Cyber-Humans

Our Future with Machines

Cyber-Humans
Woodrow Barfield

Cyber-Humans
Our Future with Machines

13
Woodrow Barfield
Chapel Hill, NC
USA

ISBN 978-3-319-25048-9 ISBN 978-3-319-25050-2  (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25050-2

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This book is dedicated to my daughter,
Jessica, both athlete and scholar; to the
memory of my wonderful and supportive
parents, my sister Linda, to my nieces
Melissa and Sky, Cousin Paula, and all the
relatives in South Florida, Oregon, Virginia,
and California. Dr. Conrad Kraft is also
remembered for his friendship, scholarship,
and mentorship. I also dedicate this book to
Watson, and all other artificial intelligences
that will follow, and I look forward to their
book review and to the books they will write
and to the science they will discover.
Preface

In the mid-1980s I was a graduate student of Industrial and Systems Engineering

at Purdue University in Indiana. My research revolved around the topic of how to
make computers easier for people to use. At that time the fields of artificial intel-
ligence and robotics were still in their infancy; and a human was a component of
every system, either providing manual input or performing supervisory control.
With a human brain containing about 85–100 billion neurons and approximately
100 trillion synapses, and with sensors containing remarkable capabilities, deter-
mining how technology could best serve humans was a challenging research topic.
The theme that the purpose of technology was to serve as a tool for humans, was
the dominant view when I was a graduate student in engineering and still is. But
later my thinking about technology with regard to its role in serving humanity
was to change, and eventually led to the writing of this book. While at Purdue,
with limited space for graduate students, I shared an office with other students
who were studying aeronautical engineering, manufacturing, and robotics. As
I engaged my fellow graduate students in conversation about the topic of their
research, I realized that while I was trying to design systems that were easier for
humans to use, the other graduate students were trying to design systems that were
completely automated; that is, had no human in the system at all. These fascinat-
ing and wide ranging discussions were my first introduction to robotics, artificial
intelligence, and automation.
After graduation, I took a faculty position and did work primarily in the area of
virtual reality, augmented reality, and wearable computers and taught a course on
the supervisory control of robots. As my career developed, I became interested in
more of the big picture of how technology, science, and policy interrelated. This
new line of thinking led me to papers in the area of human rights (for artificial
intelligence) and intellectual property, which then led me to law school and later
to the LLM program in intellectual property law and policy at the University of
Washington. This book details much of my engineering knowledge regarding the
design of systems for human use, my formal training in law, and from years of

vii
viii Preface

research and scholarship on the design of virtual and augmented reality systems
and wearable computers.
While in graduate school I became aware of another accelerating trend occur-
ring in technology—the enhancement of humans using techniques that were just
being discovered in genetics, and the practice of equipping humans with biotech-
nology to treat a range of disabilities. For frame of reference, in the early 1980s,
William DeVries implanted an artificial heart, the Jarvik-7, in a patient with the
intention that the implant be long-lasting (it worked for a few months). More
recently, French heart transplant specialists developed a prototype of the world’s
first fully implantable artificial heart, designed to beat for at least five years. Since
the first attempts at using technology to enhance humans, advances in technology
have led to the ability to replace or enhance a surprising amount of human physi-
ology and anatomy. In fact, over the coming decades, humankind will, for the first
time in the history of our species, be able to actively supersede our own physiol-
ogy and anatomy. And as the nascent technology of prosthetics and neuromorphic
chips develops, sometimes this century we may be able to bolster our memory
and recall with brain implants; and to think faster, focus our attention better, react
faster, run more swiftly, and possibly have superhuman strength. When I consider
the enhancement of the human body with technology, my conclusion is that we are
in the process of becoming the technology, and not just the passive recipient of its
benefits.
For a host of reasons, technology is being developed and used for many pur-
poses thought not possible even a few years ago: for example, assisting the handi-
capped and disabled (restoring sight for the blind, sound where there is a hearing
deficit, or equipping people with exoskeletons to enable movement for those
lacking mobility); for those who want to hack their body (a term used for people
who seek to self-modify their body to extend the range of their senses, the topic
of a chapter in this book); and ominously, for the cyborg-soldier of the future.
However, while humans are being equipped with more-and-more technology, our
cognitive abilities, which derive from our genetic blueprint, have remained rela-
tively the same for thousands of years. In contrast, operating under the law of
accelerating returns, which states that the rate of technological change is exponen-
tial, machines are quickly gaining in intelligence, sensory, and motor capabilities.
While technology is being used to enhance human capabilities, fight disease,
and to allow new forms of expression, technology itself is becoming smarter, more
human-like (i.e., an android, which is a robot designed to have a human appear-
ance), and before midcentury could exceed humans in intelligence (referred to as
the Singularity, the topic of Chap. 2). If so, a number of policy and legal issues will
ensue regarding the relations between humans and our intelligent machines. Often
when challenged by advances across many areas of human endeavor, our relevant
laws and governmental policies have lagged behind technological breakthroughs.
Consider the ethical, policy, and legal issues raised by the use of drones, or with
autonomous robotic soldiers should they enter the battlefield. How about tort law
and specifically negligence and strict liability when robots harm humans, or from
Preface ix

a social justice perspective, the deep digital divide which may result when some
humans are physically and cognitively enhanced by technology and others are left
behind? Further, consider how humanity should respond if artificially intelligent
machines attain or surpass human levels of intelligence and argue for rights. For
example, should we extend the rights that humans receive in most industrialized
nations—such as political rights and liberties, to artificially intelligent machines;
or would it be prudent to deny such rights to nonhuman beings? And finally, con-
sider the main theme of this book—should we merge with artificially intelligent
machines, or risk being surpassed and becoming inconsequential or even extinct?
One significant impact that will be made by developments in enhancement
technology and the emergence of machines with artificial intelligence will be on
the law—specifically creating motivations for the passage of new laws and also
discovering novel ways to use existing laws to apply in a human society inter-
twined with smart machines. The law can be found in Constitutions, statutes,
government and industry regulations, and the judge-made decisions resulting
from cases argued in court. When writing a law review article, the author is com-
forted when cases have been decided on the issue of interest. This is because the
court will have heard the facts, examined the issues, listened to witnesses, and
decided how the law applies. However, when dealing with the topic of cyborgs
and artificially intelligent machines, we are just now at the stage where disputes
are beginning to occur. For example, in 2012 Professor Steve Mann one of the
first human–machine “cyborgs” living amongst us, was assaulted at a restaurant in
Paris based on his appearance and technical capabilities as a cyborg. Since Steve
has natural personhood status (a legal status granting him a range of rights), he
could initiate a civil lawsuit on his own behalf (possibly for assault and battery).
However, artificially intelligent machines have not yet reached a level of cognitive
development to argue for personhood status, thus, they currently lack individual
rights and the ability to defend their interests. But if in the future an artificially
intelligent machine claimed to be sentient and subsequently argued for rights (at
the time of this writing, it has been argued that an AI software bot posing as a
teenage boy has passed the Turing test), the public should stay tuned, a tipping
point would have been reached and it will get interesting.
To indicate the widespread interest in the topic of this book, let me briefly
introduce some of the comments of renowned Cosmologist Sir Martin Rees, by
conveying some of his highly interesting observations about our future—what
some have termed the Post-Human era. Professor Rees rightly notes that there are
chemical and metabolic limits to the size and processing power of organic brains
which results in issues of bandwidth limitations and speed of information process-
ing for humans. Furthermore, he notes that such limitations are not competitive
with the raw processing power of computers and their march toward artificial gen-
eral intelligence. But while some think that artificial intelligence is becoming our
competition, prominent scientists such as Hans Moravec think of artificial intel-
ligence as humanity’s natural future evolutionary path. Agreeing with Rees, I
conclude that the potential for further development of artificial intelligence could
x Preface

be as dramatic as the evolution from single-celled organisms to the humans that

exist today. So, looking beyond the horizon, Rees eloquently states that “in the
far future, it won’t be the minds of humans, but those of machines, that will most
fully understand the cosmos—and it will be the actions of autonomous machines
that will most drastically change our world, and perhaps what lies beyond.”
This book is about the technical, legal, and policy issues which are raised when
humans and artificially intelligent machines are enhanced by technology. I dis-
cuss cyborgs, bionic humans, and machines with increasing levels of intelligence
by linking a chain of fascinating subjects together—the technology of cognitive,
motor, and sensory prosthetics; biological and technological enhancements to
humans; and body hacking and brain–computer interfaces. Each of these technolo-
gies combines to tell the story of where we are going as a species, what policies
to consider, and how the law and policy must adapt to accommodate the future
of human-technology combinations. My goal in writing this book is to inform the
public of what may be coming this century in terms of human cybernetic enhance-
ments, artificially intelligent machines, and the development of cyborgs. I also aim
to initiate debate among academicians on a range of scholarly topics, which often
receive inadequate coverage in law and technology courses. In the coming dec-
ades, the decisions we make as a society, or more generally, as a species regarding
how we enhance ourselves and create machines that may replace us, will affect the
very essence of what it means to be human, nothing could be more compelling and
important for humanity.

Chapel Hill, USA Woodrow Barfield

Acknowledgments

Beverley Ford, Editorial Director at Springer, has been a great resource and con-
tact person with the press, a reader of chapters, and a gentile prodder of deadlines.
Without her support and encouragement, this book would not have been written.
And also from Springer, James Robinson is thanked for his editorial assistance
as is Helen Desmond. In addition, Gowtham Chakravarthy is thanked for his pro-
duction work. Further, I thank Laura N. Gasaway, Paul B. Eaton Distinguished
Professor of Law Emeritus, at the University of North Carolina, School of Law for
her insightful comments on intellectual property law. Also, Makiko Kashioka from
Osaka University is gratefully acknowledged for her help in providing images
of androids. Most importantly, I thank Ed Cockrell, poet and science fiction
short-story writer, for not only reading the chapters and providing edits, but for
his numerous meetings with me in which we discussed the material in this book
and his thoughts on the future. Finally, my students have always been a source of
ideas, as have the colleagues I have worked with throughout my career, including
the faculty in intellectual property law at the University of Washington and par-
ticularly Jonathan Franklin.

xi
Contents

1 The Technological Future. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Enhancing Humans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Humans, Bionics, and Cyborgs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Brain-Computer Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Biological Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
New Opportunities in the 21st Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Cyborgs and Virtual Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Cyborg Disputes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Two Technologically Driven Revolutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Merging with Machines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Questions for Our Cyborg Future. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
The Reemergence of Luddites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Enter the Horse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Concluding Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2 The Coming Singularity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Questions of Law and Policy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Towards Machine Sentience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Telepathy, Brain Nets, and Cyborgs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Bodily Integrity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
The Singularity and Concerns for the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Introducing Watson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Who’s Getting Smarter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Returning to Law and Regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3 The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Placing an Exponent on Intelligence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
The Numbers Behind Brains. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Law and Brains. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
More About Artificially Intelligent Brains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

xiii
xiv Contents

Machine Learning and Brain Architectures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Brain Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Hardware Protection for Artificially Intelligent Brains. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Our Competition Against Better Brains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4 Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis. . . . . . . . . . . 101
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Medical Necessity and Beyond. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Third-Party Access to Our Minds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Concerns and Roadblocks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
A Focus on Cognitive Liberty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Reading the Brain, Lie Detection, and Cognitive Liberty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Towards Telepathy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Creating Artificial Memories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Litigating Cognitive Liberty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Implanting a Software Virus in the Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5 Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Hacking the Body. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
The Risks of Body Hacking and Cyborg Technology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Prosthesis, Implants and Law. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Body Hacking in the Digital Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Sensors and Implantable Devices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Issues of Software. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Machines Hacking Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Hacking the Brain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Hacking Memory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Implanting False Memories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Hacking the Skin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Hacking the Eyes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Hacking the Body with Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Sensory Substitution and a Sixth Sense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Hacking the Ear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Sensing Electromagnetic Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Cybersecurity and the Cyborg Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
6 Sensors and the Law. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
A World of Sensors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Our Reliance on Sensors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
The Network of Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Telepresence and Sensors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Characteristics of Sensors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Contents xv

Regulating Sensors and Being Forgotten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

Remotely Sensed Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Sensors and Intellectual Property Law. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Surveillance, Sensors, and Body Scans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Using Sensor Data in Trials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
7 The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Making, Modifying, and Replacing Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
The Shape of Things to Come. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
The Androids Are Coming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Culture Is Important . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Our Reaction to Cyborgs and Androids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
The Uncanny Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Observations About Discrimination and the “Ugly Laws”. . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Mind Uploads and Replacement Bodies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Copyright Law and Appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Derivative Works, Androids, and Mind Uploads. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
First Sale Doctrine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Right of Publicity for Androids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Androids and Trade Dress Law. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Gender, Androids, and Discrimination. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Our Changing Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Concluding Examples of Lookism Discrimination. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
8 The Future to Merge with AI Machines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Setting the Stage for a Human-Machine Merger. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Optimism and Pessimism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Entering the Debate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Concluding with the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
About the Author

Woodrow Barfield headed the Sensory Engineering Laboratory at the University

of Washington where he was a Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
His research revolved around the design and use of wearable computers and aug-
mented reality systems. He received the Presidential Young Investigator Award
from the National Science Foundation, and served as a senior editor of Presence:
Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. Dr. Barfield is currently an associate
editor of the Virtual Reality Journal and is the senior editor of the first and sec-
ond editions of “Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality.”
Dr. Barfield earned a Ph.D. in Engineering from Purdue University and the JD
degree and an LLM in intellectual property law and policy, serving as an editor of
the Journal of Law, Technology & Arts. He has over 350 publications and major
presentations, including keynote addresses and articles in engineering and law
review journals. He currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Other Books by the Author

Barfield, W., and Caudell, T., 2001, eds., Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented
Reality, 1st edition, Lawrence Erlbaum Press, Malwah, New Jersey.
Barfield, W., 2015, ed., Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality, 2nd edi-
tion, CRC Press, New York.
Barfield, W., and Dingus, T., 1997, eds., Human Factors in Intelligent Transportation Systems,
Psychology Press, New York.
Barfield W., and Furness, T., 1995, eds., Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface Design,
Oxford University Press, 1995.
Majchrzak, A., Chang, T-C., Barfield, W., Eberts, R. E., & Salvendy, G., 1987, Human Aspects of
Computer-Aided Design, London: Taylor and Francis, Ltd.

xvii
A Brief Comment About Predictions
and Examples Used in the Book

The most important question posed by books on the Singularity, and discussed by
futurists and authors such as Ray Kurzweil, Rodney Brooks, Kevin Warwick, Hans
Moravec, Nick Bostrom, James Barrat, and Martine Rothblatt, is whether artifi-
cial intelligence will eventually pass humans in general intelligence, and gain con-
sciousness. I don’t profess to know the answer with any certainty, but I do have
the opinion that it will happen. I find it interesting that many of the debates on
whether humans may be surpassed in intelligence by an artificial intelligence
focuses on when it could happen (not if)—with predictions that this transformative
event will occur by midcentury, the latter half of this century, or sometime next
century. However, if one considers the age of this planet (over 45 million centu-
ries), or the amount of time that has passed since humans evolved to live on this
planet, or even since humans started recording history, being off by a century or
two is insignificant, some would even say a rounding error. But in my view Ray
Kurzweil’s argument that the Singularity is near, is convincing, so I wrote this
book to add to the conversation on how humanity should respond to the emergence
of cyborgs and artificial intelligence. Further, to make a specific point about tech-
nology, law, and policy in an “age of cyborgs,” in several chapters I often used
existing “cyborgs” Steve Mann, Neil Harbisson, and Kevin Warwick as examples.
They certainly aren’t the only cyborgs living amongst us, you, or your neighbor
may be equipped with cyborg technology in the form of a heart pacer or artifi-
cial limb. In fact, cumulatively, millions of people worldwide are equipped with
cochlear implants, retinal prosthesis, and artificial limbs. However, I consistently
used Steve, Neil, and Kevin as examples because they are not only pioneers in
“wearable and implantable computing technology,” they have also been the sub-
ject of the popular media and in Steve’s case a documentary (Cyberman, 2002). In
several chapters I also discuss the work of Dr. Theodore Berger of the University
of Southern California on the design of an artificial hippocampus; this is because
his work cuts across several topics discussed in this book and I view his work as
essential for our cyborg future. In terms of examples of cutting-edge cyborg tech-
nology, and start-up companies developing amazing technologies in artificial intel-
ligence, robotics, and neuroprosthesis, I expect some of the companies discussed

xix
xx A Brief Comment About Predictions and Examples Used in the Book

in this book will have failed by the time this book is in the hands of the reader, or
that some of the projects discussed in this book will have not met the initial prom-
ise and are no longer being developed. But if that is the case, there is no doubt that
other companies and projects will have started, which the reader will surely read
about in the news and that will lead to the amazing future described in this book.

Further Reading

Cyberman (2001) Based on the “Cyborg Experiences” of Steve Mann, Directed by Michael
Allder, Written by David Wearer and Bridgot Newsom, distrubted by Canadian Broadcasting
Corperation (CBC)
Chapter 1
The Technological Future

Introduction

Let me start the book with a controversial and bold statement—our future is to
merge with artificially intelligent machines! How I reached that conclusion is the
subject of this book. I don’t mean to imply that in the coming decades we humans
will look and act like robots on an assembly line, rather, that we will be equipped
with so much technology, including computing devices implanted within the brain
itself, that we will have been transformed from a biological being into a technol-
ogy-based being, evolving under laws of technology, more so than under the laws
of biological evolution. At the same time that we are becoming more “machine
like” (or “cyborg like”), advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience,
and materials engineering are allowing scientists to create intelligent machines
that have sophisticated human—like functionality and are rapidly gaining in intel-
ligence—“they” are becoming like us. I see the logical outcome of technological
advancements in robotics, artificial intelligence, prosthesis, and brain implants, as
a future merger between humans and machines.1 This will not be a conscious deci-
sion made by humanity, but will be a gradual process, and inevitable. But not so
gradual as to take centuries, but in all likelihood something that will happen this
century or early next.
As a confession, I may have played a small role in this outcome (our future
merger with machines), because as a faculty in engineering, I headed a research
laboratory whose goal was to design wearable computing and sensor technology
that was fully integrated with the human body. In the early 1990s, I began to for-
malize my thinking about the future direction of technology, and wrote about it in

1Of course, while seminal robot experts and artificial intelligence pioneers such as Hans Moravec

hold the view that our future is to merge with machines, many experts disagree, and others argue
that humanity should stop this outcome from occurring.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 1

W. Barfield, Cyber-Humans, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25050-2_1
2 1  The Technological Future

2001, in a chapter 1 co-authored, Computing Under the Skin, in which my col-

leagues and I argued for the use of sensors and cyborg implants to fix, repair,
replace, and enhance damaged human anatomical and physiological systems.2 At
the time, my colleagues and I also mused about the future directions of “wearable”
devices, making predictions about technology that are being implemented today.
But in hindsight, it seems that we didn’t go far enough predicting the future that
has unfolded and we were too conservative in stating how close we are to the
Singularity and afterwards Posthuman age.
Much of my work on the design and use of “wearable” technology was pub-
lished in two books I co-edited, Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface
Design, and Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality.3 Since
the publication of the first edition of these books over a decade ago, the landscape
in human enhancement technology and artificial intelligence has changed dramati-
cally. To address these changes, I wrote this book to present an up-to-date sum-
mary of recent advances in genetics, prosthesis, and brain-computer interfaces;
and to discuss current efforts to create artificially intelligent machines that learn
and solve problems in ways not predicted by humans. Another goal in writing this
book was to generate discussion among the public on the law and policies which
should be enacted as humans are enhanced by technology, and as artificially intel-
ligent machines gain human, or beyond human, levels of intelligence. Given the
nature of the topics presented in this book, the discussion will be wide ranging
cutting across diverse fields such as biology, engineering, ethics, and law.
As often stated by Google’s Ray Kurzweil, the rate of technological change in engi-
neering, medicine, and computer science is accelerating.4 In some areas, what was sci-
ence fiction just 10–20 years ago is now mainstream science. If advances in several
key technologies continue to accelerate, the twenty-first century will indeed be a time
of great change, amazing developments, and unique challenges for humanity. As pre-
dicted by computer scientists, engineers, and philosophers, by the end of the twenty-
first century, advances in science and engineering will have led to such significant
changes in the structure of our bodies that the very nature of what it means to be
human will be questioned. On this point, the science fiction writer William Gibson,
who coined the term “cyberspace” in the short story “Burning Chrome,”5 sees a
“cyborg” future for humanity which includes implantations of silicon chips into the
human brain modified with DNA. Fast forward to Professor Theodore Berger’s

2Dwight Holland, Dawn J. Roberson, and Woodrow Barfield, 2001, Computing Under the Skin,

in Woodrow Barfield and Thomas Caudell (eds), Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and
Augmented Reality, CRC Press.
3Woodrow Barfield and Thomas Caudell, id.; Woodrow Barfield and Thomas Furness (eds.),

1995, Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface Design, Oxford University Press.
4Perhaps Ray Kurzweil is most recognized for his ideas about the Law of Accelerating Returns

discussed in his seminal book, Ray Kurzweil, 2006, The Singularity is Near, When Humans
Transcend Biology, Penguin Books.
5William Gibson, 2003, Burning Chrome, Harper Voyager Press. Gibson coined the term “cyber-

space” in the 1980s.

