‘What Happens Next?’: Are Humans About to Evolve?

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Susan Carland: Welcome back to What Happens Next?, the podcast that examines some of the biggest challenges facing our world and asks the experts, what will happen if we don't change? And what can we do to create a better future?

I'm Dr Susan Carland. Keep listening to find out what happens next.

Leah Heiss: We've extended or augmented our capabilities far beyond what they're capable of without those extensions. So we've been transhuman for a long time. We might not identify it as such, but there is a slippery, blurry line between augmenting capabilities and transhumanism.

Karinne Ludlow: Then we get into arguments of when is it medical and when is it enhancement.

Shaun Gregory: I think you're absolutely right. The lines are going to be blurred, and I think that's actually going to happen soon.

Susan Carland: According to the Vision Council of America, about 75 per cent of the global adult population uses vision-correcting products such as glasses or contact lenses. There's a good chance that you are one of the more than four billion glasses wearers on earth, and it could be argued that you, yourself, are something of a transhumanist.

Your glasses, your contacts, the smartphone in your pocket, the fitness tracker on your wrist. They're all everyday objects, sure. They're also all technologies humans use to augment our abilities, and in a small way, they blur the line between human and machine.

Today on the podcast, we're examining the fascinating and slightly frightening future of transhumanism, man merging with machine. Join us as we feel out the fuzzy boundary between progress and hubris, unravel possible ethical concerns, and explore the societal implications of this revolutionary movement. Keep listening to find out what happens next.

Tan Le is the Founder and CEO of EMOTIV, a neurotechnology company that seeks to decode our understanding of the human brain. She's operating on the front lines of the transhumanist movement. Tan, welcome to the podcast.

Tan Le: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Susan Carland: I want to start by asking you, how would you define what transhumanism is?

Tan Le: Wow. Let's just start right in with a really tough question. It's an interesting concept because essentially what it says, it's about the transition of what humans and what humanity is in my mind. So as we think about humans, we are always evolving. We've always historically been augmenting ourselves in different ways.

Susan Carland: Dr Julian Koplin is a lecturer in Monash University's Bioethics Centre.

Julian Koplin: Humans have been around for quite a while. We've had the bodies that we have at the moment for quite a while. We've thought and behaved in the ways that we have for quite a while. I think transhumanism is looking at what it might mean for that to change what it might mean for technologies to be developed that could give us new capacities. Things like maybe neural implants, maybe cybernetics, maybe ways of innovating and changing what it means to be humans go beyond what a human currently typically is.

Susan Carland: But human augmentation isn't anything new. We've been finding ways to break the barriers of our biology since the first caveman picked up a stick.

Karinne Ludlow: Hello, everyone. I'm Karinne Ludlow, associate professor in the law faculty at Monash University, and my passion is looking at how law impacts where science goes.

Susan Carland: Karinne, welcome.

Karinne Ludlow: Thank you.

Susan Carland: You're an expert in law, and I want to ask you, before we get into the legal stuff, how would you define what transhumanism is?

Karinne Ludlow: I think probably something like using technology to improve, if that's the right word, human qualities in an extraordinary way. Make us live longer or be smarter, run faster.

Susan Carland: So where do you see the line? Are the glasses that you're wearing now do you see that as transhuman?

Karinne Ludlow: Yeah, that's a discussion I have with lots of people. Where do you draw the line, particularly between medical assistance versus enhancement? What if I could change my genes to do away with ageing and so I wouldn't need glasses because I'm middle-aged? Are we talking transhumanism or just normal, everyday life –

Susan Carland: Yeah.

Karinne Ludlow: – appliance that I use to get around?

Susan Carland: Yeah. Because I guess if we think that glasses are a form of transhumanism, that means humans have been doing this for a long time.

Karinne Ludlow: They certainly have glasses and very early-

Susan Carland: Sticks.

Karinne Ludlow: Yeah.

