
Why I’m turning my son into a cyborg - ycnews
https://qz.com/1650393/transhumanist-parents-are-turning-their-children-into-cyborgs/
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bad_good_guy
The story about the insulin pump seems rather unethical, almost as if she is
performing research on a human child when they are not of the age to consent,
and would be biased toward consent due to parental influence.

~~~
manmal
It's not that easy. Bad compliance will lead to an early death in diabetics.
And kids are VERY bad at compliance. Most parents who can afford it nowadays
get an insulin pump for their kids. And they are so ridiculously complicated
to operate, and one single lapse can be dangerous. You're always doing math in
the back your head, considering what you've eaten (or will eat), whether you
will do sports, etc.. A custom firmware with auto-dosing can be a real life
changer, and saver.

Source: A friend of mine is part of a insulin pump hacking community

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the_seraphim
could connect a sensor to some kind of excreta to get a blood sugar level?
maybe an implantable sensor with blood flow?

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manmal
Yes that's what those systems do.

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madenine
Cool stuff, but did anyone else feel like they were reading an advertorial for
the author? Managed to pack most of their CV in there.

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merpnderp
What's the difference between this person going on a philosophical exploration
of biohacking and AI versus some drunk at the bar? Their CV.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I guess also not doing it while inebriated. that's probably a plus.

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gnode
> Imagine these advantages not being subtly embedded in the life experience of
> well-off Westerners, but being directly for sale—and turned up to 11.
> Intergenerational social and economic mobility would disappear. [...]
> augmentation could also become a tool to entrench inequality even more
> firmly.

I disagree with this argument that commercial performance enhancement will
destroy social mobility. The effect would be strongly dependent on the
economics of such a market. Conversely, an efficient market in a new
technology can be democratising.

If hypothetically an inexpensive brain-computer interface could give a person
access to information in a way which substitutes conventional education, then
this could negate the preexisting socioeconomic divide which education
creates. Particularly conventional education is unavoidably expensive because
it involves labour on at least the part of the student, whereas the cost of a
neuroprosthetic device, as with other electronic technology is diminishable.

~~~
Gpetrium
If hypothetically, a brain-computer interface were to exist, it would likely
reach individuals that are well-off first. As the base solution becomes more
widely available to the mass, enhancements to speed, quality of information
capture, processing and others would help create tiers to the product, some of
which would only be available for the right price. Coupling access to
information devices with real experience (which often involves spending
resources), it means that there would continue to be gaps in social mobility
further exacerbated by people's means to acquire the tech necessary to break
through their socioeconomic status.

~~~
gnode
In order to have a positive effect, a technology only needs to be less
discriminatory than the technology it replaces. I chose the example of
education because it is very expensive and discriminatory today; a technology
which replaces the need for tuition could still be expensive and improve
social mobility.

> If hypothetically, a brain-computer interface were to exist, it would likely
> reach individuals that are well-off first.

While often true for technology generally, medical technology has special
considerations. Rather than simply reaching the well-off first, performance
enhancing neurological implants are likely to reach the disabled first, where
it is deemed ethically more acceptable, as has been the case so far. Due to
public healthcare, health insurance, and research contribution, patients'
wealth is not always crucial here. It may be the case that costs reduce
greatly before non-medical uses become acceptable. In the case of BCIs, the
acceptability of their non-medically necessary use cases would likely depend
of the technology's maturity.

The extent to which market differentiation is possible is not yet clear for
such technology, particularly if the market is competitive. Tiering is
typically based on either having a unique product (e.g. nobody else can make
an equivalent) which can be artificially crippled, or natural differences in
production quality (e.g. only some cores of this processor work).

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inimino
I find the top-level comments here on the whole shockingly negative,
uninformed, wildly speculative, and even downright spiteful.

From the snide "hope there's no bugs" Titanic joke about an insulin pump --
This is a real mom and a real kid you're talking about. You think you're the
first person in the room who's read about the Therac-25?? Do you think a snide
joke implying catastrophic consequences is appropriate in this context!?

To the apophatic "almost as if she is performing research on a human child
when they are not of the age to consent" which raises missing the point nearly
to the form of art... almost as if you had memorized a handbook of research
ethics guidelines but yet somehow completely forgotten _why we do research in
the first place_ and what technology is even good for!

Then we have the comments whining about the author mentioning other work she's
done (like having built this stuff for much of her professional career is
somehow irrelevant to having thoughts on what the risks and opportunities
are?) as though it were pure self-promotion. And the funny-if-not-sad, "Why
isn't he turning HIMSELF into a cyborg but his son?", missing both the
author's gender and her point. If you'd glanced at the byline or even the
author bio before commenting, you could hardly have missed that the author is
a woman, not any kind of a "HIMSELF". And maybe, just maybe, if you had read
the article just a little more carefully, it would have occurred to you that
she is turning her son into a cyborg and not herself because _her son is the
one who has autism._

> I don’t want to “cure” someone of themselves. Especially not my son. I want
> them to be able to share that self with the world.

There is fascinating, thoughtful stuff here touching technology, medicine,
science, religion, parenting, and ethics, and there are discussions we could
be having around these issues, but first we have to actually engage with
what's being said.