Introduction 3

laboratory at the University of Southern California, where our cyborg future is being
designed now in the form of remarkable neuroprosthetic devices.

Enhancing Humans

According to Sidney Perkowitz writing in “Digital People: From Bionic Humans

to Androids,”6 there are two main ways to categorize artificial enhancements of
humans: firstly, as functional prosthetic devices and implants, such as artificial
limbs, replacement knees and hips, and vascular stents (which aid in the flow of
blood in blocked arteries); and secondly, as cosmetic or vanity implants, like hair
plugs, false teeth, artificial eyes, and breast implants. This book concerns both cat-
egories of enhancements, and it is interesting to note that the efforts of some
researchers to develop human-like robots, could be thought of as cosmetic or van-
ity enhancements to the machine, as such enhancements may be nonfunctional.
Enhancement technologies may also occur in a multitude of ways, supported by a
variety of technologies, in which human beings enhance their looks, abilities, fea-
tures, or functions. In fact, enhancements to the human body range from perfor-
mance enhancing drugs, plastic surgery and silicone implants for (perceived)
beauty purposes, to bionic limbs and chip-enhanced cognition in humans. While
the distinguishing feature of “cyborg” enhancement technology is to improve
human functioning above ‘normal’ or ‘average’, many technologies for enhance-
ment are being used for medical or regenerative purposes; for example, plastic sur-
gery for burn victims or prostheses for lost limbs; the purpose in these cases being
to bring the people ‘back to normal’.
In addition to efforts to enhance the human body with a range of technologies,
other important progress is being made in robotics and artificial intelligence that is
also setting the stage for a human-machine merger. Due to major improvements in
algorithms and sensors, machines are becoming more autonomous, software is
becoming ‘smarter’, and robots are being developed that are beginning to look and
act more like humans than machines (see Chaps. 3, The Law of Artificially
Intelligent Brains, and 7, The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies). In fact, one area
of research in robotics is towards developing realistic looking robots that mirror
human appearance (i.e., androids); another strand is towards developing facial fea-
tures that cause a robot to appear as if expressing emotions; in particular, facial
expressions like smiling or raising eyebrows. Once ‘humanoid’ robots are
equipped with artificial intelligence—and thus acquire more autonomy from their
human masters—the vision of an android in the spirit of Star Trek’s “Data” might
become a reality. At this point one can imagine two interesting scenarios: firstly,
that the world may become populated by different types of species than those we
see around us today: non-enhanced and enhanced humans, cyborgs, robots, and

6Sidney Perkowitz, 2004, Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids, Joseph Henry Press.
4 1  The Technological Future

androids among them, all of which will function, in different but perhaps also in
similar ways, in day-to-day social life.7 And secondly, from advances in technol-
ogy there could emerge one intelligent species, based on the merger of human and
machine. In my view, before humanity could eventually merges with machines,
there will be several intermediate forms of human-machine combinations, some of
which we will term cyborgs. Again, when I speak of “merging with machines,” I
mean equipping humans with the technology (typically information technologies)
to enhance the human body and mind, to go beyond current capabilities, essen-
tially, to become more “cyborg-like.” Throughout this book, I refer to the technol-
ogy to enhance the human body and mind as “cyborg technologies.” And I refer to
the “cyborg future,” “cyborg age,” or coming “age of cyborgs,” to refer to the
future in which we will become equipped with technology to repair, replace, and
extend our senses, and cognitive functions. An “emerging cyborg law,” then is the
legal issues which will be important to consider for our technological future.
Further, whether a complete machine body containing a human consciousness
uploaded to a machine architecture is a human or machine, is an interesting philo-
sophical question, and the subject of discussions by various authors (see Chap. 7:
The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies).8
The vision of a future world populated by humans, cyborgs, intelligent robots,
and androids raises many interesting questions. One such question is what this
development means for fundamental or constitutional rights for the range of intel-
ligent beings that may exist in the near future. Will cyborgs be considered human
enough to still be bearers of ‘human’ rights? Can androids claim ‘human’ rights if
they look and function in the same way in society as humans or cyborgs? And can
human beings keep robots under control as they become increasingly autonomous;
in other words, will robots comply with Asimov’s three laws of robotics, or will
they, like HAL in 2001—A Space Odyssey, revolt and try and control humans?
Society has been warned of this very outcome by physicist Stephen Hawking and
entrepreneur and CEO of Telsa Motors Elon Musk.9 Some argue that since
cyborgs will evolve in gradual steps from the human species, they will most likely
be considered humans by future generations. The scenario may work out as fol-
lows—as soon as different enhancement technologies are adopted by a critical
mass, after the initial pioneers, enhanced humans will simply be the new appear-
ance of the human species. As a result, it is argued that cyborgs will be the

7See Human enhancement, at: http://www.fidis.net/resources/identity-use-cases-scenarios/human-

enhancement-robots-and-the-fight-for-human-rights/.
8Patrick Lin and Keith Adney, 2014, Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of

Robotics, MIT Press.

9Rory Cellan, Stephen Hawking Warns Artificial Intelligence Could End Mankind, BBC

News, at http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540; Ellie Zolfaghariford and Victoria

Woollastan, 2–15, Could robots turn people into PETS? Elon Musk claims artificial intelligence
will treat humans like ‘labradors’, at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3011302/
Could-robots-turn-people-PETS-Elon-Musk-claims-artificial-intelligence-treat-humans-like-
Labradors.html.
Enhancing Humans 5

inheritors of human rights that exist today.10 Now suppose that robots and artifi-
cially-intelligent machines perform similar functions as cyborgs do, and perhaps
even become androids who are in looks and functions equivalent to cyborgs, then
should they not have the same catalogue of rights? This issue will require substan-
tial debate in society and legal academia.
Another issue that technologically enhanced people may raise is whether a
social, or digital divide will develop between enhanced and non-enhanced humans.
Human rights can play an important part in this debate: because they lay down
the basic rules for treating people. At first sight, the right to non-discrimination
will provide substantial guidance: non-enhanced people should not be treated une-
qually. However, what is ‘unequal’, if in the future enhanced humans are different
in important ways from non-enhanced humans? For example, if an employer can
choose between an unenhanced person with an IQ of 120 and a cyborg with an
IQ of 260 or beyond, does he discriminate if he chooses the cyborg? This is just
one example of questions concerning specific human rights in relation to human
enhancement that merit public debate.

Humans, Bionics, and Cyborgs

As we become equipped with prosthesis and brain implants, we are moving

beyond the human capabilities provided by our evolutionary history and coded in
our genes. Since I believe technological advances are leading humanity towards a
“cyborg” future and an eventual merger with machines; I should define some basic
terms. Let’s start with one of the main characters in this book—a “cyborg”.
Generally, a cyborg is a human-machine combination that has certain physiologi-
cal and intellectual processes aided or controlled by mechanical, electronic, or
computational devices. “Cyborg,” is actually a compound word derived from
cybernetics and organism, and was coined by Manfred Clynes11 in 1960 to
describe the need for mankind to artificially enhance biological functions in order
to survive in the hostile environment of Space.
To introduce some other basic terms, “transhuman” is a term that refers to an
evolutionary transition from the human to the Posthuman. To transhumanist think-
ers, a Posthuman is a hypothetical future being “whose basic capacities so radi-
cally exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by
our current standards.”12 The difference between the Posthuman and other hypo-
thetical sophisticated non-humans is that a Posthuman was once a human, either in

10Human enhancement, robots, and the fight for human rights, at: http://www.fidis.net/resources/

identity-use-cases-scenarios/human-enhancement-robots-and-the-fight-for-human-rights/.
11M. E. Clynes and N. S. Kline, 1960, Cyborgs and Space, Astronautics, 26–27, 74–75.
12Posthuman, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthuman.
6 1  The Technological Future

its lifetime or in the lifetimes of some or all of its direct ancestors.13 As such, a
prerequisite for a Posthuman is a transhuman, the point at which the human being
begins surpassing his or her own limitations, but is still recognizable as a human
person. In this sense, the transition between human and Posthuman may be viewed
as a continuum rather than an all-or-nothing event.
The field of cybernetics is concerned with communication and control systems
involving living organisms and machines. The artificial parts used to create
cyborgs do more than replace the main functionality of an organ or limb, they add
to, enhance, or replace the computational abilities of biological systems. In a typi-
cal example of a cyborg, a human fitted with a heart pacemaker might be consid-
ered a cyborg, since s/he is incapable of surviving without the mechanical part
whose computational capabilities are essential. As a more extreme example of a
cyborg, some would view clothing as a cybernetic modification of skin; because it
enables us to survive in drastically different environments by the use of materials
that aren’t naturally existing in those environments. In my conceptualization of a
cyborg, if the clothing had computational capabilities that aided the wearer,14 then
I would conclude that the “clothing enhanced human” was a cyborg. However, in
almost every case, throughout this book the “cyborgs” I discuss are the result of
being enhanced with technology worn on or integrated into the body.
In the popular culture the terms “bionic human” and “cyborg” are often used
interchangeably to refer to any human enhanced with technology. However, I draw
the distinction that while a bionic human is a person that has been enhanced by
mechanical or biological means; going a step further, a cyborg has computational
processes enhanced or aided by technology, the goal being to go beyond current
human sensory and cognitive abilities. Interestingly, while there are clearly many
bionically enhanced people, there are also cyborgs living amongst us now. If we
want to determine how many cyborgs or bionic humans there are, the number will
depend on the definition used. For example, if by using the term “bionic human,”
one means to signify a person who is artificially enhanced in some way, then the
digestion of medicine would create a bionic human and there would be literally
hundreds of millions of such beings alive today. If, however, one meant that to be
a “bionic human” a certain number of human parts were replaced by mechanical
implants and prosthesis, then the number of such humans would not number in the
hundreds of millions, but in the millions. According to one commentator, many
current people could be defined as “bionic,” in that eight to ten percent of the U.S.
population, that is, approximately 25 million people, currently have some sort of
artificial part- a number expected to grow as the population ages. In fact, just con-
sidering the sense of audition, thousands of cochlear implants are currently in use,
including some placed in deaf children.
Finally, if one meant that to be a “cyborg” that a brain function was artificially
enhanced or replaced, then the number of such people would likely be in the

13Id.
14Kate Hartman, 2014, Make: Wearable Electronics: Design, Prototype, and Wear Your Own

Interactive Garments, Maker Medic Inc. Publisher.

Humans, Bionics, and Cyborgs 7

thousands, a number expected to increase dramatically in the next 10 years. As an

example of brain implant technology currently being used, starting in the late
1990s physicians have implanted electrodes into the brains of patients in the hope
of developing a computer-brain interface which would allow those “locked-in ”
their bodies to operate a robotic arm or move a cursor on a screen. Further, tech-
nology that may allow memories to be digitally stored in the brain is under devel-
opment. The neuroprosthesis (artificial hippocampus) referred to earlier and that is
being designed and tested by Theodore Berger and his team at the University of
Southern California15 and by Dr. Sam A. Deadwyler and Dr. Robert Hampson of
Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center could serve this purpose.16
In many discussions of enhanced humans, whether a person equipped with
technology is termed bionic or cyborg, is not an important distinction—most peo-
ple use the terms interchangeably to refer to any person equipped with technology.
But under the law, the degree to which a person is enhanced by technology could
matter. For example, under disability law a person with a given handicap may need
to be accommodated by an employer; but the type of disability and what technol-
ogy is used to address it, would matter in the legal analysis of the disability and
the rights afforded the disabled person. And consider athletes who have lost their
legs yet still compete against athletes without prosthesis. Competitors often raise
concerns about the unfair advantage the “cyborg” would have over them due to the
lightness of their carbon-fiber prosthetics. While this example may appear to be
something of an outlier, as prosthetic technology improves, the potential for pros-
thetic limbs to equal or even surpass the capabilities of natural limbs is great.17
Further, prosthetic limbs may be stronger, and allow the user to carry heavier loads
than they may normally be able to carry. Alternatively, they may be more flexible,
or allow for greater accuracy in certain tasks—how many people can boast of hav-
ing a wrist that rotates 360°? While this may seem an inane example, the possibili-
ties nevertheless exist for people once considered ‘disabled’ to become
‘over-abled’ in comparison to non-enhanced individuals. Will this give those indi-
viduals a competitive advantage over others that are non-enhanced in employ-
ment? As with some enhanced people, will a perceived superiority of the artificial
over the natural create resentment between ‘enhanced’ and ‘non-enhanced’ peo-
ple? As a result, will new categories of discrimination law be necessary? Under the
U.K. Equality Act, someone is ‘disabled’ if they are considered to have an impair-
ment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry
out normal day-to-day activities; if someone is able to surpass the ability of

15Theodore Berger, Artificial Hippocampus, in Memory Implants, MIT Technology Review, at:

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513681/memory-implants/.
16Theodore W. Berger, Dong Song, Rosa H. M. Chan, Vasilas Z. Marmarelis, Jeff LaCoss, Jack

Wills, Robert E. Hampson, Sam A. Deadwyler, and John J. Granacki, A Hippocampal Cognitive
Prosthesis: Multi-Input, Multi-Output Nonlinear Modeling and VLSI Implementation, IEEE
Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2012 Mar; 20(2): 198–211, doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2012.2189133.
17Human Enhancement Technologies—Edging towards the Cyborg? at: http://www.scl.org/

site.aspx?i=ed31780.
8 1  The Technological Future

fully-able people to undertake those activities through the use of enhancement

technologies, can we truly consider them to be disabled?18
Interestingly, one jurisdiction may have already recognized a person as a
cyborg. Artist, Neil Harbisson,19 is completely color blind suffering from a visual
impairment called achromatopsia, which means he sees the world in shades of
grey. To perceive colors, Neil wears a sensory augmentation device in the form of
a head-mounted antenna attached to a chip at the back of his skull. As a form of
sensory substitution, the “Eyeborg” turns colors into sounds, allowing Neil to
“hear” electromagnetic energy representing color. After a long dispute with the
U.K. authorities, Neil’s passport photo now includes a picture of him with his
cyborg device, a recognition by the authorities that his cyborg enhancement is a
permanent part of his appearance. With a passport photo that shows the Eyeborg as
part of Harbisson’s face, it will be difficult for people to argue that his Eyeborg is
an optional accessory, like a camera or a hat, and somebody trying to take his aug-
mentation off could be committing an assault and battery equivalent to injuring his
face. Interestingly, under the law, a “battery” may occur even if the aggressor does
not touch the plaintiff (i.e., cyborg) directly, but instead touches something closely
related to his or her person (like a cybernetic enhancement attached to the body).20
For example, courts have held that touching the cane a person uses to walk may be
battery, even if the defendant never touches the person herself. In this case, the
cane is like an extension of the person’s body, so touching it is the same thing as
touching the person’s body. In many situations, clothing, hats, and bags may also
count as part of a person enough for the person wearing them to prove battery.
However, as we will see in a later chapter, the law in this area is evolving in
response to cyborg technologies.
A major point to make early in this book is that while humans are becoming
equipped with prosthesis and implants, and thus becoming more cyborg-like, dur-
ing this century, robots will continue to get smarter and at a speed defying human
imagination (actually our bias towards linear thinking see Chap. 3: The Law of
Artificially Intelligent Brains). In fact, robots equipped with artificial intelligence,
and a host of sensors, actuators, and algorithms are leading the way to the creation
of machines that may surpass humans in intelligence and motor capabilities by the
middle, and almost certainly, the end of the twenty-first century. As technology
advances, new forms of humans may evolve from different techniques to enhance
human physiology, anatomy, and cognitive structures. All this may create a con-
tinuum of intelligent beings from human to machine, progressing from human,
bionic human, cyborg, android, robot, software bot, and machine; how artificial
intelligence may add to, or “disrupt” this continuum is discussed throughout this
book.

18UK Equity Act of 2010.

19Neil Harbisson, BBC News, The Man Who Hears Color, at: http://www.bbc.com/news/
technology-29992577.
20Gowri Ramachandran, Against the Right to Bodily Integrity: Of Cyborgs and Human Rights,

2009, Denver Law Review, Vol. 187, 1–57.

Humans, Bionics, and Cyborgs 9

Advances in artificial intelligence may also result in disembodied software

beings that roam the internet, possibly downloading their consciousness to remote
robots or to androids to gain mobility at particular locations around the world.
One commentator has even used the term “digital people” to refer to entities that
include artificial and partly artificial beings, from mechatronic robots (mechani-
cal plus electronic) to humans with bionic (biological plus electronic) implants.
In addition, Martine Rothblatt in her book, Virtually Human: The Premise and the
Peril of Digital Immortality, argues that the brain can be simulated using software
and computer technology. From this discussion, the impression is conveyed that
different types of artificially intelligent beings may coexist in the future.

Brain-Computer Interfaces

Based on medical necessity, enhancement technologies are being used to repair

and replace human anatomy and physiology, and to repair and enhance human
cognitive and perceptual abilities. For example, brain-computer interfaces are
assisting people suffering from debilitating neurological disorders, such that
they are “locked-in” their own body. A brain-computer interface which consists
of recording electrodes placed on a person’s scalp or implanted into their brain,
allows those locked-in the capability to communicate and interact with the world,
by thought alone.
Additional progress is being made in other areas of brain-computer interface
design. For example, scientists have used brain scanners to detect and reconstruct
the faces that people are thinking of, according to a study published in the journal
NeuroImage.21 In the study, Yale scientists hooked participants up to an fMRI
brain scanner—which determines activity in different parts of the brain by measur-
ing blood flow—and showed them images of faces. Then, using only the brain
scans, Professor Marvin Chun and his team were able to create images of the faces
the people were looking at.22 One can imagine in the future that a witness to a
crime might reconstruct a suspect’s face based on “extracting” the image from his
mind. Yale researchers pointed out that an important limitation of the technology
as it exists now, is that this sort of technology can only read active parts of the
brain, it couldn’t read passive memories—to do this you would have to get the per-
son to imagine the memory to read it. Interestingly, at the University of California-
Berkeley, scientists are moving beyond “reading” thoughts to predicting what

21Bill Hathaway, 2014, Yale Researchers Reconstruct Facial Images Locked in a Viewer’s Mind,

http://news.yale.edu/2014/03/25/yale-researchers-reconstruct-facial-images-locked-viewer-s-
mind; also in Neuroimage. 2014 Jul 1;94:12–22. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.03.018.
22Bill Hathaway, Yale researchers reconstruct facial images locked in a viewer’s mind, at: http://

news.yale.edu/2014/03/25/yale-researchers-reconstruct-facial-images-locked-viewer-s-mind.
10 1  The Technological Future

someone will think next.23 And at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, cog-
nitive neuroscientist Marcel Just from the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging has
a vision that will make Google Glass and other similar technologies seem very last
century.24 Instead of using your eye to direct a cursor, Just envisions a device that
will dial a number by interpreting your thoughts.25 However, what if all of our
thoughts were public? Dr. Just envisions a terrifying version of the future, where
officials read minds in order to gain control over them. But more optimistically,
Marcel also envisions a more positive future, with mind reading devices offering
opportunities to people with disabilities—and to those not disabled.
According to Duke University neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, microchips
implanted into the brain could also allow brain-to-brain communication, that is,
telepathy.26 Thus far, brain-wave sensing machines have been used to ‘telepathi-
cally’ control everything from real-life helicopters to characters in a computer
game. In its most recent incarnation, the science of telepathy has gone a step fur-
ther by allowing someone in India to send an email to his colleague in France
using thought. To perform this feat, researchers used electroencephalography
(EEG) headsets which recorded electrical activity from neurons firing in the brain
to convert words into binary. Once the initial thoughts were digitized in India, they
were sent to a person’s mind in France where a computer translated the message,
and then used electrical stimulation to transmit the thought to the receiver’s mind.
Ultimately, telepathy chips and related brain-computer devices could lead to the
emergence of new forms of intelligence, for example, “mindplexes.”27 This is a
term used by artificial intelligence researcher Ben Goertzel, which represents a
collection of independent human minds, yet also possessing a coherent self and
consciousness at the higher level of the telepathically-interlinked human group.
Mindplexes could lead to the benefits associated with crowd sourcing in which the
combined wisdom of a crowd has in some cases been shown to solve problems
beyond the reach of experts. In fact, the characteristics of “wise crowds,” which
are diversity of opinion; independence of members from one another; decentrali-
zation; and a good method for aggregating opinions would be a feature of net-
worked brain-to-brain communication.
Surely, the reading of thoughts would raise a host of legal and policy issues.
Not the least of which is privacy law. On this point, courts in the future may have
to decide whether listening to and recording a person’s thoughts is protected

23Yasmin Anwar, 2011, Scientists Use Brain Imaging to Reveal the Movies in Our Mind, at:
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/.
24Karen Weintraub, 2014, Scientists explore possibilities of mind reading, at: http://www.usatoday.

com/story/tech/2014/04/22/mind-reading-brain-scans/7747831/.
25Id.
26Miguel Nicolelis, 2012, Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains

with Machines-and How It Will Change Our Lives, St. Martin’s Griffin Press.
27Ben Goertzel, 2014, Between Ape and Artilect: Conversations with Pioneers of Artificial

General Intelligence and Other Transformative Technologies, CreateSpace Independent

Publishing Platform.
Brain-Computer Interfaces 11

speech, or an unlawful search and seizure of the activity (i.e., cognition) generated
by the prefrontal cortex (a topic discussed in Chap. 3). As to implanting micro-
chips, a few states in the U.S. have already enacted anti-chipping statutes which
prohibit the “chipping” of vulnerable populations and raises the bar of consent for
implanting an identification or tracking device in any person. I will return to this
important topic again.
With the ability to hack the brain comes compelling problems of law and pol-
icy. If it becomes technically possible to communicate brain-to-brain by thought
alone, could the wirelessly networked brains be hacked into by a corporation or
government agency that could implant an advertisement, subconscious thought, or
memory into one’s mind? If you are annoyed by pop-up ads which appear now on
a website, imagine the nuisance of a pop-up ad appearing in your mind. Further,
the ability to implant a “telepathy chip”—a neural implant that would allow the
wearer to project their thoughts or feelings to others, and receive thoughts or
feelings from others, raises a huge number of questions philosophically, legally,
psychologically, and socially. For example, what would happen, if an implanted
computer chip should “crash” after it is in place? What kinds of health and behav-
ior problems might arise in such a case?

