What Happens Next?: Can Tech Unlock Humans' Full Potential?

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.

Tan Le: I think that as we think about transhuman future that we seem to be marching towards, it requires all of us to participate in the conversation.

Alex Naoumidis: It's just the next step of human evolution.

Leah Heiss: So I think we're on the brink of something very interesting. It's pretty wild.

Susan Carland: What if by slipping on a headset you could move objects with your mind? What if with a new contact lens you could see colours that no one has ever seen before? What if you could take a pill and live forever? Would you do it?

Last week on the podcast, we caught a glimpse of a future where transhumanist technologies, those are tools that enable us to go beyond the limits of our biological capabilities, could help us do all those things and more. We discussed some of the ethical quandaries that arise with new technologies and the increasingly blurred lines between augmenting our abilities and becoming something else entirely.

In today's episode, we'll explore some of the potential benefits of embracing a transhumanist tomorrow. Are we on the brink of the next stage of our evolution? Get ready to push the boundaries of what it means to be human. Keep listening to find out what happens next.

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Alex Naoumidis is the co-founder and co-CEO of Mindset Health, a company focused on helping people manage their IBS, quit smoking and more using hypnosis-based therapeutic techniques, all through an app on their phone.

Alex, thank you for joining us.

Alex Naoumidis: No worries. Thanks for having me.

Susan Carland: How do you hypnotise someone through an app?

Alex Naoumidis: Hypnosis is essential, just focused attention and heightened suggestibility. So when you're absorbed in a good book or the idea of the flow state is very similar, and when you go to in-person, you shut your eyes. They help bring you to a state of relaxed, focused attention. And while you're in this state, that's when they'll use CBT techniques or guided imagery or X, Y, or Z. So it's actually really easy for us to shut your eyes and listen to a recording of someone doing that process or shut your eyes and listen to someone in-person doing that process.

Susan Carland: And do you see hypnosis as tipping into transhumanism?

Alex Naoumidis: I think so. The way we view it is hypnosis is a way to unlock the power of the mind to influence our health. The idea is by the nature of the placebo effect, that shows how powerful the mind is to change cancer and change all these conditions from anxiety, depression, to physical conditions like irritable bowel syndrome. And the idea is you have this ability, how can we leverage that to manage your health?

Susan Carland: And so how would you then define what transhumanism is?

Alex Naoumidis: The way I would view it is just how can you make humans better than the previous human? Unlike all these maybe things that already exist that we don't... untapped potential or it's things like maybe technology we can embed into our brains or things like that. It's just the next step of human evolution. Tan Le: Hi, my name is Tan Le. I am the founder and CEO of Emotiv, a neurotechnology company that seeks to decode understanding of the human brain.

Susan Carland: Tan also thinks humans are headed for a kind of metamorphosis, especially as brain-computer technology evolves too.

Tan Le: There's a lot of conversations now about an artificial general intelligence potentially usurping human intelligence at some point in the future. Clearly, it's nowhere near human intelligence today. It doesn't have the creativity, the flexibility, but it's starting to exhibit abilities to synthesise data, language, text, images, videos, starting to create things in a generative manner that starts to make us think, “Well, what would be possible if we let this form of intelligence continue to evolve?”

Well, my view of the future is I think that there will be a merging of the two forms of intelligence, this human biological intelligence with this artificial form of intelligence to create what many forefathers in this field have called humanistic intelligence, where this artificial intelligence becomes so inextricably linked and the feedback loop is connected to a human, that it starts to serve the human in new ways.

And I think that that is more likely to evolve as a new form of intelligence, particularly when we are thinking about the space around brain-computer interface. Because today, as smart as an AI is perceived to be, it doesn't understand the mental model that a human puts around the world. It might be able to label that this is a woman hugging a dog, but it doesn't know how that woman feels when she hugs the dog.

When it looks at a mother finally reconnecting with her child, it doesn't understand the emotional and cognitive response associated with that. It can label it perfectly well and it can create images based on descriptions, but it's not able to understand what context, what behavioural, what cognitive context we as human beings associate with those descriptors and that's the missing link.

And so by connecting the two forms of technology that allows our biological human organism to then interface with the artificial intelligence, then we can create a new form of intelligence that's much more humanistic. And I think that that form of intelligence will ultimately allow us to work in symbiosis with AI in a way that allows the two systems to work very, very seamlessly together in a very exciting way that will make many people feel like we have superhuman capacity.

Susan Carland: What do you think is the most important issue that we need to address as we move towards a more transhumanist future?

Tan Le: I think having more conversations between all of the stakeholders. So the people that are inventing this field, along with regulators, with communities, with customers, users. This is really important because, without dialogue, no single organisation can steward the future in a way that is inclusive and accessible to all.