Susan Carland: Walking sticks, early limb replacement. They were obviously the very precursor to the bionic limbs that we see now. But that means humans have been doing this for hundreds of years.

Karinne Ludlow: Yes. So I think the extraordinary thing for me in the areas I look at is some of those techniques are heritable, so they're passed on to future generations without any actual decision by that person. My grandchildren might wear glasses, they might even wear my glasses, but that's their choice. But what if I changed my genes, so they didn't need to wear glasses? Susan Carland: Are there any examples of that intervention happening now? Are people changing their genes now?

Karinne Ludlow: Yes.

Susan Carland: Like how?

Karinne Ludlow: You could either look at people who are existing now changing their genes, for example, to fight cancer or to regain their sight. That's certainly being trialled all around the world, including in Australia. Medical therapies use techniques that change people's genes, but that won't be inherited. That's only going to impact that person. But last year as one of the last things done by the Morrison government, they legalised, I think, called mitochondrial donation, and that will be heritable.

Susan Carland: People are donating their mitochondria to other people? Karinne Ludlow: Yes. Susan Carland: For what purpose? To eradicate illness, genetic issues?

Karinne Ludlow: If a woman knows that she has a particular, it's only a very small group of mitochondrial disease caused by a particular defect on her mitochondria, and she wants to have a child with her genetics rather than adopting or using a donated egg, then to avoid passing on the disease, we now have a technique where the mitochondria of the egg come from a third person, another woman, rather than from the woman who wants the child. That means if the embryo grows to be a baby, the baby's born with different genes to what it otherwise would have. Those genes, if it's a baby girl and she has children, will be passed on to future generation.

Susan Carland: To the average listener, technologies such as gene editing can sound like they'll set us on a fast track to a eugenics-friendly sci-fi future. It's not a comfortable idea, but if you think about it, we've incorporated other human augmenting tech into our lives easily. We even miss it when it's gone. Here's Tan again.

Tan Le: Things that allowed us to have greater strength that augmented our muscle capacity. We introduced learning to augment our cognitive abilities at large. Over the last several decades, we've been using technology as a way to augment our capacity. This notion of transhumanism is exploring the concept of the boundaries of what this biological human organism... what it is, versus what it can be when we start to explore new forms of augmentation to this natural existing biological organism that we know as what defines us as human beings today.

Susan Carland: Associate Professor Leah Heiss is the Eva and Marc Besen International Research Chair in Design at Monash University. Her professional life has largely focused on wearable technologies from garments that can connect couples' heartbeats across distances to smart electronic skin designed to measure medication levels.

Leah Heiss: I'm very interested in augmenting people's capacities in the world. If it becomes transhumanism, that's fine, but it's not the goal of the research and the design practice. The goal is really to augment and enable people.

Susan Carland: Where do you see the line between the two? Where does augmentation stop and transhumanism begin?

Leah Heiss: I think it's almost like an accidental line. It's a moving line. We can augment capacities. So for instance, another work that I've done with designing hearing aids, for instance, you're able to restore someone to a certain level, but you're also able to provide new capacities and new capabilities, which might be to hear the television or to hear what's happening in various other places in the home that you might not have been able to have in the past. That's quite a lo-fi example. For me, transhumanism emerges from augmenting human capacities and capabilities.

Susan Carland: Associate Professor Shaun Gregory is a cardiovascular engineer working at Monash University's Victorian Heart Institute. Heart transplants, artificial, and otherwise are, of course, only conducted on the extremely ill, but like Leah, he can see lines beginning to blur, and the rise of AI is just the beginning.

You mentioned that you hadn't really considered this to be part of the transhumanist movement because that's about otherwise well people extending the boundaries to what it means to be human, and a new focus on sick people.

I guess I wonder if we might be in a position to start seeing that line blurred, or at least people arguing that the line is blurred. That like, “Okay, yes, it's a clear distinction in your situation, these people are very sick, they could die without this. They probably would die without either an artificial heart or a heart replacement.” That's right at your A and Z is having wings implanted in your back so you could fly.