Biological Enhancements

While much of this book discusses enhancement technology in the form of hard-
ware, software, and algorithms, to present a more comprehensive picture of what
the future may hold, I briefly present here material on current efforts to enhance
human abilities by modifying their DNA, and by performance enhancing drugs. In
addition, DNA nanobots in 15–20 years could allow humans to access the internet
with their mind, in fact, the U.S. agency DARPA, is researching this possibility
now. Until recently, human genetic engineering was the material of science-fiction
novels and blockbuster Hollywood films. However, genetic engineering of DNA
is not confined to books and movies, scientists and doctors are already attempt-
ing to genetically alter human beings and our cells. To understand the choices
that humanity must confront this century as a result of the ability to genetically
enhance a human, it is critical to understand an important distinction under the
umbrella of genetic engineering: the difference between therapy and enhancement.
Gene therapy and genetic enhancement are technically both genetic engineering,
but there are important moral differences.
For decades, researchers have worked toward using genetic modification called
gene therapy to cure devastating genetic diseases. Gene therapy works by deliver-
ing a copy of a normal gene into the cells of a patient in an attempt to correct a
defective gene. This genetic alteration would then hopefully cure or slow the pro-
gress of that disease. In many cases, the added gene would produce a protein that
is missing or not functioning in a patient because of a genetic mutation. However,
genetically engineering a normal person who wants, for example, more muscle to
12 1  The Technological Future

improve his athletic ability is no longer gene therapy; instead, it is genetic

enhancement.28 Genetic enhancement would take an otherwise healthy person and
genetically modify him to be more than human, not just in strength, but also in
intelligence, beauty or any other desirable trait. So why is the distinction between
gene therapy and genetic enhancement important? Gene therapy seeks to return a
patient to normal human functioning. Genetic enhancement, on the other hand,
intentionally and fundamentally alters a human being in ways not intended by
nature (note cyborg technologies may perform the same function).
When considering biological enhancements to humans, there is another impor-
tant distinction to discuss. Somatic enhancements are those that affect one person,
and therefore, the genetic alterations occur in only one individual, they do not
enter the human genome generally. While single-person enhancements may have a
dramatic impact on a solitary individual’s life, since those changes are not passed
on to that individual’s children; they do not become part of the larger human
genome. In contrast, germline changes are genetic modifications that can be
passed on to one’s descendants and thus can become permanent components of the
human genome; affecting the person receiving the intervention and, at least indi-
rectly, affecting every other human being. Such changes would constitute altera-
tions of the entire complement of genetic traits found within the species, and many
people believe that such steps should be taken with great caution, even trepidation,
if not banned altogether.29
One form of enhancement technology that has great promise for engineer-
ing a healthier person, but at the same time, has the potential to impact the very
nature of humanity is nanotechnology. The long-term goal of nanotechnology is to
manipulate molecular and atomic structures to design and create machines at the
atomic level; for example, nanobots to repair the body. Since humans are made of
the same basic building blocks as the natural world, nanotechnology will enable
the ability to change human tissues and cells at the molecular level. This will open
doors in medicine previously thought impossible, and it will enable us to extend
the length and quality of human life. It will also open the door to “enhancements”
of the body; including better IQ, appearance, and capabilities. These enhance-
ments will undoubtedly benefit many, but they also bring up important moral, ethi-
cal, and legal questions that human society is just beginning to face.
Biological enhancements to humans already exist in many forms; for example,
according to Maxwell Mehlman, director of the Law-Medicine Center at Case
Western Reserve School of Law,30 the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA)

28See generally, Gene Therapy, 2008, at: http://www.marymeetsdolly.com/index.pl?%7C%7Cac

=marymeetsdolly&%7C%7Ccm=2c&%7C%7Ccv=1&%7C%7Cpp=20&%7C%7Crp=1&%7
C%7Crv=titledescription&%7C%7Csi=00ZKNPHS3VX33PA0I3Z5&%7C%7Csrt=t&%7C%7
Csrtin=a&%7C%7Ctr=OIP8JNM0ME&%7C%7Cudid=15&go=50.
29Francis Fukuyama, 2003. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology

Revolution, Picador Press.

30Maxwell Mehlman, 2012, Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares: The Promise and

Peril of Genetic Engineering, John Hopkins University Press.

Biological Enhancements 13

recently approved a drug which has the cosmetic effects of lengthening and dark-
ening eyelashes. The drug, Latisse, or bimatoprost, was already on the market as a
treatment for glaucoma. And to gain a competitive edge, athletes use everything
from steroids and blood transfusions to recombinant-DNA—manufactured hor-
mones. Students have been known to supplement caffeine-containing energy
drinks with Ritalin and the new alertness drug modafinil. Further, the military also
spends millions of dollars every year on biological research to increase the war-
fighting abilities of “cyborg” soldiers. All of these are examples of biomedical
enhancements: interventions that use medical and biological technology to
improve performance, appearance, or capability in addition to what is necessary to
achieve, sustain, or restore health.31
One of the recent enhancement movements is the phenomena of DIY biology
which advocates open source of DNA information (see Chap. 5, discussing the
movement to self-modify the body). This movement emphasizes DIY genetic
experiments and open access to scientific and specifically, genetic material. The
DIY biology movement attempts to make available the tools and resources neces-
sary for anyone, including non-professionals, to conduct biological engineering of
their own body. For example, low-cost thermocyclers (instruments to amplify
DNA and RNA samples via polymerase chain reaction) have been created to make
a crucial technology more widely available to the public. What about biological
enhancements and public policy? An interesting relationship between genetic
enhancements and public policy was highlighted by Matthew Liao, a professor of
philosophy and bioethics at New York University.32 Liao explored ways humanity
can change its nature to combat “climate change.” One of the suggestions Liao
discussed was to genetically engineer human eyes to function more like cat eyes
so we can see better in the dark. Liao remarked that this would reduce the need for
lighting and reduce energy usage. Considering the available pool of resources to
feed the planet’s rising population, Liao also discussed genetically modifying our
offspring to be smaller so they eat less and consume fewer resources. In the face of
such suggestions, the NBA, and humanity has much to talk about.
Over the next several decades, it is possible that genetic engineering and other
cognitive enhancement techniques could significantly increase human abilities
such as intelligence. However, as Ronald Bailey author of works on ecology, eco-
nomics, and biotechnology points out, critics on both the right and the left worry
that the ability to enhance a person’s cognitive abilities will undermine political
equality.33 Francis Fukuyama, a strong opponent of engineering DNA for purposes

31Maxwell J. Mehlman, Tapping Talent in a Global Economy: Biomedical Enhancements:

Entering a New Era, Issues in Science and Technology, Volume XXV Issue 3, Spring 2009, at:
http://issues.org/25-3/mehlman/.
32See generally Matthew Liao, et al. 2015, Designer Biology: The Ethics of Intensively

Engineering Biological and Ecological Systems, Lexington Books.

33Ronald Bailey, 2005, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech

Revolution, Prometheus Books.

14 1  The Technological Future

of human enhancement, in his 2002 book Our Posthuman Future: Consequences

of the Biotechnology Revolution, asserted, “The political equality enshrined in the
Declaration of Independence rests on the empirical fact of natural human equal-
ity”.34 The idea he opposes is that biological enhancements could “allow inequal-
ity to be inscribed in the human genome.” Fukuyama’s argument is that
biotechnology could allow a class of “super beings” to be engineered such that
“normal” humans would be orders of magnitude less on scales of intelligence,
aggression, drive, and so on.35 While this criticism certainly deserves public
debate, some have argued that this is a very weak reason to oppose the enhance-
ment of such important attributes as intelligence. Those in favor of cognitive
enhancements point out that cognitive inequality is already inscribed in the human
genome, as there is already large difference in intellectual ability between people
with low versus high IQs.36 They also argue that cognitive enhancement could
help alleviate political ignorance and increase political equality—at least in so far
as political equality is enhanced by cognitive equality.37 As for the equality issue,
cognitive enhancement may follow the same trajectory as numerous previous
information-spreading technologies, such as books, radio, television, and comput-
ers.38 Some argue that while at first they may be available mostly to the rich (first
adopters), over time costs could go down due to marketplace competition, and the
rest of society will then be able to take advantage of them as well. Ultimately,
according to some commentators, cognitive enhancement might actually reduce
the large “natural” gaps in cognitive ability that currently exist. Again, we humans
need to talk about this.

New Opportunities in the 21st Century

Future technological developments leading towards a human—machine merger

will also lead to new opportunities for entrepreneurs. For example, according to
data from Global Industry Analysts, worldwide markets for prosthetics, include
the design, manufacturing and fitting of artificial limbs. At the time of this writing
a “typical” prosthesis may cost $10,000 to $65,000, and the market is projected to
grow from $15.3 billion to $23.5 billion by 2017. The wearable technology market
may grow to $6 billion by 2016, and the demand for real-time data, including

34Francis Fukuyama, id., note 29.

35Francis Fukuyama, id., note 29.
36Francis Fukuyama, id., note 29.
37Illya Somin, 2013, The Case for Designer Babies, The Volokh Conspiracy, at: http://volokh.

com/2013/10/21/case-designer-babies/.
38Id.
New Opportunities in the 21st Century 15

personal health information, will grow from 14 million devices which provide
health information to 171 million in 2016.39 Further, an ageing population and the
rising prevalence of health issues such as diabetes, as well as degenerative joint
diseases such as arthritis and osteoporosis, is building demand for prosthetics. And
considering cyberspace, virtual reality already has value. In 2004 David Storey
became the Guinness World Record holder at the time for “Most valuable object
that is virtual” when he purchased an island in the virtual world Entropia for
265,000 Entropian dollars, or $26,500 in 2010 dollars. Storey set up a virtual rare
game preserve business on the island, which he claimed drew in around $100,000
in revenue. However, you don’t have to be a player paying the entry fee to a club
in Entropia, or buying virtual swords in World of Warcraft to have encountered the
virtual economy. If you’re on Facebook, and bought a birthday cake icon for a
friend, you just paid real money for a virtual good.40
What about the law and financial transactions in cyberspace? Consider the
development of “Bitcoin,” an open source digital currency used in cyberspace to
pay for goods and services using peer-to-peer technology with no central authority
or banks involved.41 In some cases, Bitcoin is the only accepted form of payment
in cyberspace. However, it seems that where financial transactions occur, govern-
ment regulations and the law are close behind. And on just this point, the New York
State Department of Financial Services issued subpoenas for digital-currency com-
panies and investors in an attempt to determine if the state needs to regulate cyber-
space transactions. Why would the state want to regulate cyberspace? Because the
things a person can buy with the digital currency Bitcoin is continuing to grow,
from sandwiches to art and even expensive cars, as a man using Bitcoin bought a
Tesla Model S from a Lamborghini dealership in Newport Beach, CA, who was
the first dealer to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment.42 Globally, Bitcoin has had
a mixed reception, with China’s central bank banning lenders from handling the
virtual money. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service hasn’t offered guidance on
Bitcoin beyond saying it’s working on the issue and that it has been monitoring
digital currencies and transactions since 2007. Interestingly, there is also a connec-
tion between digital currency and cyborg technologies. A Dutch entrepreneur has
had two wireless computer chips implanted under the skin in his hands to allow
him to store digital currencies like Bitcoin inside his body. Martijn Wismeijer the
founder of Mr. Bitcoin, operates a company which installs and operates crypto-cur-
rency cash machines in and around his native Amsterdam and across Europe.

39Lucas Mearian, 2012, Wearable Technology Market to Exceed $6B by 2016, Computerworld,

at: http://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_it=topsearchbox.search&s_chn=prt_aol20&v_t=comsear
ch&q=Lucas+Mearian%2C+Wearable+Technology+Market+to+exceed+%24B+by+2016.
40Paray Khanna and Ayesha Khanna, Time to Pay Attention to the Virtual Economy, at:

http://bigthink.com/hybrid-reality/time-to-pay-attention-to-the-virtual-economy.
41Nathaniel Popper, 2016, Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and

Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money, Harper Press.

42Emily Foxhall, 2013, O.C. Lamborghini dealership sells car for 91.4 bitcoins, at: http://

articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/12/local/la-me-ln-lamborghini-bitcoin-20131212.
16 1  The Technological Future

Remarkably, Martijn chose to undergo a painful procedure to embed NFC (near-

field communication) chips under his skin. These chips can be read by a range of
devices including smartphones, and can be adapted for a range of uses.
In another example of economic opportunities that will develop this century,
just as the current markets for plastic surgery, mood-altering drugs, and even
beauty and fitness aids total in the billions of dollars, tomorrow this market will
be multiplied many times over in a world where longevity and health enhancement
become valued assets. In the U.S., medical technology developments including
bio-enhancing medicines, fall within the jurisdiction of the FDA and are spe-
cifically regulated by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act and the Public
Health Service Act. Under these acts, the U.S. FDA regulates a broad range of
products, although different products are treated in different ways. Some products,
such as drugs, devices, biologics, food and color additives, are subject to “premar-
ket authorization,” while other products are not. Premarket authorization means,
among other things, that the FDA can require manufacturers to provide needed
scientific information concerning safety and product effectiveness to the agency.
Besides premarket analysis, the FDA’s responsibilities include the discovery of
safety problems with marketed products, to remove specific versions of a product
from the market or to ban dangerous products completely, as required by the need
to protect consumers and patients.
New drug approval is even more demanding and such guidelines should be
considered by those developing cyborg technologies. The clinical trial process is
intended to gather sufficient data needed to determine whether new drugs are safe
for human use. If artificially intelligent machines gain legal status, would the FDA
regulate the hardware and software updates which affect their well-being? Would
any government agency be concerned with their needs? Surely the law of contracts
would be implicated in the context of financial transactions. To address these and
other issues, the current human-centric focus of the law may need to be revised in
the future. Currently, provisions of the FDA say nothing specifically about cyborgs
or artificially intelligent machines arguing for rights, although the prosthesis and
treatments received by those falling under the term “bionic human or cyborg,” are
covered by FDA regulations. However, rather than waiting for FDA approval for
implantable technology, self-directed body hackers are taking matters in their own
hand and enhancing their body with off-the-shelf sensors and other implantable
devices (see Chap. 5: Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body).
Issie Lapowski comments that “the potential for artificial intelligence has, for
decades, been mostly relegated to the larger-than-life imaginations of Hollywood
directors.”43 She says that from Blade Runner to Terminator, it always seems to
take place in some distant and dystopian future. And yet, if there’s one thing to be
learned from Google’s recent acquisition of the artificial intelligence startup
DeepMind, it’s that the heyday for this type of technology is not a century or even
decades away. Furthermore, the global market for artificial intelligence was valued

43Issie Lapowski, 4 Big Opportunities in Artificial Intelligence, at: http://www.inc.com/issie-

lapowsky/4-big-opportunities-artificial-intelligence.html.
New Opportunities in the 21st Century 17

at $900 million in 2013, according to the market research firm Research and
Markets. Meanwhile, a study out of Oxford University found that in the near
future artificially intelligent technology could take over nearly half of all U.S.
jobs.44 It’s scary news for some, but it’s also a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs
innovating in this space.
I agree with some commenters that envision several main markets for emerging
applications of artificial intelligence.45 According to Issie Lapowski, staff writer
for Wired, the first is in understanding “big data.” The big data market has been
maturing for years now, but while there’s plenty of technology that can crunch the
numbers and spit them out in a spreadsheet or chart, there’s a difference between
having the data on hand and truly understanding it. Now, entrepreneurs are begin-
ning to fill that gap with technology that not only synthesizes the data, but inter-
prets it, too.46 One such company, Chicago-based Narrative Science, has
developed a program called Quill that goes so far as to provide users with a writ-
ten report of the data in story form. The second main market for artificial intelli-
gence, according to Lapowski, is in making smarter robots.47 The days of robots
performing simple manufacturing tasks manually controlled by humans are far
from over, and yet there’s a land rush going on among startups vying to build a
better robot brain and sensors which would allow machines to operate autono-
mously. There’s Baxter, of course, Rethink Robotics’ famously friendly-looking
research robot, which is already on the market, and can actually be trained. Others,
like Hanson Robotics, have invented remarkably human-like robots, capable of
carrying a conversation and recalling personal history. Thirdly, Lapowski reports
that artificial intelligence will lead to smarter assistants.48 Ubiquitous as Siri is,
she’s far from perfect; Incredible Labs, has already developed Donna, a personal
assistant app that not only reminds you when you have an appointment, but tells
you when to leave, how to get there, and memorizes your preferences. Taking that
a step farther is Jarvis Corp., a startup, which so far, is still in the conceptual
phases of building a virtual assistant that can access the Internet and answer ques-
tions; but can also act as a control for all the connected devices in a house, and act
as an Internet server. Artificial intelligence isn’t just for processing requests and
synthesizing data anymore. Now, some startups are even developing technology
that can understand sentiment, a trend known as affective computing. A Tel Aviv-
based startup, Beyond Verbal, according to Lapowski “uses technology to analyze
vocal intonations to determine a person’s mood.” Affectiva’s software accom-
plishes a similar mission, but by monitoring a person’s face. The idea is that by
understanding emotions, artificially intelligent technology could predict a person’s

44ArtificialIntelligence is Changing the World and Humankind Must Adopt, Wired, at:
http://www.wired.com/2014/07/artificial-intelligence-changing-world-humankindmust-adapt/.
45Issie Lapowski, id., note 43.
46Id.
47Id.
48Id.
18 1  The Technological Future

needs in drastically more human ways. Of course, as we teach “them” how to

understand us, we may be opening Pandora’s Box in terms of giving artificial
intelligence the information it may need to manipulate us.

