group mentalities that we can strive to minimize these types of situations from occurring.

Wow, the Daily Mail is reporting that over 150 human-animal hybrids have been grown in UK labs since 2008, the same year the Brits passed the Human Fertilisation Embryology Act allowing for this kind of research. For some reason these transgenic embryos have been produced secretively for the past three years.

Specifically, the scientists produced animal eggs fertilised by a human sperm, ‘cybrids’, in which a human nucleus is implanted into an animal cell, and ‘chimeras’, in which human cells are mixed with animal embryos.

The purpose of the research is to develop embryonic stem cells which can be used to treat a range of incurable illnesses.

It's worth noting that human-animal hybrids are also created in other countries, many of which have little or no regulation.

IEET Program Director Kyle Munkittrick interviewed director Rupert Wyatt, and stars Andy Serkis and James Franco, about the ethics of cognitive enhancement and animal uplift in the film Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Looks like a good example of cultural uplift.

I also recommend the RadioLab episode, "Lucy." Description:

The haunting epic of Lucy the chimpanzee. When Lucy was only two days old, she was adopted by psychologist Dr. Maurice K. Temerlin and his wife Jane. The Temerlins wondered, if given the right environment, how human could Lucy become? We hear from Lucy's language tutor, Dr. Roger Fouts, Lucy's caretaker and eventual friend, Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, and Mr. Temerlin himself... or his words anyway, read by radio host David Garland. And writer Charles Siebert helps us to make sense of Lucy's story.