But what if we start getting that middle bit blurred? If someone says, “Well, it is an impediment to me that I have an IQ of 100, and I really should, for a better quality of life, have an IQ of 130, so I would like to have a chip implanted in my brain.” Now that person's not sick, but they're making an argument that their quality of life would be better with this help. How would you see grappling with the ethics of that? Can you ever see a time where that may start to encroach on your work?

Shaun Gregory: I think you're absolutely right. The lines are going to be blurred, and I think that's actually going to happen soon. In our field, not so much with an artificial heart. Nobody wants an artificial heart implanted in them. It's an incredibly invasive surgery, lots of complications, lots of issues. That's a long, long way off if it will ever happen. But there are many other applications of technology that could be implied now, well, very soon. If we look at ChatGPT and artificial intelligence, it's only a matter of time.

I don't think it's a very long matter of time before that's being used to help us with rapid decision-making and rapid information gathering. We will probably have systems very soon that will give us a huge amount of information very quickly when we're confused by something and help us make decisions. Perhaps improving that IQ. Now whether or not that's a chip implanted in the brain, I'm not sure that will be the best way to do it immediately. But there are also a lot of brain-machine interfaces that are being developed at the moment to help control other medical devices.

Susan Carland: Can laws keep up with emerging technology and public demand? Here's Karinne.

Karinne Ludlow: I'm not a big fan of the slippery slope argument because I think we can put a boundary wherever we choose to. But on the other hand, it has implications because of the language used to justify the change. Once you start seeing what the public thinks is a good justification, then you can figure out, “Well, will that be useful for other types of changes as well?” The implications of legalising that very regulated mitochondrial donation scope for genome editing, we might then think, “Well, if we can change the mitochondrial DNA of future people, why can't we change the nuclear DNA of future people?” Then we get into arguments of when is it medical and when is it enhancement.

Susan Carland: I guess we've been having these conversations for a long time though, haven't we? I know, I think, that the very first IVF baby was born in 1978, I think. I imagine when that happened, it was a massive social debate. “Oh, we're playing God. This is what a shock. Is this even okay? What do we think about this?” Now no one really bats an eyelid if people speak very openly, “I'm using IVF.” Everyone seems calm about it.

Do you think we could get to that point with even changing nuclear DNA, where society would be like, “It's actually fine. I want to be taller and smarter, and I don't want to get disease. I wouldn't mind being slightly better looking.”

Karinne Ludlow: I mean, I don't have a problem with society getting to that point. That's the whole point of society is we change particularly as our science gets better. When IVF first happened, and Victoria was a world leader in the laws to come around IVF, the thing that drove that was the concern of the churches that it would be a form of adultery. Never mentioned now as an objection to modern technique.

Susan Carland: That's interesting. So that was a concern. It wasn't that you're playing God and –

Karinne Ludlow: Oh, those ones were up too. But –

Susan Carland: It would be adultery.

Karinne Ludlow: Yeah, the adultery argument was of great concern to the community.

Susan Carland: How interesting. Which I guess is probably not going to come up in the mitochondrial DNA conversation.

Karinne Ludlow: Well, it surprises me it came up with the IVF conversation.

Susan Carland: New technology, especially the kind that challenges our idea of what it means to be human, brings with it new ethical considerations. Here's Tan.

Tan Le: There's always ethical questions when it comes to this question of transhumanism because you are essentially... The issue of decoding the brain is less of a topical issue in and of itself. But as you think about the applications that can emerge as a result of our ability to decode and understand the human brain. Then potentially interface with it as a form of brain-computer interface, that augmentation of humans starts to move into the territory where ethicists will start to ask questions about, "Are you still human? Who has access to this technology? Who has control?" Et cetera, et cetera.