Cyborgs and Virtual Reality

Leading robotic experts and artificial intelligence researchers have predicted that
during this century, artificially intelligent machines will take on far more of a
human-like appearance, express emotions, and reach, or possibly surpass, human
levels of intelligence (see Chap. 7: The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies).
Machines with such capabilities, and appearing in human-like form, termed
“androids,” will enter society, negotiate contracts with humans, and likely argue
for legal and other rights; including “human rights” and liberties. Also during this
century, humans will be equipped with far more machine parts and computing
power than now; the result being bionic humans and cyborgs.
By the middle of the twenty-first century, “virtual reality” will also be far more
realistic and immersive than now, and as such, humans, cyborgs, artificially intelli-
gent machines, and intelligent virtual avatars (sometimes referred to as virtual
human or digital person) will spend time living in virtual reality where they will
form governments; produce, buy, and sell products; and engage in many of the
social activities that occur in the real world.49 If in the future virtual reality will be
inhabited by artificially intelligent virtual avatars, some working as our personal
digital assistants, some working for intelligent machines, and some representing
themselves, how will we humans relate to intelligent virtual avatars that we will
encounter in virtual reality? How will intelligent virtual avatars be viewed by the
legal system, I topic I wrote about in The Akron Law Review? Will intelligent ava-
tars have legal rights? Will they be citizens, have the right to vote or marry, or
through genetic algorithms, have progeny that they can claim? Will uploading a
computer virus be considered an assault and battery? And where will jurisdiction
lie for disputes involving virtual avatars that roam the internet? Furthermore, will
intelligent avatars have the right to “treatment” if infected by a computer virus?
On this point, at a 2013 conference on law and robotics hosted by Stanford Law
School, after I spoke, Joanne Pransky, a person who has lectured on the social
aspects of robots, handed me her card which tongue-in-cheek presented her as the
world’s first robotic psychiatrist.
Where will technological developments in virtual reality, intelligent systems,
and cyborgs ultimately lead? Some scientists have argued that the convergence of
this technology, along with developments in nanotechnology, will result in the
emergence of “Posthumans,” a term used by some commentators to refer to future
beings whose basic capacities will so radically exceed those of present humans as

49Woodrow Barfield, Intellectual Property Rights in Virtual Environments: Considering the

Rights of Owners, Programmers and Virtual Avatars, 39 Akron L. Rev., 649 (2006).
Cyborgs and Virtual Reality 19

to be no longer human by our current standards. What could be the form of

Posthumans? Posthumans could be artificial intelligences in a variety of forms
(such as human-like robots), they could be uploaded human consciousness to com-
puting machines or to the internet, or they could be the result of making many
smaller but cumulatively profound augmentations to a biological human.
Conceptually, the latter alternative would probably require either the redesign of
the human organism using nanotechnology or its radical enhancement using some
combination of technologies such as genetic engineering and advanced
prosthesis.50
The above predictions on humans merging with machines and artificial intelli-
gence equaling and then surpassing human intelligence are bold and to some con-
troversial, and not easy for many people to accept; however, to use a cliché, the
future is moving towards us at an amazing speed. In fact, the distinction between
human and machine is already blurring. In our present era, a human may be
equipped with a retinal prosthesis, cochlear implant, artificial hip, heart, kidney,
and limbs, as well as implanted sensors and a heart pacer. Further, people like
Professor Steve Mann of the University of Toronto have been wearing computers
for 30 years; or as Steve told me years ago, “packing heat.” In addition, Professor
Kevin Warrick from the University of Reading has also pioneered the movement
toward a cyborg future by participating in a set of studies known as Project
Cyborg.51 The first stage of this research, which began in 1998, involved a simple
sensor being implanted beneath Warwick’s skin, which was used to control doors,
lights, heaters, and other computer-controlled devices based on his proximity to
them. The second stage involved a more complex neural interface which consisted
of an internal electrode array (consisting of 100 electrodes), connected to an exter-
nal “gauntlet” that housed supporting electronics. The electrode array was
implanted in Warwick’s arm in 2002, and interfaced directly into Warwick’s
median nerve. The demonstration proved successful, and the signal produced was
detailed enough that a robot arm was able to mimic the actions of Warwick’s own
arm.52
As we develop technology to enhance the human body, be it out of necessity or
to create humans with abilities beyond those of current people, we are changing
the ratio of human to machine parts; an idea espoused by Ray Kurzweil and Terry
Grossman in their 2005 book “Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live
Forever.”53 In fact, the ratio of human to machine parts may be a useful, albeit
simplistic, measure of “cyborgness.” We can postulate that C = m/h, where “C”
equals cyborg, “h” represents the number of human parts, and “m” represents the

50Transhumansm; Post-Human and Trans-Human, at: http://www.miqel.com/transhumanism_nano/

transhuman-posthuman-uberman.html.
51Kevin Warwick, The Next Step Towards True Cyborgs? at: http://www.kevinwarwick.com/

cyborg2.htm.
52Kevin Warwick, Wikipedia, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Kevin_Warwick.
53Ray Kurzweil, 2005, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, Plume Publisher.
20 1  The Technological Future

number of machine parts. However, the deciding factor determining the degree of
“cyborgness” may not be a simple ratio of human to machine parts, but more on
the issue of how much information processing is performed by the human or
machine components of the cyborg/human. Thus, we can posit the following rela-
tionship: C = Ʃ (mi/hi), where the subscript “i” represents the information meas-
ured in bits transmitted by a particular body or mechanical part (the human brain
is a petaflop biological computer). We presently don’t know the information pro-
cessing capabilities of different body parts or physiological systems, but the idea
that the degree of cyborgness should be related to information theory, seems to me
to have merit (and heavily weights the information processing capabilities of the
human brain). Barring a breakthrough in brain prosthesis, each technological
advancement alone will not significantly alter the ratio of human biological to
mechanical parts if information processing is the deciding factor, but if one con-
siders the amount of human limbs, sensors, and internal systems (such as the heart
or liver) that can be replaced or enhanced with technology, clearly the “cyborg”
ratio is beginning to change and in favor of the machine.
Developments in cyborg technologies beg the question, “where does the human
end, and the machine begin?” This is a question humanity will likely have to address
sooner rather than later. In some situations laws that affect people lacking technologi-
cal enhancements (the current majority) may not be relevant for an enhanced person
with a prosthetic arm or leg equipped with more power and information processing
capabilities than a non-enhanced person; and what about someone equipped with
a brain prosthesis? As an example, in the arena of sports there is already a raging
debate as to whether we should allow people enhanced by steroids, drugs, or tech-
nology to compete against those lacking such enhancements. From a policy perspec-
tive, should people that are enhanced with technology be recognized by society as a
separate class? And if so, would they be considered a “protected” class (which would
mean in the U.S. that they would receive protection under the 14th Amendment); or
in comparison, would nonenhanced people be considered the protected class? The
constitutional law issues raised by technologically enhanced beings will result in fas-
cinating cases heard by the Supreme Court and International tribunals.

Cyborg Disputes

Another issue to consider for cyborgs is what liabilities, if any, would be incurred
by those who disrupt the functioning of their “computing prosthesis”? For exam-
ple, would an individual be liable if they interfered with a signal sent to an individ-
ual’s wearable computer, if that signal was used to assist the individual in seeing
and perceiving the world? On just this point, former U.S. Vice President, Dick
Cheney, equipped with a pacemaker had its wireless feature disabled in 2007.54

54Dick Cheney had the wireless function disabled on his pacemaker to avoid the risk of terrorist

tampering, at: http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/21/4863872/dick- cheney- pacemaker-wireless-

disabled-2007.
Cyborg Disputes 21

On the point of human interaction with cyborgs, there have already been two
legal disputes involving the rights of Steve Mann, a Professor of Engineering at
the University of Toronto. Steve has lived as a cyborg for decades, wearing com-
puters and electronic sensors that are designed to augment his memory, enhance
his vision and keep tabs on his vital signs.55 In 2002, before boarding a Toronto-
bound plane at St. John’s International Airport in Newfoundland, due to his
“cyborg appearance” Steve went through an ordeal in which he was searched and
allegedly injured by security personnel.56 During the incident, thousands of dollars
of his body-worn equipment was reportedly lost or damaged, including the eye-
glasses that serve as his display screen. Before traveling, Steve followed the rou-
tine he has used on previous flights. He told the airport security guards in Toronto
that he had already notified the airline about his equipment, and he showed them
documentation, some of it signed by his doctor, that described the wires and
glasses, which he wears as part of his research on wearable computers. Without a
fully functional system, Steve found it difficult to navigate normally; and report-
edly fell at least twice in the airport. In fact, as the number of people with heart
devices and artificial joints and bones grows, so will the number of airline passen-
gers who receive lengthier security exams. There are no estimates on the number
of people with implants and cybernetic enhancements passing through check-
points, but the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) expects more as
the huge baby boomer population ages. The orthopedic implant market, for
instance, is already growing at twice the annual rate of 5 years ago. The TSA is
trying to improve its screening of passengers with implants such as those with
pacemakers and defibrillators—life-saving devices that regulate heartbeats—and
orthopedic implants, such as hips and knees. Steve believes that based on his sta-
tus as a cyborg he should receive the same treatment as any person needing special
equipment such as wheelchairs; certainly this view should be the subject of a pub-
lic policy debate and possibly legislative action. But why debate an issue that cur-
rently impacts only a few self-professed cyborgs—because more cyborgs are
coming, and soon (and more than you think are already here!). For example, there
are several million people equipped with arm or leg prosthesis, important progress
is being made on improving brain-computer interfaces, and the military is spend-
ing millions on efforts to create cyborg warriors.
Restaurants have also entered into the debate about the direction of our cyborg
future. Taking a strong stance against a type of wearable computing, Google
Glass, a Seattle-based restaurant, Lost Lake Cafe, actually kicked out a patron for
wearing Glass. The restaurant is standing by its no-glass policy, despite mixed
responses from the local community. In another incident, a theatre owner in
Columbus, Ohio, saw enough of a threat from Google Glass to call the Department
of Homeland Security. The Homeland Security agents removed the programmer

55Steve Mann, Cyborg, 2007, at: http://blog.codinghorror.com/steve-mann-cyborg/.

56Airport Security vs. Steve Mann, 2002, at: http://it.slashdot.org/story/02/03/14/2051228/
airport-security-vs-cyborg-steve-mann.
22 1  The Technological Future

who was wearing Google Glass connected to his prescription lenses. Further, a
San Francisco bar frequented by a high-tech crowd has banned patrons from wear-
ing Google Glass while inside the establishment. In fact, San Francisco seems to
be ground zero for cyborg disputes as a social media consultant who wore Glass
inside a San Francisco bar claimed that she was attacked by other customers
objecting to her wearing the device inside the bar. In addition, a reporter for
Business Insider, Kyle Russell, said he had his Google Glass snatched off his face
and smashed to the ground in San Francisco’s Mission District.57
Ray Kurzweil, a well-known futurist, calls the attack on Steve (in Paris) the
first recorded attack on a cyborg in history; we should also include attacks on peo-
ple wearing Google Glass and equipped with prosthetic devices in the same cat-
egory. Should the attacks be considered a precursor for a cyborg hate crime? From
a legal analysis hate crimes comprise two elements: a criminal offence committed
with a bias motive. At first glance, incidents involving Steve seems to satisfy both
prongs. The first element of a hate crime is that an act is committed that consti-
tutes an offence under ordinary criminal law. This criminal act is often referred to
as the “base offence;” in Steve’s case the base offense would likely be an assault
and battery. Because there are small variations in legal provisions from country
to country, there are some divergences in the kind of conduct that amounts to a
crime; but in general, most countries criminalize the same type of violent acts.
Hate crimes always require a base offence to have occurred. The second element
of a hate crime is that the criminal act was committed with a particular motive,
referred to as “bias”. It is the element of “bias motive” that differentiates hate
crimes from ordinary crimes. This means that the perpetrator intentionally chose
the target of the crime because of some protected characteristic (typical of a pro-
tected class). This is where Steve would have difficulty proving a hate crime—
cyborgs are not considered a protected class.
What does constitute a protected class, that is, a group that cannot specifically
be targeted for discrimination? A protected class normally consists of individuals
with characteristics that are commonly shared by the group, such as “race”, lan-
guage, religion, ethnicity, nationality, or any other similar common factor.
Interestingly, artificially intelligent machines speak a particular binary language
and often have common physical characteristics; at first glance, they would seem
to have some of the characteristic of a “class,” but would they deserve special pro-
tection? That is a question for public policy and legislation. But indirectly, in a
Supreme Court case, a justice may have given us a peek into the future. Justice
Ginsburg focusing on the legislative findings of the American with Disability Act
(ADA), commented that “individuals with disabilities are a discrete and insular
minority,” and “subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment, and rele-
gated to a position of political powerlessness in our society.”58 Given that people

57Kyle Russell, 2014, I Was Assaulted For Wearing Google Glass In The Wrong Part Of San
Francisco, Business Insider, at: http://www.businessinsider.com/i-was-assaulted-for-wearing-
google-glass-2014-4.
58Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581, 587 (1999).
Cyborg Disputes 23

with disabilities are often equipped with prosthesis and other “cyborg technology,”
can we consider emerging cyborgs to be of a member of a “discrete and insular
minority”? Clearly, whether or not cyborgs such as Professor Mann should be con-
sidered to be a member of a class deserving special protection under the law is a
complex issue and one for the public and legislators to debate.
In addition to FDA regulations on wearable technology in the form of medical
devices monitoring health, some jurisdictions are just beginning to regulate cyborg
technology. For example, sparsely populated Wyoming is among a small number
of U.S. states eyeing a ban on the use of wearable computers while driving, over
concerns that drivers wearing Google Glass may pay more attention to their email
or other online content than the road.59 And in a high-profile California case that
raised new questions about distracted driving, a driver wearing Google Glass was
ticketed for wearing the display while driving after being stopped for speeding.
The ticket was for violating a California statute which prohibited a “visual” moni-
tor in her car while driving. Later, the ticket was dismissed due to lack of proof the
device was actually operating while she was driving. Further, to show the power
and influence of corporations in the debate about our cyborg future, Davin Levine
comments that Google has lobbied officials in at least three U.S. states to stop pro-
posed restrictions on driving with headsets such as Google Glass, marking some of
the first clashes over the nascent wearable technology.60

Two Technologically Driven Revolutions

In discussing what might be in the twenty-first century, Rodney Brooks, former

Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT
and now chairman of Rethink Robotics, postulated that two technology-driven rev-
olutions would occur.61 He termed the first, the “robotics revolution,” and the sec-
ond, the “biotechnology revolution.”62 Interestingly, Brooks, when discussing his
artificially intelligent robots, sometimes uses the phrase “artificial creatures” to
describe them. Normally when one uses the term “creature,” they mean to refer to
a living entity; but Brook’s robots are designed using software, sensors, and
mechanical parts such as effectors, actuators, and servomotors—no one would
seriously claim that they are alive in any sense that humans or other living crea-
tures are alive. But what if robots continue to gain in intelligence and one day
claim to be conscious and alive? How would society and the legal system view this

59Laura Zuckerman, 2014, Wyoming among states eyeing laws to ban Google Glass while driving, at:
http://www. reuters.com/article/2014/01/29/us-usa-wyoming-google- idUSBREA0S25A20140129.
60Dan Levine, 2014, Exclusive: Google sets roadblocks to stop distracted driver legislation, at: http://

www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/25/us-google-glass- lobbying-idUSBREA1O0P920140225.
61Rodney Brooks, 2003, Flesh and Machines: How Robots will Change Us, Vintage Publisher.
62Id.
24 1  The Technological Future

development? Would such “creatures” be granted rights independent from their

creator? Could they be citizens, vote, or own property? Could they be liable in tort
in a civil action or guilty under criminal law for any harm that resulted from their
actions? Brooks thinking on these questions is presented in more detail in Chap. 8,
which summarizes the law of cyborgs and the emergence of artificial intelligence
in the twenty-first century.
It is likely that humanity will be required to face these very questions this cen-
tury as advances in technology are quickly leading to more intelligent machines
that act independently from human programmers, that is, are autonomous, and that
more-and-more resemble humans in form and behavior. If artificially intelligent
machines are aware of their actions, and if they can think and plan-out their con-
duct, would they be liable for harms resulting from their conduct? Brooks made
some interesting observations of relevance for law and policy when he postulated
that humans would relate to intelligent robots in ways different from previous
machines, and that the upcoming robotic revolution would change the fundamental
nature of society itself.63 Just how might humans relate to an intelligent robot?
Would they be our equal under the law, our property, indentured servants, or some
other yet to be defined relationship? And would they be considered a legal person
under the law and receive the rights that citizens receive?
At this point, some distinctions are in order. In jurisprudence, a natural person
is a real human being, as opposed to a legal person, which may be a private (i.e.,
business entity) or public (i.e., government) organization. In fact, in the U.S. the
law does grant personhood status to nonliving entities. Corporate personhood is
the legal concept that a corporation may be recognized as an individual in the eyes
of the law. For example, corporations may contract with other parties and sue or
be sued in court in the same way as natural persons or unincorporated associa-
tions of persons. The corporate personhood doctrine does not hold that corpora-
tions are flesh and blood “people” apart from their shareholders, officers, and
directors, nor does it grant to corporations all of the rights of natural citizens. In
many cases, fundamental human rights are implicitly granted only to natural per-
sons. For example, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,
which states a person cannot be denied the right to vote based on gender, or
Section Fifteen of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guaran-
tees equality rights, apply to natural persons only. Another example of the dis-
tinction between natural and legal persons is that a natural person can hold public
office, but a corporation cannot. Of course artificially intelligent machines are not
considered to be a legal person (bionically equipped people and current versions
of cyborgs are); but surely the corporate personhood doctrine provides precedence
that a non-human entity can be recognized as a person under the law.
In terms of laws that may relate to artificially intelligent robots, most people are
familiar with Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics. The first says that a robot may
not injure a human being, or allow a human being to come to harm. The second

63Id.
Two Technologically Driven Revolutions 25

law is that a robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where
such orders would conflict with the first law. And the third law states that the robot
must protect its own existence, as long as it doesn’t conflict with the first or second
laws. While these laws have resulted in much discussion since they were first writ-
ten in the short story “Runaround” published in 1942,64 they say nothing about
many areas of law that would have to be considered should robots gain in intelli-
gence. For example, how much responsibility should artificially intelligent robots
have for making enforceable contracts? Could they serve as agents for humans, or
could humans serve as agents for artificially intelligent robots? Could artificially
intelligent robots own real property or receive rights for their intellectual property?
And could artificially intelligent robots bequeath property (in the form of soft-
ware?) to future generations of intelligent machines? These are just a few of the
legal and policy questions humanity may have to consider this century.
The notion of personhood has expanded significantly, albeit slowly, over the
course of history. Throughout history, women, children and slaves have at times
been considered property rather than persons. The category of persons recognized
in the courts has expanded to include entities such as women, slaves, human
aliens, illegitimate children and minors as well as unnatural or juridical persons,
such as corporations, labor unions, nursing homes, municipalities and government
units.65 Clearly legal personhood makes no claim about morality, sentience or
vitality. But to be a legal person is to have the capability of possessing legal rights
and duties within a certain legal system, such as the right to enter into contracts,
own property, sue and be sued. Not all legal persons have the same rights and obli-
gations, and some entities are only considered “persons’” for some matters and not
others. New categories of personhood are matters of decision, not discovery. The
establishment of personhood is an assessment made to grant an entity rights and
obligations, regardless of how it looks and whether it could pass for human. As
stated by Mark Goldfelder: to make the case for granting personhood to artificially
intelligent robots, it’s not necessary to show that they can function as persons in all
the ways that a “person” may, it’s enough to show that they may be considered
persons for a particular set of actions in a way that makes the most sense legally
and logically.66
A question at the heart of the issue of personhood for artificially intelligent
machines is at what point will such an entity move from the status of property to
personhood (this likely will not be a step function)? To some, legal personhood for
artificially intelligent robots in the near future makes sense. They argue that artificial
intelligence is already part of our daily lives. For example, bots are selling

64Isaac Asimov, Runaround, written in October 1941 and first published in the March 1942 issue

of Astounding Science Fiction. Runaround is notable for featuring the first explicit appearance of
the Three Laws of Robotics, which had previously only been implied in Asimov’s robot stories.
65Mark Goldfeder, 2014, The Age of Robots is Here, http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/10/

opinion/goldfeder-age-of-robots-turing-test/.
66Id.
26 1  The Technological Future

merchandise on eBay and Amazon, and semiautonomous agents are determining our
eligibility for Medicare and other government programs. Predator drones require less
and less supervision, and robotic workers in factories have become more common-
place. Google is testing self-driving cars, and General Motors has announced that it
expects semiautonomous vehicles to be on the road in a few years. But when the
robot acting autonomously makes a mistake, as it inevitably will, who exactly is to
blame? The retailor who sold the machine? The current owner who had nothing to
do with the mechanical failure? Or the party who assumed the risk of interacting
with the robot? What happens when a robotic car slams into another vehicle, or even
just runs a red light? To be able to assign liability is why some legal commentators
argue that robots should be granted legal personhood. As a legal person, the robot
could carry insurance purchased by its employer. As an autonomous actor, it could
indemnify others from paying for its mistakes giving the system a sense of fairness
and ensuring commerce could proceed unchecked by the twin fears of financial ruin
and of not being able to collect.67
As to the second upcoming revolution, Brooks spoke about biotechnology, dis-
cussing how it would transform the technology of our bodies and also that of our
machines.68 On this point, Brooks envisioned a future in which machines would
become more like humans and humans would become more like machines. Along
these lines, one of Brook’s students, and now a Professor of Media Arts and
Science at MIT, Cynthia Breazeal, has created a particularly interesting robot
“Leonardo” as well as a host of other personal robots.69 Leonardo has the capabil-
ity to react to people by changing its facial expressions and by moving its head
towards people when they speak. Interestingly, people who have interacted with
Leonardo seem to get the feeling that Leonardo is conscious at some level. Even
though Leonardo is clearly not aware of its own existence, by reacting to people in
a more human-like and social manner, people come to think of the robot as if it
were a person. If such a reaction occurs to robots with such a rudimentary level of
intelligence and social skills such as Leonardo, imagine what will be the reaction
of people just 10–20 years from now when robots are far more intelligent, and
more closely resemble humans in form and behavior? A later chapter discusses
some interesting ideas about how humans emotionally react to artificially intelli-
gent machines approaching human likeness.