~~~
subjectsigma
As a counterpoint: the article is sloppy and full of clickbait. The fact that
people are sexist / can't read is entirely tangential to that. Any of the
"thoughtful stuff" you mentioned has been explored elsewhere in a context
where we're not playing games with a real human being that literally can't
give informed consent. (And personally, I find some of her more philosophical
assertions about those issues pretty tasteless and lacking.)

> I find the top-level comments here on the whole shockingly negative,
> uninformed, wildly speculative, and even downright spiteful.

Welcome to the Internet

~~~
inimino
If people think the article is poorly written and poorly researched garbage,
then they can say that and say why, or just don't comment, but that's no
excuse for posting poorly written and poorly researched garbage in response.

I'm not saying the article is great, but that the comments here should be
better.

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jonstaab
This kind of thing makes me intensely uncomfortable, given that Wendell Berry
is basically my spirit animal. But her points are really compelling. What's
the difference between repairing damage (cochlear implants) and enhancing a
healthy body? I love her rule: "You should not only be better when you’re
using it, you should be better when you turn it off."

Also (for the christians out there), as someone who believes in the Fall of
Man, we are all broken in some way, so every enhancement that brings us closer
to the way we were created (in God's image) is actually damage repair, even
brain implants to bring us closer to health and holiness. My only doubt is
whether we have the wisdom to pull off a work that seems to belong to God.

~~~
faissaloo
Muslim here, I've been thinking about something like what you're talking
about, right now my best answer is that we would have to define some threshold
for what constitutes a gross imperfection. I think most people can agree that
the replacing of a damaged organ or limb is fine, so we could go from there
and progressively discuss more minor imperfections until its something the
overwhelming majority of people have.

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sidlls
This person is playing a dangerous game and using her autistic child as an
experimental toy. She's overconfident and certainly does not understand all
the ramifications of what she's doing.

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cabaalis
Hacking the operation of an insulin pump for your child seems so insanely
dangerous I could not even conceive of attempting it.

The other things she talks about, such as helping autistic people recognize
emotions, could be enormously beneficial and much less potentially harmful.

My understand of part of the autism spectrum is difficulty empathizing, not
being able to understand cues of emotion. I have the benefit of being able to
understand pretty well that words I've just spoken or actions I've taken have
hurt somebody's feelings. If an AI can flash up an image of "this person is
now sad" right after someone lacking that ability has done or said something,
they have the opportunity to apologize or say it differently. That could
greatly improve their social interactions and personal happiness.

~~~
inimino
> I could not even conceive of attempting it.

Someone had to write the software that runs on her kid's insulin pump. If you
could make it better and had the resources to do it right, you'd probably find
it less insanely dangerous and more like the obvious way to approach the
problem.

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e2le
After reading this and researching the state of open source diabetes care,
it's quite disappointing to see there isn't any work being done on open
hardware insulin pumps and instead are relying on insecure old existing pumps
to make this work.

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conjectures
> When he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I hacked his insulin pump and
> built an AI that learned to match his insulin to his emotions and
> activities.

Wow, hope there're no bugs in that one. I'd hate for the kid to be weeping
over _Titanic_ and get od'd with insulin.

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Konnstann
I work in Biotech and every time I read one of these articles/posts about how
somebody hacked their insulin pump people start asking why there aren't
already affordable closed-loop pumps on the market if people are hacking their
own with raspberry pis and the like, and they clearly don't understand the
regulatory process or the level of clinical testing that's needed to validate
something that, if it malfunctions at night, can kill you.

~~~
danielschonfeld
As opposed to not doing anything which is the current state of Diabetes for
the most part, which too, kills you and if not outright kills you then slowly
does via financial ruin.

How many episodes of hypoglycemia do you think one needs to have, in an
utterly broken healthcare system in which being ordered paramedics and given
sugar pills costs you $XXXX per occurance.

And if you're gonna talk to me about responsbility and healthy living please
join the real world some time.

That's why people choose to take actions into their own hands. Because being a
victim of a system that just doesn't care _enough_ leads you to either take
the handles or down under.

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Konnstann
What does this even mean? Hacking an open-loop insulin pump and making it
closed-loop doesn't eliminate the need for insulin, did you misread me as
saying insulin prices are A-OK and diabetics should just eat healthy?