And so I think that as we think about the human of the future and this transhuman future that we seem to be marching towards, it requires all of us to participate in the conversation. And I don't mean just the Western-educated industrialised nations, but I mean collectively as a global human species, we need to include all voices and make sure that when we're creating the technology, it's as inclusive as possible in ensuring that even the most remote parts of the world, we are able to involve those individuals in some way.

And I think that's the hardest part about many of these advancements is that we are seeing collectively massive improvements in quality of life and how much longer we're all living and much healthier abilities to live through most of our life all around the world. And so I would say the living conditions from most of the world has improved, but we are still seeing this massive polarisation in wealth and not everyone feels like they have a voice.

And so how do we continue to think about ways we can foster a much more inclusive future so that more people could participate? And so obviously it requires people like myself who are inventing the field to be active in the conversations, but it also requires all of the people who are part of the broader stakeholder community to really engage as well.

Susan Carland: Leah Heiss is an associate professor in Monash University's Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture and an innovative designer of wearable devices. Like Tan, she sees a few bumps in the road ahead as society plays catch-up to technology.

And is there anything that keeps you up at night worrying about the future of the augmented human capacity?

Leah Heiss: What keeps me up at night is not worrying about the future of the augmented human capacity necessarily. It's actually more what's happening in the healthcare system at the moment and how do we democratise the kinds of technologies that enable people to have good lives is something that I'm very interested in.

And I think there is almost like an imperative to really think about where the need is greatest and for the funding to be directed in that area, as opposed to, and I hate to use the term, but the consistent creation of artefacts to serve the worried well, to help us to be more worried about the kind of sleep we're getting or whether we are doing enough steps or whatever it might be. That's fine, but there are greater areas of need.

But currently what we're seeing in the funding landscape is that there isn't a huge amount of interest in people injecting their capital into the spaces of that need.

So I think there is a really big issue, but I think if we have these ideas on the table at the same time that we are looking at system reform, system investment, system change, and if we know what the capacities are and we have our finger on the pulse of merging technology, then hopefully we can not just create the technology, but we can also have the societal and regulatory frameworks in place to make sure we don't get into trouble. A bit similar to the AI scenario.

Susan Carland: Once we've navigated these obstacles, however, innovators like Alex see tremendous potential for helping people and even tackling major societal challenges.

What other conditions are you hoping that you can be able to manage with hypnosis?

Alex Naoumidis: So we've worked with the researcher, Dr Elkins from Baylor, to create a digital programme for menopausal hot flashes. So teaching you how to regulate temperature again. We've launched one for smoking cessation. So how to help people quit smoking and address the underlying patterns of behaviour that can lead to smoking continuance, anxiety and depression.

So hypnosis-based cognitive behavioural therapy in the future, chronic pain. So obviously opioid epidemic, how do you manage pain and chronic lower back pain specifically with your mind? So lots of different conditions. How do you build this? We build this framework to launch all these different indications.

Susan Carland: Cardiovascular engineer and associate professor Shaun Gregory believes we're still a ways away from the first cyborg Olympian, but he can already see enormous potential in artificial organs and improved quality of life for his patients.

Do you think, could you one day create a super heart that could make a super athlete, for example?

Shaun Gregory: It's definitely possible in the distant future. I think at the moment we don't have it right for the patients that need it yet, and so that's obviously the biggest focus. But what we are seeing is even with these devices that we have now, the one-year survival rate with these devices is around 86 per cent patients. And the one-year survival rate for someone who gets a heart transplant is about 86 per cent.

So we're actually at a similar level of survival with these mechanical devices to what a native replacement organ can do. So where that limit is, we don't necessarily know yet. We might be able to take it a lot further and get better survival and then start to look at how we could apply these devices in other ways, but I think that's a long way in the future.

Susan Carland: And if someone gets an artificial heart or even a replacement heart, are there limits of what they can do? Could they go scuba diving? Could they run a marathon?

Shaun Gregory: So the artificial heart devices are electrically powered and electricity and water don't usually mix so well. So scuba diving can be ruled out, but I have spoken to patients that have gone deep sea fishing, for instance. Unfortunately, the devices are powered typically by batteries.

And in this instance, the patient forgot to bring spare batteries and had to get into shore very quickly and plug himself into a charging station that was at the dock. So there is always a limit to what these patients can and can't do. They like to push those limits, but yeah, there are some limits.

Susan Carland: It feels like a surprising thing to forget. If it were me, I would think that would be top of mind.

Shaun Gregory: I would too, but you'd be surprised, the stories that you hear from these patients.

Susan Carland: Here's associate professor Leah Heiss. When you think about the future of this space of augmenting human capacity, what gets you really excited?