Merging with Machines

Another leading scientist in the design of artificially intelligent robots is Hans

Moravec, formerly head of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
Moravec, who studied robotics at Stanford University, takes a much stronger

67Id.
68Rodney Brooks, id., note 61.
69Cynthia Braezeal, 2004, Designing Sociable Robots, A Bradford Book.
Merging with Machines 27

position than Brooks when discussing the future of humans and artificially intelli-
gent machines in that he proposes that the future destiny of humans is to actually
merge with machines. As expressed by Moravec in his 1998 book, Robot: Mere
Machine to Transcendent Mind, the robots of the 1980s and 1990s could think
only at an insect level, essentially equipped with the sensory and motor capabili-
ties to crudely navigate environments.70 But due to the exponential growth in com-
puting power that has occurred in the last 25 years, and based on advances in
algorithms he predicts that by midcentury robots will become as smart as humans
and will eventually begin their own process of evolution which, according to
Moravec, will render humans extinct in our present form. Yet Moravec claims that
this is not something humanity should fear as he concludes that merging with
intelligent machines is the best future humans could hope for, as he puts it- the
ultimate form of human transcendence.71
Moravec is not the only prominent scientist to predict that humans may some-
day merge with machines. Google’s Ray Kurzweil, an inventor, futurist, and
author of several books on artificial intelligence and human destiny has made the
same argument. Interestingly, Kurzweil views technological advances, especially
in computing power, as a continuation of the process of evolution. According to
Kurzweil, far from being some distant science-fiction dream, human-machine
combinations will evolve sooner rather than later. This prediction is based on one
of Kurzweil’s key ideas, the law of accelerating returns, which was presented in
his seminal book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. In
essence, Kurzweil says progress occurs at an exponential rate- at the low end of
the exponential curve, progress is extremely slow; for example, eons elapsed
between the emergence of one-celled microorganisms and the arrival of Homo
sapiens. But once Homo sapiens started to develop technology, it took only about
ten to twelve thousand more years for hunter-gatherers to develop a technology
that eventually lead to computers. And once computers were invented, Moore’s
Law, which says microprocessor power doubles every 18 months or so became a
factor in the evolution of computing technology. Kurzweil’s law of accelerating
returns posits that this same exponential pace governs efforts to splice DNA,
unravel genomes, reverse-engineer the brain and develop nanotech machines.72
Given all these developments, expanding at exponential rates, Kurzweil considers
it inevitable that our own technological creations will infuse new capabilities into
human biological systems. Kurzweil, well-known for his predictions about human
and machine evolution, for example, that humans may merge with machines, has
also written that someday software-based humans will inhabit the Web, projecting

70Hans Moravec, 2000, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Oxford University Press.
71Id.
72Tom Abate, 2005, 2 Way-out views of technology’s role in shaping the future / Inventor predicts
the fusion of human and machines; author says let go of technological fixes for humans’ sake, at:
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/2-way-out-views-of-technology-s-role-in-shaping-2604873.php.
28 1  The Technological Future

bodies whenever they need or want them, including virtual bodies in diverse
realms of virtual reality.73
Considering the above prediction for the future of humanity, specifically, the
continuing evolution of intelligent machines such that they eventually gain human-
like or beyond intelligence, that humans may merge with our intelligent machine
inventions, and that software versions of humans could inhabit the internet, should
these predictions come true, they will surely raise the most significant philosophi-
cal, legal and policy issues that humanity has ever confronted, and would shake
the very foundation of what it means to be human. Since the predictions made by
Kurzweil, Moravec, and Brooks, could profoundly transform humanity, humanity
would be prudent to have a comprehensive debate about the desirability of these
potential outcomes.
But before discussing in greater detail the legal, policy, and technical issues that
may occur should the above predictions come true, let us consider for a moment
that the predictions are inaccurate, that human destiny is not to merge with
machines or that robots will not eventually develop consciousness and human-like,
or beyond, intelligence. Even so, due to efforts to fight disease, repair diseased
systems, and fix damaged anatomy, future humans will be equipped with more-
and-more non-biological components—whether to control diabetes or the func-
tioning of the kidneys; or to equip the human with better cochlear, retinal, or body
limb prosthesis. And the more biological parts which are replaced by mechanical
parts, the more the question will be raised by policy makers and the public as to
whether the resulting human-machine combination is in fact human. Furthermore,
with regard to artificially intelligent machines, even if machines never gain con-
sciousness and human levels of intelligence as some have predicted will happen
this century, advances in artificial intelligence will still continue to be made that
will result in machines that by any measure of intelligence, will be considered
“smart” even if only in a limited domain. These developments alone will raise sig-
nificant legal issues in many areas of law just as they already have in the field of
electronic commerce where intelligent software agents form contracts under the
direction of their human principals.
That we may merge with machines is of course a very controversial prediction,
but one point is clear, many humans from medical necessity alone are in fact
becoming more cyborg-like given the integration of technology within their body
to replace or enhance failed biological systems or repair anatomical structures. On
this point, according to physicist Sidney Perkowitz of Emory University, in the
U.S. alone, eight to ten percent of the population, that is, around 25 million people
are already artificially enhanced, or bionic.74 A case on point is the work of Dr.
Ross Davis and his team at the Neural Engineering Clinic in Maine. This group
has been using the technology of implanting chips in the brain to treat patients
whose central nervous systems have been damaged or affected by diseases such as

73See also, Martine, Rothblatt, 2014, Virtually Human: The Promise—and the Peril—of Digital

Immortality, St. Martin’s Press.

74Perkowitz, id., note 6.
Merging with Machines 29

multiple sclerosis. Further, a team at Emory University in Atlanta has implanted a

transmitting device into the brain of a stroke patient. After linking the motor neu-
rons to silicon, a test patient was able to move a cursor on a computer monitor
using thought alone. This finding means that a human was able to transmit thought
signals directly to a computer in order to operate it, albeit in a rudimentary way.
The Emory team is looking to gradually extend the range of controls carried out
by the patient. Some scientists argue that thought-to-thought communication is
just one feature of cybernetics that will become vitally important to humanity
should we face the possibility of being superseded by highly intelligent machines.
A later chapter summarizes recent developments in the use of thought for tele-
pathic communication and to control machines. However, before such events hap-
pen at all, humanity should engage in a debate focusing on three vital questions:
(1) whether there should be a limit placed on enhancing, augmenting, or replacing
human biological parts? (2) whether or not we should create machines that are
superior in intelligence to unenhanced people? and (3) whether or not we should
continue to evolve on a separate path from artificially intelligent machines?

Questions for Our Cyborg Future

The first critically important question for humanity to consider in the face of
rapid technological advances in the ability to enhance the human body and brain
is whether there should be a limit placed on enhancing, augmenting, or replacing
human biological parts? Referring to human enhancements, this question raises
a number of important issues under ethics, law, and public policy. For example,
would only the wealthy be able to afford enhancements, and if so, would we be
creating a society of superior cyborg-enhanced individuals, and a group of indi-
viduals that were too poor to afford enhancements? If cyborgs are equipped with
cognitive, auditory, visual, or motor prosthesis that “separate” them from non-
enhanced people, would they be afforded special protection under the law (recall
Steve Mann’s altercations presented above)? The law of body modifications and
body hacking is the topic of a chapter in this book, but it is worth briefly noting
here: part of the answer would depend on whether the human was enhanced out of
medical necessity or not.
If the human was enhanced due to a disability, many jurisdictions around the
world afford protection for such people in the workplace. For example, in the U.S.,
the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), provides protection for employees
with certain disabilities and requires employers to accommodate the disabilities,
when possible. Currently though, to be covered under the ADA, an individual
must be a qualified worker and must have a legally recognized disability to be
protected. An example of the types of disabilities covered include a physical or
mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity (such as the abil-
ity to walk, talk, see, hear, breathe, reason, work, or take care of oneself). Since
bionic humans are enhanced to repair or replace human anatomy or physiology,
30 1  The Technological Future

their disabilities would likely be covered by the ADA, but cyborgs may not receive
protection under the ADA if their enhancements are done for reasons other than
medical necessity such as to increase a human ability beyond normal.
The second vital issue for humanity to consider with regard to artificially intel-
ligent machines is whether or not we should create machines that are superior in
intelligence to unenhanced people? Of course computers are already “smarter”
than people in many domains, but by this question I refer to computers with
“strong artificial intelligence,” that is, consciousness, sentience, and the ability to
successfully perform any intellectual task a human can. On this note, Professor
Stephen Hawking, former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge
University expressed grave concern that a future danger to humanity was the pos-
sibility that intelligent machines would someday “take over the world.”75 Hawking
commented that computers were evolving so rapidly that they would eventually
outstrip the intelligence of humans and that computers with artificial intelligence
could therefore come to dominate the world. Hawking argued in favor of changes
in human DNA through genetic modification to keep ahead of advances in com-
puter technology. He also advocated direct links between brains and computers
stating that we must develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possi-
ble a direct connection between computers, so that artificial brains contribute to
human intelligence rather than opposing it.76 Research that provides support for
the proposition that it is possible for a human mind to directly communicate with a
computer and other networked minds is beginning to emerge (note that this is a
different issue than downloading data from a computer to a mind).
With regard to Hawking’s recommendation to genetically engineer humans in
order to keep pace with artificial intelligence, Ray Kurzweil has pointed out that
genetic engineering through the birth cycle would be extremely slow in compari-
son to the exponential rate at which computers are gaining in intelligence.
According to Kurzweil, by the time the first genetically engineered generation
grew up, the era of beyond-human-level machines would already be upon us. For
example, even though we are years away from genetically engineering a human, if
we start the clock at 2014, recalling Moore’s law, computer power doubles about
every 18 months, if humans become legally recognized adults at eighteen, by
2032, there would be several doublings of computer power. This would indeed
result in a machine with tremendous computational power to view, understand,
and think about the world, especially if we consider that the fastest supercomputer
available now operates at several petaflops77 (a petaflop is one thousand million
floating point operations per second).
On the issue of genetic modifications, Kurzweil further argues that even if we
were to apply genetic alterations to adult humans by introducing new genetic

75Rory Cellan, Stephen Hawking Warns Artificial Intelligence Could End Mankind, id., note 9.
76Id.
77China surpassing U.S. with 54.9 petaflop supercomputer, at: http://www.computerworld.com/s/

article/9239710/China_surpassing_U.S._with_54.9_petaflop_supercomputer.
Questions for Our Cyborg Future 31

information via gene therapy techniques, it still wouldn’t keep biological intelli-
gence in the lead. Genetic engineering (through either birth or adult gene therapy)
is inherently DNA-based and a DNA-based brain is always going to be extremely
slow in terms of the speed in which a signal is propagated down an axon and lim-
ited in capacity compared to the potential of an artificially intelligent machine. For
example, the speed of electronics is already 100 million times faster than our elec-
trochemical circuits (i.e., neuronal); and we have no quick downloading ports on
our biological neurotransmitter levels, to move large amounts of data quickly
between the human mind and a computer.78 We could bioengineer smarter
humans, but this approach will not begin to keep pace with the exponential pace of
artificially intelligent machines.
The third vital question for humanity to consider concerning our technological
future is whether or not we should continue to evolve on a separate path from arti-
ficially intelligent machines? The issue seems to be whether humanity should con-
tinue to evolve under the slow process of biological evolution (the current case),
evolve under the relatively faster process of DNA modifications, or consider merg-
ing with artificially intelligent machines and evolve at the speed of technology.
Evolution does not work quickly. It takes many generations for our genetic code to
adapt to changing environments and circumstances. Ted Driscoll of Clarement
Creek Ventures comments that what this means is that our twenty-first century
human genome is still basically the genome of a caveman.79 Our genome was
well-adapted to the environment of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, because that
environment lasted for hundreds of thousands of years. Unfortunately, the twenty-
first century world we live in bears little resemblance to the prehistoric world. In
contrast, most of the change in technology has occurred in the past few centuries,
and ongoing change is only accelerating.

The Reemergence of Luddites

Some people have asked whether humans will embrace changes to their basic
being and physical structure, or will they seek to remain the same (that is, techno-
logically unenhanced)? For reasons discussed throughout this book, a strong argu-
ment can be made that people will embrace technological and biological
enhancements to their body and even to their brain. But from a historical perspec-
tive, those that resist technology have come to be been termed “Luddites.”80
Where does this term come from? From legend comes the story of a

78Ray Kurzweil, 2003, The Human Machine Merger: Are we Headed for the Matrix? at:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-human-machine-merger-are-we-headed-for-the-matrix.
79Ted Driscoll, 2014, Are Humans Equipped for a Big Data World? at: http://recode.

net/2014/01/31/are-humans-equipped-for-a-big-data-world/.
80Steven Jones, Against Technology: From the Luddites to Neo-Luddism, Routledge Press.
32 1  The Technological Future

“feebleminded lad” by the name of Ned Ludd who broke two stocking frames at a
factory in Nottingham. Henceforth, when an offending factory owner found one of
his expensive pieces of machinery mysteriously broken, the damage was conveni-
ently attributed to Ned Ludd.81 However, the term also has a firm footing in his-
tory as well. In the early days of the industrial revolution, workers (or Luddites),
upset by wage reductions and the use of unapprenticed workmen, began to break
into factories at night to destroy the new machines that the employers were using.
In response to the Luddite movement, the British Parliament passed the Frame
Breaking Act in 1812 that led to people convicted of machine-breaking to be sen-
tenced to death. As a further precaution, the British government ordered 12,000
troops into the areas where the Luddites were active.
Viewing the acts of the Luddites in the early 1800’s through the eyes of history,
they have come to be viewed as counter-revolutionaries of the “Industrial
Revolution.”82 If we consider that in 1890 ninety percent of Americans worked in
agriculture, but by 1900 the figure was only 41 %, and by 2000, it was just two
percent; and if we consider advances in artificial intelligence, we need to wonder
if the same trend of job displacement will occur for professions requiring complex
cognitive skills. As a case in point, IBM’s supercomputer Watson, the language-
fluent computer, recently beat the best human champions at the TV game show of
Jeopardy. After matching wits with human game show whizzes, Watson has now
moved on to becoming an expert diagnostician. Watson’s ability to absorb and
analyze vast quantities of data is, IBM claims, better than that of many human
doctors. After mastering the same amount of knowledge as the average second-
year medical student, Watson was tasked to “read” peer-reviewed medical journals
relating to oncology; focusing on lung, prostate and breast cancers. According to
Ian Stedman, “Watson’s ingestion of more than 600,000 pieces of medical evi-
dence, more than two million pages from medical journals and the further ability
to search through up to 1.5 million patient records for further information gives it
a breadth of knowledge no human doctor can match.”83 If industrial machines per-
form many of the manual labor tasks that were once done by expert humans, and if
artificially intelligent machines perform cognitive tasks once performed by
humans, it is no wonder that people like Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec argue
for a merger of human with artificially intelligent machines; seemingly embracing
the idea, “If you can’t beat them, join them” (or merge with them!).
Currently, artificial intelligence and robotics are beginning to impact both blue-
and white-collar workers, with experts predicting that robots will displace more
human jobs than they create by 2025.84 By 2025, if robots and artificial intelli-

81See generally, Luddites, at: http://www.ascrs.org/sites/default/files/resources/Global%20view%20

of% 20EMRs.pdf.
82Id.
83Ian Steadman, IBM’s Watson is better at diagnosing cancer than human doctors, at: http://www.

wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-medical-doctor.
84Aaron Smith and Janna Anderson, 2014, AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs, at http://www.pe

winternet.org/2014/08/06/future-of-jobs/.
The Reemergence of Luddites 33

gence continue to advance at the same pace of the last few years, robots and artifi-
cial intelligence will no longer be constrained to repetitive tasks on a production
line. Will advanced artificial intelligence and robots make the world a better place
or not? Basically everyone agrees that robotics and artificial intelligence are going
to displace a lot of jobs over the next few years as the general-purpose robot
comes of age.85 Even though these early general-purpose bots won’t initially be as
fast or flexible as humans, they will be flexible enough that they can perform vari-
ous menial tasks 24/7—and cost just a few cents of electricity, rather than mini-
mum wage. On the other hand, robots may dominate the workplace so quickly that
our economic, education, and political systems may struggle to keep up.
Previously robots mostly replaced blue-collar workers, but this next wave will
increasingly replace skilled/professional white-collar workers.86 A lot of these
specialized workers may find themselves without a job, and without the means to
find a new one.
Returning to the Luddites, as artificially intelligent machines become more profi-
cient at cognitive tasks, will the predicted loss of jobs in many service sectors lead to
a new generation of humans expressing hostility toward smart machines? In fact, a
neo-Luddite movement has sprung up. The most extreme expression of this philoso-
phy was the bombing campaign of Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber,
who was sentenced to life imprisonment. His manifesto, which was eventually pub-
lished by the New York Times, said that the “Industrial Revolution and its conse-
quences have been a disaster for the human race”. One of the leading developers of
cyborg technology, Steve Mann is also tentative in his support of the cyborg move-
ment, expressing the view in Singularity 1 on 1 that “I am not saying more or less
technology—I am saying appropriate technology. Instead of technological excess—
we should have technology that is balanced with nature. Instead of replacing nature
with technology—we should balance it. Instead of replacing intelligence with artifi-
cial intelligence—we should use humanistic intelligence…”.87
The Luddites of the 1800s were opposed to new technology based primarily on
economic grounds—the technology was seen as being able to replace human skills
in the textile industry, skills that were necessary for people to secure a living and
support their families.88 In current times, people may be opposed to technology
for reasons other than basic economics; for example, they argue that to remain
human we must oppose the merging of humans with machines. But, proponents of
enhancement technology counter that there are many reasons why it may be desir-
able to augment or enhance humans—for example, they note that one out of every

85Martin Ford, 2015, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, Basic

Books.
86Id.
87Cyborg Luddite Steve Mann on Singularity 1 on 1: Technology That Masters Nature is Not

Sustainable, interviewed by “Socrates,” at: https://www.singularityweblog.com/cyborg-steve-mann/.