All power to these knowledgeable, individuals, for doing something dangerous
but potentially great. This is HN, full of smart people who understand the
risk of failure and will monitor the crap out of their system and adjust and
tinker until it's ok. The problem is people making tutorials and publicizing
their work, which leads to people not as smart following their tutorial and
thinking it will be alright.

There are tons of papers on closed-loop systems, and probably clinical trials
are happening as I write this comment. Medicine isn't one of the industries to
"disrupt" though, as much as people on here want to believe.

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carlmr
I studied control engineering, and I bet he forgot some things. A few things
come to mind. How does he recognize sensor failure (pretty important in
closed-loop systems, like MCAS for example)? Did he use floating point math
which may cause numerical issues? Does he use integrators and limit their
output? If he does limit the output does he counteract windup? If he uses
neural networks, did he gather enough data that we can be sure that this
things works?

There's so many pitfalls here where teams of engineers with the whole part
spec and from different disciplines have failed before. It sounds very
dangerous.

~~~
penagwin
Fuzzing seems like a really useful test for this.

Either way, I agree I'm not really subscribed to the idea that DIY life
critical systems are a good idea beyond POC.

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roribob
Maybe it isn't life critical but only quality of life critical?

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penagwin
If it pumps too much you're dead - which is why I'm considering it life
critical.

Not enough is also bad but hopefully they'll notice and can act accordingly -
still a threat too though.

It's not that we're all saying this is an unsafe machine, we're saying that a
random person DIY'ing and using such a solution is very risky, there's a
reason why commercial medical equipment requires rigorous
testing/certifications, etc.

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michaereyess
tl:dr :

Do my son's engineered superpowers make him more human, or less?

The more different you are, the more valuable you become.

My particular area of research and development is cognitive neuroprosthetics:
devices that directly interface with the brain to improve our memory,
attention, emotion, and much more.

How can we respect someone's humanness while also giving them the choice to
become more like the majority of humans?

In a world that values difference, untypical humans paired with
neuroprosthetics might become even more powerful than fully abled ones.

If these kinds of augmentations can lift them above the crowd, soon everyone
will want to be more than human.

It's seductively easy to imagine a world in which we're a little smarter or a
bit more creative, in which our kids have the latest advantage.

~~~
onemoresoop
> Do my son's engineered superpowers make him more human, or less?

Theres a line to be drawn here and it depends on the functionality of the
implant. Implants that restore normal function versus implants that do
something else which healthy humans could not achieve without.

~~~
klodolph
Why are you choosing to draw the line there? I don't understand the rationale
for that choice.

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merpnderp
I took it as humans are incredibly complex things with properties ranging
along curves. What happens when one of these properties gets pushed out far
beyond the previous maximum of its curve? What happens when people can stay
hyperfocused for 12 hours straight? Their IQ's jump 100 points on average?
Will they look upon normal people like we look upon cattle (historically,
slavery is the normal state of mankind)? When people can turn on and off their
modes, will they pick their favorite mode and never turn it off?

Yes, it is certainly useful to differentiate between normal ranged human
properties, and those so far exceeding the norms we have zero evidence on what
to expect.

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klodolph
If we expect "superhumans" to look at us like cattle, does this reflect the
idea that we look at "subhumans" like cattle? Isn't that just projecting our
own moral failings onto other people?

(So far the evidence seems to point towards the notion that you can't increase
human performance by pushing along a single axis. We are near a local optimum
in a massive, multidimensional space. Pushing too much in any one direction
will move us farther from the local optimum.)

~~~
AstralStorm
The counterpoint is that superpowers do not come bundled with superior
morality, but the consequences are magnified.

We're facing this everyday with rich and powerful making likely bad choices,
for themselves and for others. Why would any other kind of superhuman be
different?

The question is only of magnitude - what could one person do? How would they
do it? What would be the cost or benefit?

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roribob
It's time for humans to disappear from the world stage. The lack of self
replication means that in the future more and more robots will be needed to
care for the aging populations. Humans are already incapable of building
robots without machines. The only value humans will provide is by giving them
orders through programming them. General AI will never arrive but we will only
ever need a million or two robotics developers the same way we only need a few
million software developers.

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woliveirajr
And won't this make the kid's body, probably unconsciously, generate feelings
just to get another dose of insulin?

Injecting insulin according to the emotions might give bad clues on how you
"should" feel in each situation.

~~~
ceejayoz
It's insulin, not morphine. The body doesn't crave higher and higher doses of
it.

~~~
woliveirajr
I don't mean addicted. Anyone who has ever gone from sugar highs and lows, or
has experienced how your body reacts from a single candy when your glucose is
low, or even how it reacts when you were in need and took an insulin shot...
Knows that you can feel it.

And if you can feel it, your body can learn to modulate your mood and feelings
to get (or to avoid) another dose.