Absolutely, it's a field that neuroethics is one that's becoming a lot more of high interest in Australia and other parts of the world as well. I think it's a very important conversation to have, especially as we start to make more progress in understanding the human brain and start to introduce new ways to potentially augment and enhance its capabilities.

Susan Carland: Bioethicists like Julian are wrestling with these questions. As a bioethicist, what do you see as some of the main ethical issues facing the development of transhumanism?

Julian Koplin: I think there are quite a few different ways that you can break it down. There's one set of concerns where you might think, “If we're changing what it means to be a human, is that a problem? Are we playing God? Are we taking over some role that we shouldn't?”

One way that you can look at that concern is for a religious perspective, obviously playing God has that language built into it, but you can still have worries about interfering with nature and meddling with nature, going beyond what we ought to be doing. There are a few reasons why you might be worried about it.

You might think just in and of itself to strive too hard to go change the world. It might not be a good thing for us to do that we would be happier, better off, more appropriate for us to accept some limits.

Or we might think that we might just get things catastrophically wrong that we are as we are at the moment. If we innovate too much on it, if we innovate too rapidly, we might end up in a situation where we achieve some grand change, we haven't fought through fully or we haven't been able to imagine what the risks are. We end up with a Frankensteinian monster scenario where this intervention that we were working on turns out to turn around and kill all of our loved ones and then –

Susan Carland: Eat our brains.

Julian Koplin: Yeah, exactly.

Susan Carland: What do you think would be the best way to manage those potential ethical concerns? Is it government policy? Is it... I don't know. How are these ethical issues been dealt with in the past?

Julian Koplin: I think there are a few different levels. There's always a question of individual researchers, individual scientists. You can see this at various points in history when you have researchers beginning to make the first forays into understanding nuclear reactions, wondering, “Should I publish my findings? What if this information could be used to generate a nuclear weapon?”

You have individual scientists who have discovered ways to maybe synthesise a virus or ways to revise some extinct virus asking themselves, “Is this an area of research I should be going down? Is this something I should be sharing? Is this something I should be publishing? It could be good for my career, but what it falls into the wrong hands?”

Individual moral reflection really matters. People working in these areas, it really matters. Investors deciding where to put their money, that really matters.

Then you obviously have government decisions, you have laws, you have regulations that can curtail what we do. We have funding decisions where we try to decide what research we want to fund, what areas matter.

You have professional ethics, you have education, you have people like me, bioethicists, stepping in and trying to get people thinking about ethics and trying to give them some tools they can use to think through how they want to act, what they want to do in the world, think through the ethical implications of their own decisions.

Susan Carland: Then there's the issue of access. How do we ensure everyone can benefit from life-changing, and in some cases, lifesaving devices, not just the ultra-wealthy? Here's Shaun.

Shaun Gregory: I think the biggest ethical issue that we have is about the discrepancy between availability of these devices and transplants. These devices, the one that's on the table right now in front of us, they cost north of 100,000 Australian dollars, which for us is great. It's covered by Medicare.

But if you look at lower-income countries, there's no way that they can afford technology like that. They also don't necessarily have the clinically trained staff to implant the devices or to do transplants. So they don't have access to this technology. If you think about we could possibly develop cheaper devices, maybe they don't need to be made out of titanium with magnets in them, but the cost of the device is only a small percentage of what the sales price is because you have insurance costs, regulatory approvals, and all of these things.

Susan Carland: You don't want to be buying it off eBay.

Shaun Gregory: Exactly. Especially if it's a life-supporting device. I think that there's going to be a limit with how we can distribute these things globally and meet the needs of global heart failure before we really go any further than that.

Susan Carland: For now, these technologies are most accessible to the rich, and this group led by Silicon Valley execs have funnelled increasing support to researchers looking into lifespan extension, a possibility rife with ethical dilemmas. Here's Julian.