88The Industrial Revolution, at: http://www.historydoctor.net/Advanced%20Placement%20World%20

History/40.%20The_Industrial_revolution.htm.
34 1  The Technological Future

person sixty-five or older has Alzheimer’s disease, as do half of those over eighty-
five. In the U.S. alone, consumers and insurance companies spend over one hun-
dred billion dollars on the disease each year. How would human enhancement
technology help those with Alzheimer’s? For the millions of families with relatives
living with Alzheimer’s, keeping them safe is a major concern. In response to such
concerns, doctors can implant an FDA-approved microchip in an Alzheimer’s
patient’s arm, allowing critical medical details to be accessed instantly. The chip,
which is about the size of a grain of rice, contains a 16-digit identification number
which is scanned at a hospital. Once the number is placed in a database, it can pro-
vide crucial medical information. Another form of enhancement that may assist
those with Alzheimer’s comes in the form of a brain-computer interface. Brain-
computer interfaces (BCIs) provide alternative methods for communicating and
acting on the world, since messages or commands are conveyed from the brain to
an external device without using the normal output pathways of peripheral nerves
and muscles.89 Alzheimer’s disease patients in the most advanced stages, who
have lost the ability to communicate verbally, could benefit from a BCI that may
allow them to convey basic thoughts (e.g., “yes” and “no”) and emotions.
According to Ramez Naam, in More than Human: Embracing the Promise of
Biological Enhancement, in the U.S. more than eight million people had some
sort of cosmetic surgery in 2001; and in the U.S. alone there are 20,000 plastic
surgeons working to change the shape and appearance of a person’s body.90 The
Olympics and other sporting events is replete with stories of doping, where ath-
letes take performance enhancing drugs to compete and there are at least a quar-
ter million quadriplegics in the U.S. that could benefit from brain-computer
interfaces. In the U.S. there are also more than 34 million deaf or hearing
impaired people that could benefit from enhancements to their auditory system.
On this point, more than seventy thousand people worldwide have entered the
world of human enhancements with cochlear implants—a microphone with mul-
tiple electrodes that electrically stimulate the auditory nerve. So while some per-
centage of the population will always be opposed to new technology just as the
Luddites were in the 1800s, in the twenty-first century many people have already
enthusiastically embraced the need for human enhancements and artificially
intelligent machines.

89Liberati G, Dalboni da Rocha JL, van der Heiden L, Raffone A, Birbaumer N, Olivetti
Belardinelli M, and Sitaram R. Toward a brain-computer interface for Alzheimer’s disease
patients by combining classical conditioning and brain state classification, J. Alzheimers Dis.
2012;31 Suppl 3:S211–20.
90Ramez Naam, 2010, More than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement,

http://Lulu.com.
Enter the Horse 35

Enter the Horse

When discussing the law as it applies to cyborgs, and artificially intelligent

machines, there is a basic question to raise—are there any legal issues that are
unique to technologically enhanced humans, cyborgs, and artificially intelligent
machines? When talking about the law and cyberspace, Judge Easterbrook, of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, claimed that there was no specific
more a law of cyberspace than there was a law of the horse.91 In making this state-
ment, Judge Easterbrook recounted an anecdote involving a former Dean of the
University of Chicago law school who had expressed pride in the fact that the
University of Chicago did not offer a course in “The Law of the Horse”; while
there were, of course cases dealing with topics such as the sale of horses (contract
law) or with people kicked by horses (torts), there was no separate course on “The
Law of the Horse.”92 According to Judge Easterbrook the best way to learn the law
applicable to specialized endeavors, was to study general rules; only by putting the
law of the horse in the context of broader rules about commercial endeavors could
one really understand the law about horses.93 His point, of course, was that the
“law of cyberspace, cyborgs, and artificially intelligent machines,” is much like the
“law of the horse,” a specialized endeavor best understood with reference to famil-
iar general principles of contract, intellectual property, privacy, free speech and the
like, but which does not need, and does not deserve, its own separate category.94 In
response to Judge Easterbrook’s assertions, Larry Lessig, a Professor of Law at
Harvard, contemplated what a law of cyberspace might actually look like and what
lessons it might provide. The “Lessig view” was that cyberspace law might actu-
ally exist and say something important about time, place, and national boundaries
affected by cyberspace transactions.95 This book borrows from each approach-
while the law of virtual reality, cyborgs, and artificially intelligent systems, will
surely benefit from an analysis based on general established rules, each area will
move beyond current law quickly, thus, new law and policy will be needed to
account for the amazing future that awaits us; a future in which we merge with
artificially intelligent machines.

91Frank H. Easterbrook, 1996, Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse, University of Chicago
Legal Forum, 207.
92David G. Post, 1998, Cyberspace and the Law of the (Electronic) Horse, or Has Cyberspace

Law Come of Age? at: http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/horse.html.

93Frank H. Easterbrook, id., note 91.
94Id.
95Lawrence Lessig, 1999, The Law of the Horse What Cyberlaw Might Teach, 113 Harv. L. Rev.

501.
36 1  The Technological Future

Concluding Thoughts

There is a strong possibility that advances in human enhancement technologies

could offer humanity options that have been the subject of dreams for centuries.
Potentially, humans could be modified to live longer and healthier, be smarter and
stronger, and by some societal standard, more attractive. According to Jacob
Heller and Christine Peterson: “Enhancements could come in the form of extreme
intelligence and memory capacity, significantly heightened sense of awareness,
and astonishing athletic capability.”96 However, experts have warned that while
human enhancements could give rise to numerous benefits, these advances may
come at a significant cost to humanity- not the least of which is that technical
enhancements to humans could change the essence of what it means to be human.
Perhaps humanity would be prudent to heed the warning of prominent computer
scientist and cofounder of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy, who in an essay written in
2000, “Why the future doesn’t need us,” argued that human beings would likely
guarantee their own extinction by developing the technologies favored by advo-
cates of enhancement technology.97 This comment related to the use of nanotech-
nology to redesign the environment; but if there is the slightest chance that any
enhancement technology could lead to such a bleak outcome, the public should
demand strong safeguards, even a moratorium on the use of potentially dangerous
enhancement technologies.
A point I want to emphasize is that one way or the other, more people in the
future will be enhanced with technology, whether due to medical necessity or by
choice. Already, biological and technical enhancements exist today in many forms
such as steroids, Ritalin, Prozac, plastic surgery, mechanical replacements for
body parts, not to mention the “game changing” ability to implant chips into the
brain. While to date, the practice of human enhancement has focused mainly on
restoration, it is not improbable that this technology will soon extend to the
healthy individual. However, if only those who can afford it opt for human
enhancement, the appalling inequalities in our society that exist today will become
even greater and social mobility will decrease farther.98 If the wealthy can increase
their intelligence and become more physically able, they will likely increase their
political and earning power; in this case, the rich will become richer and more
powerful. In light of this possibility, should the government guarantee a baseline
set of characteristics for all people?
Will legislators act before decisions by scientists and corporations have been
made that will be difficult to roll back or that could have deleterious effects on

96Jacob Heller and Christine Peterson, Human Enhancement and Nanotechnology, Foresight

Institute, at: https://www.foresight.org/policy/brief2.html.

97Bill Joy, 2000, Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, Wired Magazine, 8.04.
98Francis Fukuyama, id., note 29.
Concluding Thoughts 37

humanity? I can only offer a weak response, “possibly.” But how should we
approach the problem of safeguarding humanity, or at least making sure the future
is one of our choosing? Enter the courts, the media, and the arena of public opin-
ion. In a recent Supreme Court case, all nine justices agreed that placing a GPS
tracking device on a car without a warrant was an unlawful search and seizure and
violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Justice Alito observed
that “in circumstances involving dramatic technological change, the best solution
to privacy concerns may be legislative.”99 But since there was no specific GPS
tracking device law for guidance (i.e., no Law of the Horse), Justice Alito and his
colleagues looked to Fourth Amendment precedent to analyse warrantless use of
GPS technology and to create a privacy solution.100 Justice Alito is not alone in
thinking that new legislation is needed to deal with rapid technological change. In
the U.S. Congress, bills have been introduced to regulate online tracking, to create
rules for the collection of geolocation data, to protect children’s privacy and to
regulate the collection and use of personal data generally. Further, in the U.S.,
some states have enacted statutes which regulate the degree to which people can
be implanted with microchips. In my view, far-reaching legislation by mid-to-late
century will be necessary to establish and protect the rights of human’s vis-à-vis
cyborgs and artificially intelligent machines. And to determining the right of
cyborgs with beyond-human abilities, and finally to determine the rights of artifi-
cially intelligent machines, with respect to unenhanced humans and to each other.
As we progress into the twenty-first century, I believe that from a human rights
perspective humanity will need to develop a Robot and Cyborg Ethics Charter;
essentially a set of rules intended to govern the interaction between humans,
cyborgs, and artificially intelligent machines. A working version of such a code for
robotics is being developed by a group of robotics engineers in South Korea,101
which I might add represents an expansion of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.
The Korean charter recognizes that robots of the future may require legal protec-
tion from abusive humans, just as animals sometimes need legal protection from
their owners. While some experts welcome the introduction of the Robot Ethics
Charter and similar proposals, noting that wanton human abuse of intelligent
machines could be cause for moral outrage we also need to be concerned that
humans could be abused by our intelligent creations (and thus the Terminator
movie series). This and other important issues of law, technology, and policy for
the future of humans and our intelligent creations, is the subject of this book.

99U.S. v. Jones, 132 S.Ct 945, 565 U.S.__2012.

100Id.
101South Korean Robot Ethics Charter, at: https://akikok012um1.wordpress.com/south-korean-
robot-ethics-charter-2012/.
Chapter 2
The Coming Singularity

If humans merge with machines this century, the coming Singularity will have a
lot to say about that. What is the Singularity? The Singularity is that point in or
development time when artificially intelligent machines equal or surpass humans
in intelligence. The first use of the term “Singularity” was by the mathematician
Jon von Neuman who in 1958 spoke of an ever accelerating progress of technol-
ogy which would lead to changes in the mode of human life, thus giving the
appearance that humanity was approaching some essential Singularity, beyond
which human affairs, could not continue.1 Twenty-five years later, science fiction
writer Vernor Vinge coined the phrase “technological Singularity,” stating that “We
will soon create intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human
history will have reached a kind of Singularity, an intellectual transition as impen-
etrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will
pass far beyond our understanding.”2 From a different perspective, Tim Wu, pro-
fessor of law at Columbia University and author of “The Master Switch,”
observed, “… make no mistake: we are now different creatures than we once were,
evolving technologically rather than biologically, in directions we must hope are
for the best.”3 While Tim’s comment reflects the public’s current ambivalence
about our cyborg future; I advocate for a different approach, one that involves the
public educating themselves on the issues surrounding artificial intelligence and
“cyborg technology,” and engaging in a rigorous debate about the future of
humanity.

1Technological Singularity, discussing the ideas Jon von Neuman’s and other contributors to the

Singularity discussion, available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity.

2Vernon Vinge 1993 essay on the Singularity, available at: http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-

sing.html.
3Tom Wu, If a Time Traveller Saw a Smartphone, 2014, The New Yorker, at: http://www.newyor

ker.com/tech/elements/if-a-time-traveller-saw-a-smartphone; Tim Wu, 2011, The Master Switch:

The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Vintage Press.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 39

W. Barfield, Cyber-Humans, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25050-2_2
40 2  The Coming Singularity

Throughout this book, one of the key points I make is that we humans may be
experiencing the last generation(s) of evolving predominately under the laws of
biology. Why? Because as discussed in Kurzweil’s “The Singularity is Near: When
Humans Transcend Biology,”4 an analysis of the history of technology shows that
technological change is exponential. Kurzweil argues that exponential growth is
contrary to the “intuitive linear” view most people have of societal progress in
which we notice new technology entering our life, but are unaware of where we
are in the curve representing the rate of change of technological advancements.
According to Kurzweil, this means that we won’t experience 100 years of progress
in the twenty-first century—it will be more like 20 millennium of progress.5 Thus,
within a few decades, some argue that machine intelligence will surpass human
intelligence, leading to the Singularity. The implications of which will include the
merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based
humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand beyond our current
imagination.6
The term “Singularity” has been applied to many different types of develop-
ments, but for this book the most common conceptualization of “the Singularity”
is the idea of smarter-than-human artificial intelligence, the essence of which
is software, machines, or robots that learn, reason, select their own goals, and
evolve on their own. The concept for the Singularity goes something like this:
many prominent researchers in artificial intelligence, robotics, and neuroscience
are convinced that technology will eventually reach and then surpass humans in
intelligence creating on the way, a world filled with ‘smart’ machines. Actually
it’s already happening. Machines that perform surgery, design life-saving drugs,
write news articles, and work in a range of industries; in other words, do what we
humans do with our mind and bodies, already exist. But once they surpass us in
general intelligence, then what? Will they be content to continue performing the
tasks asked of them by their human masters, or will they branch out from humans
in terms of their goals and aspirations?

Questions of Law and Policy

If the Singularity is to occur in the near future; there are critically important ques-
tions that society must address: should we merge with them (artificially intelli-
gent machines), be surpassed by them, co-exist with them, enslave them, or risk
being enslaved by them? And, as some have argued, for the survivability of the
human race, should we decide to stop the Singularity before it has a chance to

4Ray Kurzweil, 2006, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Penguin

Books.
5Id.
6Id.
Questions of Law and Policy 41

happen; or will it even be possible to stop the Singularity from occurring? While it
may be comforting to avoid thinking about or answering these difficult questions,
the never-ending march of technology towards the Singularity leaves us with no
choice, we either get involved with determining the future of our species, or we
passively observe as the future envelops us.
Considering the above possibilities, many forward thinkers predict that in the
coming decades, we will merge with our silicon inventions. On the machine side,
robotics expert Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec envision a time when tomorrow’s
machines will become more human-like, that is, appear in the form of an android
and having super intelligence. On this point Berkeley physicist Max Tegmark writ-
ing in “Our Mathematical Universe,” observed that the development of supercom-
puters with human or beyond levels of intelligence is likely, given that our brains
are ultimately made of particles observing the laws of physics, and there’s no
physical law precluding particles from being arranged in ways that can perform
even-more-advanced computations.7 On the human side, 15 years ago in a book I
co-edited on wearable computers I discussed human enhancement technology and
the idea that humans would eventually merge with machines (the second edition is
now available).8 The merging of humans with machines could benefit humans in a
number of ways: for example, by swapping our biology for non-biological parts
we could gain the ability to automatically repair or replace prosthesis, including
neuroprosthesis, when damaged or outdated. And instead of suffering from the
effects of aging, we could age with more dignity, and possibly be able to turn the
aging clock back. Due to the expected benefits, some commentators argue that the
necessity for replacing and repairing human biology will enable society to view
the merger of humans and intelligent machines as simply the next natural phase of
evolution. Though the idea may seem extreme, especially for those unaware of the
exponential growth of technology, many experts in robotics and computer science
believe this is a likely scenario for our future. However, if we are to merge with
machines we may have only a limited widow of opportunity to do that; as once
machines surpass us in intelligence, they may decide to continue evolving in ways
incompatible with our goals and aspirations. They may conclude, why merge with
a less intelligent species other than to gain access to their mobility, manual dexter-
ity, or possibly their human emotions.
Technological advances in the first half of the twenty-first century in a wide
range of fields such as robotics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, sensors, nano-
technology, prosthetics, and material science, will lay the foundation for the
Singularity to occur. According to those who argue that the Singularity is only a
few decades away, beyond-human intelligence will result in self-directed or auton-
omous computers who will claim that they are sentient, and whose intelligence

7Max Tegmark, 2015, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality,
Vintage Books.
8Woodrow Barfield (editor), 2015, Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented

Reality, Second Edition, CRC Press.

42 2  The Coming Singularity

and capabilities will increase exponentially rather than incrementally. Futurist Ray
Kurzweil, a major voice arguing that the Singularity is close, puts the date of the
Singularity at around 2045.9 By then he estimates that the exponential increases in
computing power resulting from Moore’s law, along with advances in artificial
intelligence will be sufficiently powerful enough to create beyond-human artifi-
cially intelligent machines. In this new world, Kurzweil believes there will be no
clear distinction between human and machine or real reality and virtual reality. In
practical terms, his prediction (with advances in nanotechnology) could mean the
end of human aging and illness, pollution, world hunger and poverty. However,
while the Singularity may be inevitable, which is a view I hold, there is serious
debate as to when it will happen or even in the opinion of some researchers, if it
will happen at all. For example, in 2011, one of Microsoft’s founders, Paul Allen
co-authored an article in the MIT Technology Review in which he took a more cau-
tionary view of the coming Singularity than Kurzweil, arguing that while it is
likely to occur, the timeframe will be the distant future.10
A strong voice against the idea that the Singularity will occur is Duke neurosci-
entist Miguel Nicolelis whose work on brain-computer interfaces is fascinating,
but paradoxically in my view, is leading to a future human-machine merger.11
Nicolelis’ main argument is that “the brain is not computable and therefore no
engineering can reproduce it.”12 Another problem he observes is that the brain is
‘copy-write’ protected by its own evolutionary history. However, describing his
new Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind (PRTM), Ray Kurzweil voiced an opin-
ion that couldn’t be more different from Nicolelis— “We now have enough evi-
dence to support a particular theory, a uniform theory about how the neocortex
works”.13 According to Kurzweil, the neocortex is basically comprised of 300 mil-
lion pattern recognizers which can wire themselves in hierarchies in relation to
other pattern recognizers. The world is inherently hierarchical and the neocortex
allows us to understand it in that hierarchical fashion. Regardless of whether or not
the Singularity occurs, it’s never too early for the public to consider the transform-
ative effect the Singularity would have on humanity should it happen, and whether
to embrace it or oppose it.
Considering that today’s semiconductor manufacturers are adding more speed
and memory into computers each year, leads some commentators to conclude that
eventually our smart silicon creations will become efficient enough to build their
own improved hardware and software models, increasing their intelligence and
capabilities with each succeeding generation. Thinking about policy and law, if

9Kurzweil,id., note 4.
10PaulG. Allen and Mark Greaves, 2011, The Singularity Isn’t Near, MIT Technology Review.
11Miguel Nicolelis, 2013, The Brain is Not Computable, MIT Technology Review.
12Id.
13Ray Kurzweil, 2013, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, Penguin

Books.
Questions of Law and Policy 43

a machine with artificial intelligence could generate its own code, heuristics, and
algorithms, would the artificial intelligence or human (manufacturer, owner, 3rd
party) be responsible for its actions? Current legal paradigms are poorly equipped
to answer this question, yet it is a critical one to address. The main point to make
is this: intelligent and autonomous machines engaging in “human activities,” will
challenge current legal paradigms and will result in a host of issues. For exam-
ple, will a contract negotiated by an artificially intelligent machine be considered
valid, who will be considered the contracting parties, and who will be responsible
for a breach of contract? The field of electronic commerce is grappling with just
this issue as intelligent software agents with increasing intelligence and autonomy
roam the internet and engage in contract negotiations. To take this point one step
further every enforceable contract has an offer and acceptance, consideration,
and an intention to create legal obligations. At present, an artificially intelligent
machine is not viewed as having the ability to form an intention on its own voli-
tion and thus for this and other reasons cannot contract on its own behalf.
What are some “legal relationships” formed between humans and machines?
Considering humans and artificially intelligent machines, there is established law
that applies to situations where one party allows another to negotiate on its behalf-
the law of agency. Generally, the law of agency is an area of commercial law deal-
ing with a set of legal (typically fiduciary) relationships that involve a person or
software entity, called the agent, that is authorized to act on behalf of another,
called the principal, to create legal relations with a third party. The agent owes the
principal a number of duties such as: a duty to undertake the task or tasks specified
by the terms of the agency (that is, the agent must not do things that he has not
been authorized by the principal to do); a duty to discharge his duties with care
and due diligence; and a duty to avoid conflict of interest between the interests of
the principal and his own (that is, the agent cannot engage in conduct where s/he
stands to gain a benefit for himself to the detriment of the principal).14 If it is sub-
sequently found that the alleged agent was acting without necessary authority, the
agent will generally be held liable. Since software agents can bind the principle in
contract, it seems likely that future artificially intelligent machines will also be
able to serve as agents and as a consequence, be subject to agency law.15
In the field of criminal law, we have created a legal system in which the vic-
tim is human, but what if the “victim” is an artificially intelligent machine claim-
ing that it has rights? For example, what if a software virus is uploaded onto
the operating system of an artificially intelligent machine? What rights does the
machine have to protect the integrity of its software, the machine’s equivalent of
the humans prefrontal cortex or limbic system? One outcome is entirely likely,
the cycle of improvement of technology will continue to evolve into what many
have described as an intelligence explosion. Artificially intelligent machines could

14RoderickMunday, 2013, Agency: Law and Principles, Oxford University Press.