Leah Heiss: What I think is very interesting is this idea of how do we use nano- and micro-technologies in ways to restore capacity to people that have been through hardship? And I particularly find the space of... When we think about hardship, it's the loss of a sense, an accident or maybe from birth have been not able to have a certain type of experience of the world. So that's the restorative side of things. And then there's the fine-tuning of that and the opportunity that perhaps we have a brighter ability to see a different spectrum.

How fun! It's going to be interesting, and that's when you start to play with the gap between the augmenting capability, restoring capability and transhumanist capabilities. And I think that's really interesting.

If it's something we can build into our technologies with our nanotech and our microelectronics and everything getting smaller and thinner and stretchier, I think that's really fascinating. We can introduce these capabilities over the top of the skin, which is very interesting.

So with these new capabilities which are around stretchy, see-through electronics, you have the potential to have a second skin and that second skin might be able to be tailored to tell you different things which are relevant to your context. And so if your context is around gender safety, then you want your second skin to be telling you if you're in danger. If your context is around managing your risk of cardiovascular disease, you want your second skin to be telling you that.

And so I think we're on the brink of something very interesting with some of the work that's being done at Monash University with her stretchable centre work and other universities across Australia in being able to realise that kind of smart dermis. It's pretty wild.

Susan Carland: The idea of seeing a new colours and being around for humanity's next big breakthrough and the one after that and the one after that is pretty intoxicating. If you could tackle one condition in the future with your programme, what would you want to target?

Alex Naoumidis: Ageing.

Susan Carland: Okay. Why ageing?

Alex Naoumidis: I think it's one of those. One, it's not viewed as a condition when it should be, like on reading longevity in some of those books The idea is that that is such a contributor to so many other health conditions. I don't think there is evidence that it would work. But if hypothetically, if you address ageing, you address so many cancers and so many other conditions that actually kill you.

Susan Carland: So would you like to have humans live for a lot longer?

Alex Naoumidis: Yeah, I would want to live as long as you want.

Susan Carland: What would be a good amount of time for you?

Alex Naoumidis: Until you don't want to live.

Susan Carland: A thousand years?

Alex Naoumidis: Sure.

Susan Carland: That's a long time.

Alex Naoumidis: Yeah. There's issues that come up and things around that, but I want to see us colonise the stars and I want to live through sci-fi, and I don't want to miss out on that.

Susan Carland: The question remains, however, can we enter this brave new world and merge man and machine without losing touch with our humanity? Here's Shaun.

Before we started our chat, you were showing me this artificial... This would be correct to call this an artificial heart?

Shaun Gregory: It's called a ventricular assist device, but essentially works as an artificial heart.

Susan Carland: VAD for those in the know, people.

And you were showing it to me and you were saying what's really interesting about this is that when someone has this in their body, there's no heartbeat, which is such an interesting, obviously physiological concept, but I guess philosophical idea.

When we think about what it means to be human, the heartbeat is probably the first thing we hear in utero, and it's the last thing we listen for when someone dies. It's such a quintessential part of what makes us human. Do you think these technologies change the way we understand what it means to be human?

Shaun Gregory: I do, but in a different way to perhaps what we're getting towards there, and it's a very common thought is that taking away the sound of a heartbeat or the pulse in someone might lead to them being less of a human, but we actually do a lot of consumer-based research. We talk to clinicians and we talk to patients and the caregivers. And interestingly, even the patients and caregivers have very different feelings about these devices.

Some of the patients name the devices, so they actually associate their device by a name, but the caregivers actually get very, very stressed by the whole situation because they are the ones that have to keep their partner alive, and if the device stops working, then their partner dies.

But what we always come back to is that it doesn't make them necessarily feel less human at all. It makes them appreciate life because they've been given a second chance. They've been given a way to stay alive and stay with their families, watch their children grow up. And to me, that actually makes them appreciate life more. And it even adds more of a humanism approach.

Susan Carland: There's more to being human than a heartbeat.

Shaun Gregory: Exactly.

Susan Carland: It's also a very cool party trick. If you could say, “All right, come on, find my pulse.”

Shaun Gregory: Yeah, you won't in most of these patients.

Susan Carland: The transhumanist movement holds immense potential for humanity. It's easy to envision and be swept away by a future where diseases are eradicated, lifespans are lengthened, and our cognitive and physical capacities are enhanced beyond their current limitations. We're on the cusp of unprecedented advancements, and while ethical considerations and responsible implementation are crucial, we must remember that extending the abilities of the human race means bringing every member of it along on the journey.

This is our final episode on transhumanism.

Thank you to all our guests on this series, Tan Le, Dr Julian Koplin, associate professor Leah Heiss, associate professor Corinne Ludlow, associate Professor Shaun Gregory and Alex Naoumidis. You can learn more about their work by visiting our show notes.

Join us next week on What Happens Next? when we'll explore an all-new topic.

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