Julian Koplin: You have a series of startup biotech companies that are trying to go find ways to go slow ageing or reverse ageing or reverse some facets of ageing. That's quite exciting, I think for quite a few reasons. As it happens, these companies have ended up attracting some money from Silicon Valley billionaires, people like Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who's been in the news a lot recently with ChatGPT as well as Jeffrey Bezos, as well as quite a few others.

Susan Carland: How do you think about that endeavour as a bioethicist? Is it a good example of humans always pushing for progress and self-improvement? Or is it actually a manifestation of arrogance, “I am beyond nature and fear”?

Julian Koplin: I think there are quite a few different worries someone might have about extending lifespan. One is something like, “Well, is this hubris? Is this overstepping the bounds what humans should be doing?” But we have overstepped the bounds of natural limits to human lives many, many times in the past, and we tend to think that's gone really well for us. Great. We have antibiotics now. That's wonderful.

Susan Carland: Vaccines.

Julian Koplin: Yes. Life is no longer nasty, short, brutish. We get to live for longer. We get to be healthier for the time that we're alive, and we tend to think that that's a good thing. One of the questions is, well, is anything different if we're talking about not curing illnesses as they come up, not helping people as they become older and frailer, but actually trying to push back the ageing process?

Susan Carland: Is there anything different? If we do all live to 150, if that were the new goal or the new norm, would that be a good thing?

Julian Koplin: Would it be a good thing to live until 150? I am going to say I'm not sure about 150. I do think there's a point at which it would become a bad thing. But before we talk about the points at which it would become a bad thing, I want to just briefly acknowledge that at the moment, we tend to think it's a very good thing to save people's lives. We tend to think it's a very good thing to help people live longer, healthier lives. That's why we celebrate the invention of antibiotics. That's why if I save somebody from drowning, I tend to think, “Oh, great, I've done a good thing.” People would say, “Good job.”

The first worry is about resources. The obvious response is to say, “Well, okay. We just need to not reproduce in the same rates that we are at the moment.”

Maybe that can be achieved. Maybe we can start ending up in a world where people have their first child at age 200 or 300. But if you have people living very, very long lives, one implication of this is that we presumably need to slow the rate of generational turnover. We wouldn't be able to have people continuing to reproduce the rates that we are at the moment if no one is actually making room for the next generation.

There might not be any hard fixed carrying capacity for the earth. But if you imagine that we continue reproducing like we are at the moment and no one dies, or they don't die until they're 500, or they don't die until they're 700.

But I think even there's a new worry, which is that people become fixed in their ways as they become older, they become less likely to change their mind. There's all kinds of really interesting research on this. As that happens, we might worry, “Okay, so these people who are around, who have achieved very highly in their fields, who have done a great thing for the world, there's scientists, musicians, artists, they will climb the pinnacle of their profession and then stay there.”

Having reached that point by thinking a certain way, they might continue to think that way. We know that we change our minds less frequently as we get older. We know that our political positions become more fixed. We know that... I mean, there's very glib phrase about scientific advances that they don't win by convincing. New scientific theories, they don't win by convincing their opponents. They win by being right and waiting out for the old guard to die, where a new generation of scientists can come up that's received the new truth.

We might worry, “Okay, what would it mean if you have the rate of generational turnover change as well?” It might mean that the same views that we have at the moment, the same theories that we have at the moment might continue to be around 200, 300, 500 years from now.

Susan Carland: While transhumanism offers exciting possibilities for human enhancement and technological progress, it also raises profound ethical concerns and potential risks. It's crucial to critically examine the unintended consequences and inequalities that could arise as we navigate the path to a transhumanist tomorrow.

Thank you to all our guests on today's episode, Tan Le, Dr Julian Koplin, Associate Professor Leah Heiss, Associate Professor Karinne Ludlow and Associate Professor Shaun Gregory. You can learn more about their work by visiting our show notes. We'll be back next week with part two of this series.

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