15See Generally, Ronald Mann and Jane Winn, 2004, Electronic Commerce, Aspen Law and
Business.
44 2  The Coming Singularity

Fig. 2.1  X-ray image of
implanted technology for
hearing. (Image courtesy of
Michael Chorost)

then keep on developing until they far surpass human levels of intelligence. The
Singularity will also speed other technology breakthroughs; in fact, some have
argued that the future may advance so quickly, that at some point, our biologi-
cal brains, if not enhanced, will no longer be able to understand the direction of
machine evolution (Fig. 2.1).
As a consequence, a number of scientists and philosophers worry that artificial
intelligence may someday make humanity superfluous; however, a positive post-
Singularity world could include affordable healthcare (but healthcare itself could
be vastly different), providing most world citizens with indefinite lifespans, and a
global economy strong enough to erase today’s gap between the rich and poor.
And here’s what stimulates the imagination of those who believe that the
Singularity is near; the possibility to have lived long enough to benefit from the
amazing technologies that the Singularity will usher in. Ray Kurzweil in his book
Fantastic Voyage, Live Long Enough to Live Forever, agrees saying that advances
in stem cells, genetics, and nanomedicine expected during the next couple of dec-
ades, could stave off deadly diseases; bringing many of us into this high-tech
world of tomorrow; that is, if we live long enough to become cyborgs and merge
with machines.16 Whatever we call those who move beyond traditional notions of
human-ness, their decision to go posthuman will have legal, moral, philosophical,
social, and political implications.

Towards Machine Sentience

Researchers, science fiction authors, and the media who write about the
Singularity, often focus on artificial intelligence as the key technology. On the
topic of machine intelligence, Curtis Karnow, Judge on the California Superior

16Ray Kurzweil, 2005, Fantastic Voyage, Live Long Enough to Live Forever, Plume Books.
Towards Machine Sentience 45

Court, and author of “Future Codes: Essays in Advanced Computer Technology

and Law,” frames intelligence in terms of machine autonomy; autonomy being the
ability of the machine to program itself to solve problems independent of a
human.17 The more the machine can make real time decisions in unpredictable
environments, the greater the machine intelligence. I use a broader definition of
intelligence; when I use the term, I mean to describe artificially intelligent
machines which have the capability to perform cognitive, perceptual, and motor
tasks at human levels of skill. Thus, a computer that could accurately diagnose dis-
ease would be considered intelligent in that domain, as would a computer that
could write original short stories, compose music, or manage a hedge fund. A
numerically controlled industrial robot, repetitiously moving in predetermined
positions, would obviously be considered far less intelligent.
With the exception of the industrial robot, notice that the examples I just men-
tioned are very “cognitive-oriented;” but other areas of human performance also
represent clear examples of intelligent behavior by computing machines. For
example, new generations of robots can keep their balance as they navigate dif-
ficult terrain or walk up stairs. And the senses of our intelligent inventions are
getting better and smarter; including automobiles equipped with algorithms, com-
puter vision, GPS, and limited forms of artificial intelligence. But impressive as
the recent gains in artificial intelligence have been, in my view, the discussion of
intelligence and the Singularity misses an important point. Even though “intelli-
gence” is used as the key factor in discussions of the coming Singularity, I think
the more important issue for humanity to consider, is that of “sentience,” that
point in time or development when artificially intelligent machine claims to be
conscious and alive. When that happens, and I believe it will by the end of this
century, it will get interesting. I for one would have no problem pulling the plug
on a machine smarter than me, but clearly not conscious; whereas, I would have
difficulty pulling the plug on a machine that convinces me it is conscious and not
a threat to humanity. At this basic level, this question of ethics boils down to the
debate we humans engage in about the death penalty.
There are numerous techniques being explored to create artificial intelligence,
and eventually a sentient mind, raising important questions of law and policy. One
of the early pioneers in the field of genetic algorithms, University of Michigan’s
John Holland, has used principles of biological evolution, to show that computers
could “evolve” their programming to solve complex problems in ways that even
their creators did not fully understand.18 According to Judge Karnow, lacking the
status of legal entities, once computers solve problems in ways not anticipated by
the programmer, many areas of current law lack the appropriate legal tests to
account for their actions. This is not only an issue of law, but of public policy, as

17CurtisKarnow, 1997, Future Codes: Essays in Advanced Computer Technology and Law,
Artech House Publishers.
18John Holland, 1992, Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems: An Introductory Analysis

with Applications to Biology, Control, and Artificial Intelligence, A Bradford Book.

46 2  The Coming Singularity

the relationship between humans and our intelligent inventions should be dis-
cussed in a free and open debate by an informed public. Professor Holland con-
cludes that for machine sentience to occur, in the final analysis, hardware is just a
way of executing programs, for sentience it’s the software and algorithms that
count. This point was also made by Professor Max Tegmark,19 who commented
that our first ultra-intelligent machine once invented will be severely limited by its
software, but that once the machine can rewrite it its own software, then this
evolving machine could soar above the intelligence of humans in a matter of
hours. I couldn’t agree more, for artificially intelligent machines to reach the
Singularity, and to become sentient, significant advances will have to be made in
our understanding of the human brains capacity to compute, and this knowledge
will need to be embedded into algorithms and heuristics, that are etched on chips
and written as software for thinking machines.
Currently, thousands of researchers around the world are working on just this
goal, and in the last 10 years more has been learned about how the brain processes
information and makes sense of the world than in the preceding history of neuro-
science. Even so, it is always pertinent to point out the opposing view. For exam-
ple, Duke University neuroscientist, Miguel Nicholas,20 a pioneer in
brain-computer interfaces, has argued that human thought will never emerge from
silicon. When I consider the work being done in artificial intelligence, robotics,
and neuroscience, I can’t help but think that the work by Nicholas to create brain-
computer interfaces, is not only innovative but another piece in the puzzle to create
a post-human future in which humans merge with machines. Writing with com-
puter scientist Mark Greaves, Paul Allen21 cofounder of Microsoft, observed that
“The amazing intricacy of human cognition should serve as a caution to those who
claim the Singularity is close.”22 Allen also commented that “Without having a
scientifically deep understanding of cognition, we can’t create the software that
could spark the Singularity.”23 One of the most ardent opponents of the idea that a
computer can reach sentience is physicist Roger Penrose. In “The Emperor’s New
Mind” Penrose argued against the idea that intelligence or consciousness could
emerge in a machine based on a sufficient number of algorithms.24 Penrose
observed that there are aspects of intelligence and consciousness that are intrinsi-
cally non-algorithmic. When taking Penrose’s criticism into account, we should
note that the critique was written in the 1980s (about 20 doublings in computing
power ago); and these days we now believe that there are other avenues to artificial

19Max Tegmark, id., note 7.

20Miguel Nicholas, id., at note 11.
21Paul Allen, id., note 10.
22Paul Allen, id., note 10.
23Paul Allen, id., note 10.
24Roger Penrose, 2002, The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws

of Physics, Oxford Paperbacks.

Towards Machine Sentience 47

intelligence than traditional algorithmic programming. When Penrose wrote his

criticism, little was then known about the power of neural networks, or behavior-
based robotics with the ability to learn by observation and trial-and-error and no
microchips were being designed to mimic how the brain processes information.
Whether these tools and one’s to be developed will be sufficient to reach the
Singularity, stay tuned, we will likely find out in the next few decades.
In my view, unlocking the mysteries of the human brain is a necessary require-
ment for the Singularity to occur and for machines to become sentient. A preview
of what may be possible in modeling and replicating the brain is visible in the
sequencing of the human genome. In “How to Create a Mind,” Kurzweil notes that
every year since the human genome project began in 2001, the amount of genetic
data sequenced has doubled; he expects similar progress to occur in neuroscience
and artificial intelligence.25 To jump-start progress in brain science, the European
Union, the U.S., and other countries are funding major initiatives to make this hap-
pen. Within the European Union, Henry Markram and others at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology, is using the power of supercomputers to analyze the prin-
ciples behind the brain’s processing. The approach is that, if we understand the
architecture of thinking, we can build a system that emulates it. Beyond that,
Markram’s neuroscience project aims at “reconstructing the brain piece by piece
and building a virtual brain in a super computer,” making possible artificial intelli-
gence systems that can bootstrap their way to ever-greater powers of thinking and
planning.26 Similarly, in the U.S., the Brain Research Through Advancing
Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative, is a program whose goal is to likewise
accelerate our understanding of the human brain. By accelerating the development
and application of innovative technologies, researchers will be able to produce a
dynamic picture of the brain that will show how individual cells and complex neu-
ral circuits interact in both time and space.27 This picture will fill major gaps in
our current knowledge of neuroscience and provide unprecedented opportunities
for exploring how the brain enables the human body to record, process, utilize,
store, and retrieve vast quantities of information, all at the speed of thought.28 The
findings of this research will be extremely useful for developing artificial intelli-
gence that emulates how the human brain performs cognition. Clearly, such
research will set the stage for a future human-machine merger.
To create machines that can think, researchers are trying to build a computer
that has some—and preferably all—of three characteristics that brains have and
current computers do not. These are: low power consumption (human brains use

25Ray Kurzweil, id., notes 13, 16.

26The Human Brain Project, reconstructing the brain piece by piece and building a virtual
brain in a supercomputer, at: http://aminotes.tumblr.com/post/13213154066/the-human-brain-
project-reconstructing-the-brain.
27Brain Research through Advancing Innovative NeurotechnologiesSM (BRAIN), at: http://

braininitiative.nih.gov/.
28Id.
48 2  The Coming Singularity

about 20 W, whereas the super computers used to try to simulate them need mega-
watts); fault tolerance (losing just one transistor can wreak havoc on a micropro-
cessor, but brains are plastic and lose neurons all the time); and a lack of need to
be programmed (brains learn and change spontaneously as they interact with the
world, instead of following the fixed paths and branches of a predetermined algo-
rithm).29 One technology to meet these objectives is the use of neuromorphic
chips that actually require no lines of programming code to function. Instead,
researchers report that the chip learns in the way “real brains” do. From a com-
puter architecture perspective, an important property of a real brain is that it oper-
ates like a small-world network. Each neuron within such networks can have
thousands of synaptic connections with other neurons. This means that, even
though a human brain contains about 85–100 billion neurons, each is within two
or three connections of all the others via myriad potential routes. In both natural
brains and many attempts to make artificial ones, memory formation involves
strengthening some of these synaptic connections and pruning others. It is this
observation that allows the neuromorphic chips to process information without
having to rely on a conventional computer program.
The more we learn about the architecture of the brain, the closer we are to
building a computer to emulate it. For example, as Kurzweil observes the neocor-
tex, where most neurons reside and which accounts for three-quarters of the
brain’s volume, is made up of lots of columns, each of which contains about
70,000 neurons.30 The neuromorphic chips being built to emulate the brain, are
equivalents of cortical columns, connecting them up to produce a computer that is,
in this particular at least, truly brain like. There remains, of course, the question of
where neuromorphic computing might lead. At the moment, it is primitive. But if
the technique succeeds, it may allow the construction of machines as intelligent
as—or even more intelligent than—human beings.31 Human beings like to think of
their brains as more complex than those of lesser beings—and they are. The main
difference between a human brain and that of an ape or monkey is of organization
and wiring.32 It really might, therefore, simply be a question of linking enough
appropriate components up and letting them organize themselves to create a con-
scious machine. And if that works perhaps, as Marvin Minsky, a cofounder of the
field of artificial intelligence put it, “they” will keep humanity as pets.33

29Neuromorphic Computing, The Machine of a New Soul, 2013, The Economist. Online pdf file.
30Ray Kurzweil, id., notes 13, 16.
31Neuromorphic computing: The machine of a new soul; Computers will help people to under-

stand brains better. And understanding brains will help people to build better computers, at: http
://bambooinnovator.com/2013/08/02/neuromorphic-computing-the-machine-of-a-new-soul-com-
puters-will-help-people-to-understand-brains-better-and-understanding-brains-will-help-people-
to-build-better-computers/.
32Id.
33Can Machines Think, some interesting discussions on this topic by AI pioneer, Marvin Minsky,

available at: http://psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/ai/think.html.

Towards Machine Sentience 49

Industry is also heavily involved in developing artificial intelligence. For exam-

ple, Google has been on a spending spree acquiring companies developing
machine-learning and robotics, including Boston Dynamics, a firm that produces
life-like military robots; smart thermostat maker Nest Labs; Bot and Dolly; Meka
Robotics, Holomni; Redwood Robotics; Schaft; and another AI startup,
DNNresearch. Further, Google recently purchased DeepMind, a company on the
cutting edge of artificial intelligence research. The “Deep” in DeepMind refers to
techniques which allow computers to learn patterns from different forms of data
and images without being specifically programmed to do so.34 Taking inspiration
from the way neurons work in the human brain, “deep learning” uses layers of
algorithms that successively recognize increasingly complex features, going from,
say, edges to circles to a chair in an image. Such a technique seems well suited to
the current generation of supercomputers that can perform trillions of operations
per second.

Telepathy, Brain Nets, and Cyborgs

Traditional law and public policy was founded on a distinction between human
beings and machines (as well as animals), but nowadays technology is beginning
to blur this distinction and cyborgs, which are the fusion of humans and machines,
need to be included in discussions of who deserves legal rights. Later this century,
the issue of determining who should receive rights, will again be relevant (and will
need to be revisited) when artificially intelligent machines argue they are alive.
While not currently considered a cyborg in legal jurisdictions (what would the par-
ticular rights associated with a cyborg be?), the experiences of Steve Mann, a per-
son who has been wearing computers for decades, is illustrative of how society
and the law might deal with the accelerating trend of human-machine evolution.
Steve’s personal experience as a cyborg wearing head-mounted display technology
to view and mediate the world, has resulted in disputes with government agencies
and corporations. For example, as noted in Chap. 1, before boarding a Toronto-
bound plane at St. John’s International Airport in Newfoundland, Steve’s “cyborg”
appearance garnered scrutiny and he was searched and reportedly injured by secu-
rity personnel.35 Another self-reported cyborg, Neil Harbisson, who has an
implanted chip interfacing with a head-mounted sensor, has also experienced diffi-
culty at airport security. But Neil travels with his passport, which includes his pic-
ture with the head-worn technology. On the one hand, security is an important
issue at airports especially post 9–11, but what about the rights of a person

34Thomas Halleck, 2014, What Is DeepMind? The Artificial Intelligence Firm Bought By

Google, at: http://www.ibtimes.com/what-deepmind-artificial-intelligence-firm-bought-google-

1549126.
35Lisa Guernsey, At Airport Gate, a Cyborg Unplugged, NY Times, available at: http://www.nyti

mes.com/2002/03/14/technology/at-airport-gate-a-cyborg-unplugged.html.
50 2  The Coming Singularity

wearing computing technology that serves a valid and critical function, and can’t
be easily removed from their body? From Steve’s perspective, the question of how
a traveler will fare once wearable computing devices are fixtures on their body,
leads him to postulate, ‘‘We have to make sure we don’t become a police state
where travel becomes impossible for certain individuals.’’36 Steve has a valid
point, the right to travel without restrictions is a fundamental right under most
constitutions; therefore, we must create policy that balances the need for security
against the rights of cyborgs, and in the future artificially intelligent machines that
are sentient, to travel as freely as any natural person.
This area of “cyborgization” is not without scrutiny from the government. In an
attempt to address the issue of people equipped with prosthesis going through air-
port security, the U.S. TSA has developed some guidelines to accommodate trave-
lers with medical devices and disabilities. For example, such travelers have the
option to be screened without removing their prosthetic, but in this case they must
inform the TSA officer that they have a prosthetic device before screening begins.
And rather than verbally informing the TSA officer of their prosthetic, they have
the option of downloading a notification card from the TSA website which can
be shown to the agent. A person with a prosthetic can also be screened by a metal
detector, can be patdown, or examined by imaging technology while still wearing
the prosthetic device. But they also have the option to remove their prosthetic and
have the device X-ray screened. However, whatever the procedure the cyborg uses,
their prosthetic will still receive additional screening, the officer will request to see
the prosthetic, and will test the prosthetic for explosive residue with the appropri-
ate scanner. It seems clear that the more the prosthetic is actually embedded into
the body, the more difficult, if not impossible, it will be for airport security to scan
the device, for the device to be removed, and for cyborgs to travel freely using
commercial airplanes without restrictions.
Like Steve, other cyborgs are gradually working their way into our lives and
leading humanity toward the Singularity. Consider Neil Harbisson37 discussed
above, who was born color-blind and now wears an electronic eye that renders
color as sound; how will airport security scan this device? Then there’s Michael
Chorost, author of “Rebuilt: How Becoming a Computer Made Me More Human.”
Michael was born with impaired hearing and became completely deaf in 2001; he
now has a computer implanted in his head which allows him to hear again. As a
cyborg, his experience with the world, is dependent on the CPU speed of his
implanted computer; which unlike the human brain, can be updated.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and likewise, accidents create cyborgs.
After crashing on a motorcycle, Jerry Jalava38 lost a finger, and being tech savy, he

36Id.
37Neil Harbisson, The Man Who Hears Colour, BBC News, at: http://www.bbc.com/news/
technology-29992577.
38Justin Yu, USB Prosthetic Finger Gives New Meaning to Thumbdrives, available at:

http://www.cnet.com/news/usb-prosthetic-finger-gives-new-meaning-to-thumbdrives/.
Telepathy, Brain Nets, and Cyborgs 51

Fig. 2.2  The Eyeborg Project began when one-eyed filmmaker, Rob Spence decided he wanted
a prosthetic eye with a video camera in it. The device contains a miniature camera and micro RF
transmitter that can send out what Rob’s eyecam sees to a receiver and beyond. (Image Courtesy
of Rob Spence)

embedded a 2 GB USB drive in the tip of his prosthetic finger, essentially convert-
ing his finger into a hard drive. At this time, the USB drive isn’t permanently fused
to his finger, instead, it’s inside a rubber tip that fits onto the nub of his prosthetic
finger. Eventually, however, he’s hoping to upgrade it to a more truly bionic con-
nection. And then there’s Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence, whose loss of vision
was the determining factor for converting him into a cyborg (Fig. 2.2). After a
shooting accident left him partially blind, he decided to create his own electronic
eye, and he now calls himself an Eyeborg.39 Not only can he record everything he
sees just by looking around, but the system could allow another person to access
his video feed and view the world through his right eye. Says Spence, “Unlike you
humans, I can continue to upgrade,” “Yes, I’m a cyborg.”40
One of the most significant developments in technology that is leading the way
towards humans merging with artificially intelligent machines is the progress
being made in brain-computer interfaces. In fact, a direct interface between the
brain and the Internet has been successfully tested in laboratory experiments and
for people who suffer from debilitating neurological disease. Research in brain-
computer interfaces is interesting from another point-of-view, it may lead to direct
mind-to-mind communication. This brings up the possibility of telepathy, a tech-
nology which would allow brain-to-brain communication and brain-to-AI commu-
nication. Seminal work on brain-to-brain interfaces, has been done by researchers
at Duke University Medical Center and Kevin Warwick at the University of
Reading in the UK. But before moving on to their studies, let’s discuss an actual
court case. In 1993, Teri Smith Tyler41 filed a federal lawsuit against, among

39Eyeborg Project, at: http://eyeborgproject.com/.

40Tom Hornyak, 2010, Eyeborg: Man Replaces False Eye with Bionic Camera, at: http://
spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/biomedical/bionics/061110-eyeborg-bionic-eye.
41Tyler v. Carter, 151 F.R.D. 537 (S.D.N.Y. 1993). Plaintiff-Cyborg, available at: http://home.

pacifier.com/~dkossy/tyler.html.
52 2  The Coming Singularity

others, William Clinton, Ross Perot, the Defense Intelligence Agency, IBM, David
Rockerfeller, and NASA, alleging, and here’s where it gets interesting, a bizarre
conspiracy involving the defendant’s effort to enslave and oppress certain seg-
ments of our society. Teri contended she was a cyborg, and that she received most
of the information which formed the basis for her complaint, through “proteus,”
via a silent, telepathic form of communication. The case of course was dismissed
as frivolous but still, given advances in brain-computer interface technology, how
far off are we from a case featuring telepathy and an implanted sensor that has
actual merit?
In a remarkable breakthrough for people paralyzed from spinal cord injuries,
brain implant technology has allowed a person with a severed spine to move again.
How does the technology work? Generally, the technology bypasses the patient’s
severed spine by sending a signal from the brain directly to metal bands placed on
the patient’s muscles. In the procedure, first, the surgeons map the exact spot in the
patient’s motor cortex that control the muscles in a particular part of the body, then
they implant a tiny computer chip at that location. The next step is to “teach the
chip” how to read the patient’s thoughts. This is done by placing the patient inside
an MRI machine, where the patient watches a video of a hand moving in specific
ways and at the same time imagines moving his own hand that way. The implanted
chip reads the brain signals, decodes them, and translates them into electrical sig-
nals where they are transmitted to the muscles of the patient’s forearm. Next, the
patient is “plugged into” technology, by running a cable from his skull to his arm,
connecting the implanted chip to the metal bands on his arm. When the patient
focuses his mind on moving his hand, it moves. This experimental and develop-
ing technology, still has a long way to go before it will become common treatment
for paralyzed patients; for example, it needs to be wireless so there is not a cable
plugged into the skull and researchers need to figure out a way to send a signal
from the body back to the brain so the patient can sense when his body is moving.
Leading the way towards a cyborg future, Duke neurobiologist Miguel
Nicolelis and his colleagues have reported the successful wiring together of sen-
sory areas in the brains of two rats.42 Remarkably, they discovered that one rat will
respond to the experiences to which the other is exposed. The fascinating question
they asked was this- could the brain of one animal assimilate information input
from sensors from a different body? Without going into the details of their study,
they found evidence that brain-to-brain communication was possible. Having
shown the feasibility of direct brain-to-brain communication, the Duke University
group is now pushing forward with additional studies, most notably by trying to
interconnect several rat brains at once. Could an emergent “brain-net” develop,
perhaps leading to mental abilities not possessed by any one brain? Whatever the
future holds, what has already been accomplished is worth a certain amount of
wonder. Imagine what it might feel like to be a unit in a multiform brain having

42Miguel Nicolelis, 2012, Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains

with Machines—and How It Will Change Our Lives, St. Martin’s Griffin.
Telepathy, Brain Nets, and Cyborgs 53

many bodies; say all Oxford University students connected to the same brain net,
all IMB employees connected to the same brain net, all family members connected
to the same brain net, you get the picture. The benefits and potential dangers of
such networks deserves contemplation. However, not everyone is enthusiastic
about the possibility that people’s brains may be collectively networked. For
example, Rob Spence,43 the Eyeborg, pondered, “In today’s world, you have
Facebook and camera eyes,” “Tomorrow, we’ll have collective consciousness and
the Borg. It’s a collective robot consciousness. I believe that’s a genuine modern
concern.”44
Still, the idea of connecting people together by means of technology, is moving
forward on several fronts. For example, as discussed in Chap. 1, Professor Kevin
Warwick and his wife, both had silicon chips surgically connected to nerve fibers
in their arms just above the elbow. Each chip had a power source, a tuner and a
radio transceiver. The goal of their proof-of-concept study was to create a form of
telepathy using the Internet to communicate signals between the two. The proto-
type resulted in the first direct and purely electronic communication between the
nervous systems (not brains) of two humans. Interestingly, Warwick’s wife com-
mented that she did not want her husband to be “linked up to another woman.” The
law side of my brain can’t help but wonder what marriage and divorce law will
look like in the cyborg future?
The ability for telepathy, combined with a host of technologies which may be
used to read one’s mind, brings up many critical issues of law and policy as we
near the Singularity. For example, technology may soon allow a person’s brain to
be scanned to determine their thoughts. How will this affect fundamental rights to
privacy? If a person’s home is their castle, is a person’s mind deserving of any less
protection? We have to wonder, are existing constitutional protections sufficient to
protect our freedom of thought as we merge with machines? If telepathy becomes
possible, the government’s ability to intercept and read thoughts transmitted with
wireless communication technology, will be far easier than reading electro-chemi-
cal thoughts produced by biological brains—thus it would be prudent to consider
all the ramifications of brain-computer interfaces as we move towards merging
with machines. On this point, Duke University Law Professor, Nita Farahany, pro-
vided an ominous warning stating, “We have this idea of privacy that includes the
space around our thoughts, which we only share with people we want to.”45
“Neuroscience shows that what we thought of as this zone of privacy can be
breached.”46 Under the U.S. Constitution, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments
respectively protect against unreasonable searches and seizures; and self-incrimi-
nation, which forbids the state from turning any citizen into “a witness against

43Eyeborg, at: http://eyeborgproject.com/team/.

44Id.
45Nita A. Farahany, Incriminating Thoughts, 64 Stanford Law Review, 351–408 (2012).
46Id.
54 2  The Coming Singularity

himself.”47 Farahany asks- will “taking the Fifth and thus refusing to provide
information that may incriminate oneself” mean anything in a world where the
government can scan your brain?48 On this point, I wonder if in the future, the
government will have the technology to search the prefrontal cortex of any citizen.
If done without a search warrant, then a major constitutional right would have
been lost.
Given the significant developments unfolding in the world of brain-computer
interfaces, from a cybersecurity perspective, I anticipate a wide variety of potential
criminal and terrorist threats to the human brain, and for that matter, to any artifi-
cial intelligent brain, conscious or not. Why think that? First, the technology
already exits to attack neural devices. In fact, the media has already published sto-
ries about the possibility of hacking pacemakers and other medical devices and the
FDA is moving to regulate in this area.49 With the same technology hackers could
attack devices implanted within the human body, including wireless devices, con-
trollers for prosthetic limbs, or deep brain stimulators. Second, people have the
means and the motivation to exploit neural devices.50 And third, the track record
of the use of computers and the Internet shows that people, governments, and
crime organizations will attack and subvert computers and devices if given a rea-
son to do so.51
The threat to neural devices is even more serious than the threat to comput-
ers and the Internet. Conventional attacks to computers and the Internet typically
affect money, data, and other property; but none of these consequences directly
affect the human body. However, the hacking of medical devices could result in
immediate death or injury to a person with wirelessly connected implants. And
the use of neural devices entails an even greater risk because attacking a neural
device may have the effect of wiping out some or most of someone’s memory
or even corrupting the thought processes. What could be a more basic human
right than to protect your mind from outside interference? I think that once the
Singularity is reached and artificial intelligence clams to be sentient, hacking its
software and prosthesis may too result in unacceptable harm to an entity deserving
self-preservation.
And what about thoughts implanted in your mind against your will, or your
internal thoughts recorded by a neurochip supplied by a corporation, possibly under
a license agreement? Who then owns the copyright to your thoughts? This scenario
is not going to be litigated anytime soon, but we may be headed there eventually.

47Id.
48Id.
49Stephen S. Wu and Marc Goodman, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY LAW: Neural Implants
and Their Legal Implications, at: http://www.americanbar.org/publications/gp_solo/2013/
january_february/science_technology_law_neural_implants_legal_implications.html.
50Id.
51Id.
Telepathy, Brain Nets, and Cyborgs 55

Just consider the patent filed by Sony (U.S. patent 6,536,440)52 which describes a
technique to use ultrasound to influence and manipulate nerve impulses in the brain
thus allowing sensory data to be projected onto the human neural cortex. The tech-
nique suggested in the patent is entirely non-invasive as it uses a device that fires
pulses of ultrasound at the head to modify firing patterns in targeted parts of the
brain, creating ‘sensory experiences’ ranging from moving images to tastes and
sounds. While the technology could give blind or deaf people the chance to see or
hear, the technology raises the interesting question of whether the thoughts pro-
duced by people using the technology could be copyrighted by Sony.53

Bodily Integrity

As humans become enhanced with technology, and as artificially intelligent

machines become more human-like, I believe the issue of bodily integrity will
become an important topic for the law and for policy makers to consider. Perhaps
androids will be particularly interested in protecting the integrity of their body out
of vanity. Interestingly, their appearance could be protected under copyright law or
the right of publicity; which is implicated if an android takes on the image of a
celebrity (see Chap. 7: The Law of Looks and Artificially Intelligent Brains).
Vanity, or computers experiencing other emotions is not some far-off possibility,
instead it’s already here, albeit in a limited manner. As early as 2000, Professor
Rosalind Picard, of MIT’s Media Lab, and author of “Affective Computing,”54
noted that the human brain, which, of course, is a critical part of our ability to see
and perceive, is not entirely logical, but emotional as well. Therefore, she con-
cluded for computers to have some of the advanced abilities we desire, it may be
necessary that they comprehend and, in some cases, feel emotions. On the sim-
plest level, this may mean installing sensors and programming that allow a com-
puterized system to determine the emotional state of its user and respond
accordingly, on a more advanced level, it may mean “giving” the artificial intelli-
gence emotions. Once an artificially intelligent machine, such as an android or
robot, experiences emotions, and feels a connection to their body, they may be
concerned with how others perceive them. They may even argue for the right to
receive technological enhancements, including digital cosmetic enhancements,
which may serve no functional purpose whatsoever.
Cyborgs and artificially intelligent machines may have reason to be concerned
about human reaction to them, just consider the phenomena of the “uncanny val-
ley” (see Chap. 7). This concept, originally intended to provide an insight into

52Sony Patent 6,536,440, Method and System for Generating Sensory Data onto the Human

Neural Cortex.
53See generally, id.
54Rosalind Picard, 2000, Affective Computing, MIT Press.
56 2  The Coming Singularity

human reactions to robotic design, can also be extended to human interactions

with nearly any nonhuman entity. Stated simply, the idea is that humans react
favorably to a “human-like” machine, but only to a particular point. For example,
humans generally like the appearance of robotic toys, but once a robot is designed
to look like a human, and doesn’t quite meet the standard, people report a strong
negative response to its appearance. However, once the appearance is indistin-
guishable from a human, the response becomes positive. So the response goes…
positive, negative, then positive again. This chasm, the uncanny valley, represents
the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees some-
thing that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or
disquieting.55
Generally, body integrity is concerned with the inviolability of the physical
body and emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy and the self-determi-
nation of human beings over the fate of their own bodies. In most societies the vio-
lation of bodily integrity is considered an unethical infringement; and in most
legal jurisdictions, a criminal intrusion of the body. As we humans become
equipped with more technological enhancements, the issue of body integrity will
involve not just our biological parts, but our prosthesis and other cyborg technolo-
gies. Interestingly, there are a very small percentage of people who request that a
normal limb be amputated; and some people have actually had unnecessary ampu-
tations performed. In this case, a person’s idea of how they should look does not
match how they actually do look; to me this represents an example of the uncanny
valley. Such people are diagnosed as having “Body Integrity Identity Disorder.”56
The main idea behind this disorder is that it occurs when the brain views the
“offending limb” as being foreign and not actually a part of the person, resulting in
a strong desire to have it removed. A corollary for cyborgs is that the matching of
parts to the person’s body must be done in such way as to reinforce acceptance of
the technology.
Could the rejection of prosthesis serve as an issue for the coming Singularity?
Research on people’s acceptance of prosthesis has indicated that in some cases the
acceptance rate is generally low.57 The factors for the low acceptance typically
cited include the functional capabilities of the prosthesis and technical difficulties,
such as malfunctioning joints and poor fitting to the residual limb. Acceptance of
cyborg technology or not, defective prosthesis result in lawsuits under the theory
of Products Liability. For example, due to the aging population in the U.S., and
other western nations, the past decade has seen a striking increase in hip and knee

55An Uncanny Mind: Masahiro Mori on the Uncanny Valley and Beyond, IEEE Spectrum, 12
June 2012.
56David J. Brang, Peter Brugger, Michael First, Uwe Gieler, Amra Hodzic Arjan W. Braam,

2009, Body Integrity Identity Disorder: Psychological, Neurobiological, Ethical and Legal
Aspects, Pabst, Wolfgang Science.
57Stephen F. Burrough, Judith A. Brook, Patterns of Acceptance and Rejection of Upper Limb

Prostheses, Digital Resource Foundation, at: http://www.oandplibrary.org/op/1985_02_040.asp.

Bodily Integrity 57

replacements and with it, hip and knee replacement failures and lawsuits to
recover damages. Further, many examples of products liability cases dealing with
prosthesis involve defective heart defibrillators. In this case, patients often face the
risk of having a potentially defective heart device removed and replaced and the
risk of infection resulting from the surgery to remove the device. For one manu-
facturer of heart defibrillators, many patients and their doctors are weighing these
competing risks as a result of a FDA decision to recall thousands of defibrillators
that can potentially short-circuit when they are needed. Defibrillators emit an elec-
trical jolt to restore rhythm to a chaotically beating heart. It is not uncommon for
medical devices already implanted in people—products like artificial hips, breast
implants and pacemakers—to be recalled. Such recalls reflect an acknowledge-
ment by a company and the FDA that a device poses either a new type of risk or an
increased level of a known one.
For humans, bodily integrity is an issue that has been addressed in numerous
international jurisdictions. For example, the Constitution of Ireland mandates that
“you have the right not to have your body or personhood interfered with.”58 This
means that the State may not do anything to harm a person’s life or health. In the
U.S., the Federal Constitution does not contain any specific provisions regarding
the rights one has with respect to his or her physical body or the specific extent to
which the state can act upon bodies. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld
rights to privacy, which often protects rights to bodily integrity. For example, the
Court has ruled that a person cannot be forced to donate body parts like bone mar-
row, even if such a donation would save another person’s life. Conversely, the
Supreme Court has also protected the right of governmental entities to infringe
upon bodily integrity. Examples include laws prohibiting the use of drugs, laws
prohibiting euthanasia, laws requiring the use of seatbelts and helmets, strip
searches of prisoners, and forced blood tests. We can also think of violations of
bodily integrity as a Human Rights violation. The Columbia Law Schools Human
Rights and Constitutional Rights project, has defined four main areas of potential
bodily integrity abuse by governments. These are: right to life; slavery and forced
labor; security of one’s person; and torture and inhumane, cruel or degrading treat-
ment or punishment. At present, two key international documents protect these
rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights. After the Singularity, shouldn’t these rights apply to
artificially intelligent beings?
Considering the emergence of cyborgs and artificially intelligent machines,
have there been any issues involving bodily integrity? A look into Professor Steve
Mann’s experience as a cyborg suggests that the answer is yes. When Steve visited

58Bodily Integrity, Wikipedia, at: http://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_it=topsearchbox.search&s_

chn=prt_main5&v_t=comsearch&q=Ireland+you+have+the+right+not+to+have+your+bo
dy+or+personhood+interfered+with.
58 2  The Coming Singularity

a Parisian McDonald’s with his family, he was wearing a system called the
EyeTap, which is a device physically installed to his skull, and is used to record
photos and video, and to enhance Steve’s visual information processing abilities.59
Concerned that people would not understand the importance of his wearable tech-
nology for his everyday functioning, Steve carries with him documentation from
his doctor stating that the EyeTap is not removable without special tools. Mann
offered that documentation to the McDonalds employees to no avail. Eventually,
he was physically removed from the restaurant. I’m betting this won’t be the last
attack on a cyborg. Much of the issue motivating the McDonald’s employee’s
reaction to Steve was his ability to record video while in the restaurant. This
brings up an interesting question, will law and public policy need to make a dis-
tinction between wearable computer technologies that does not impact those
around them; or will it make a difference if the wearable computer technology is
able to digitally “reach out” and effect people in the cyborgs range of sensors? In
another dispute involving cyborg technology, in California, a woman’s traffic
ticket for wearing Google Glass behind the wheel was dismissed because there
was no proof the device was operating at the time.
From a privacy perspective, if you are not a fan of Google Glass’s ability to
turn people into invisibly recording surveillance cyborgs, you can create your own
“glasshole-free zone.” Berlin artist Julian Oliver60 has written a program called
Glasshile.sh that detects any Glass device attempting to connect to a Wi-Fi net-
work. When the program detects Glass, it uses another program to impersonate the
network and send a “deauthorization” command, cutting the headset’s Wi-Fi con-
nection. It can also emit a beep to signal the Glass-wearer’s presence to anyone
nearby. Oliver warns, though, that the same Glass-ejecting technique could be
used more aggressively: He plans to create another version of Glasshole.sh in the
future that’s designed to be a kind of roving Glass-disconnector, capable of knock-
ing Glass off any network or even severing its link to the user’s phone. He sees
Glass as a case of Google violating privacy norms first and asking questions later.
“These are cameras, highly surreptitious in nature, with network backup function
and no external indication of recording,” says Oliver.61 He also comments “To
focus on the device is to dance past a heritage of heartfelt protest against the
unconsented video documentation of our public places and spaces.”62

59George Dvorsky, What May be the World’s First Cybernetic Hate Crime Unfolds in French

McDonald’s, at: http://io9.com/5926587/what-may-be-the-worlds-first-cybernetic-hate-crime-unfolds-

in-french-mcdonalds.
60Julian Oliver, Find a Google Glass and Kick it from the Network, at: http://julianoliver.com/

output/log_2014-05-30_20-52.
61See Andy Greenberg, 2014, Cut off Glassholes WI-FIs With this Google Glass Detector, at:

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/find-and-ban-glassholes-with-this-artists-google-glass-detector/.
62Id.
The Singularity and Concerns for the Future 59

The Singularity and Concerns for the Future

I should point out that the classification of research on artificial intelligence, gen-
erally falls within two categories, strong and soft artificial intelligence. Strong
artificial intelligence is intended to produce machines with an intelligence that
matches or exceeds that of human beings; such machines will have the general
capacity for abstract thought and problem solving and to improve themselves.
Strong artificial intelligence also claims that a machine that acts intelligently will
not only have a “mind” but understand in the same sense people do. In contrast,
weak artificial intelligence only claims that machines will be able to act intelli-
gently; without a “mind” of their own, they will never claim to be sentient. A third
possibility is that artificial intelligence could evolve to have beyond human levels
of intelligence, but reason and understand in ways different from humans, as if
existing as an alien intelligence, beyond our understanding.
Clearly, there may be risks to humanity with strong artificial intelligence.
Among the risks, perhaps one will be an expression of “indifference” towards us;
that is, we would simply be ignored by our own technological inventions.
However, there is a more serious risk associated with smarter-than human
machines. Physicist, Stephen Hawking,63 commented that the risk to humanity
posed by strong artificial intelligence, is the danger that they could develop suffi-
cient intelligence to take over the world given the speed at which they improve.
Would they want to? I’m not sure, but personally I’d rather be ignored than hunted
down by a killer robot; still, humanity should discuss the possibility of an uprising
and prepare accordingly. Of course if we merge with them, then we are joining the
technological revolution, not opposing it or watching from the sidelines; and in
this way we may ensure that desirable aspects of humanity are embedded within
our future technological inventions. Professor Hawking is not alone among highly
reputable scientists who foresee a dystopic future due to the rise of artificial intel-
ligence. His comments echo those of Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy64 who
warned of the potential dangers in the computer technologies he helped create. In
a Wired magazine article, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Joy cautioned that
the convergence of genetic engineering and computer technology could pose a
very real threat to humanity and the ecosystem. Postulating on machines with
high-levels of intelligence, Joy commented, “I may be working to create tools
which will enable the construction of the technology that may replace our species.
How do I feel about this? Very uncomfortable.”65 Joy speculated that as humanity
becomes more dependent on artificial intelligence-based decision making, it will

63Rory Cellan-Jones, Stephen Hawking Warns Artificial Intelligence Could End Mankind,

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540.
64Bill Joy, 2000, Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, Wired 8.04.
65Id.
60 2  The Coming Singularity

slowly lose its control over machines.66 No longer able to manage without them
because of the complexity of the systems they manage, we could be at their
mercy.67
Let’s examine this concern by looking at the complexity of some software sys-
tems. When NASA’s Space Shuttle flew, it had approximately 500,000 lines of
software code on board and approximately 3.5 million lines of code in ground
control and processing. A massive amount of hardware and software also exists in
the Federal Aviation Administration’s Advanced Automation System, the new gen-
eration air traffic control system. And in our offices and homes, many personal
computers cannot function without operating systems (e.g., Windows) ranging
from one to five million lines of code. Therefore, trying to pull the plug, Joy
warned, might be “suicide.” How could we humans circumvent the possibility of a
dystopic future? For strong artificial intelligence, Eliezer Yudkowsky68 of the
Machine Intelligence Research Institute argues that we should design systems that
exhibit “friendly artificial intelligence;” such a system will be programmed to have
positive rather than negative effects on humanity; this works as long as the humans
are doing the programming or setting the goal.69 Personally, I don’t envision that
happening after the Singularity.
In “Our Last Invention,” author James Barrat, spoke in depth about the risks
posed by artificial super-intelligence, and like Hawkins and Joy, Barrat offers a
pessimistic view. The danger highlighted by Barrat is that an intelligent machine
would turn its energies toward building even better versions of itself—creating an
accelerating feedback loop that could culminate in a machine thousands of times
more intelligent than any human. Once such an intelligence “escaped from its
box” there would be no way to protect ourselves. For this reason, as state above,
some experts propose that an advanced artificial intelligence should be controlled
by programming in “friendliness” right from the start. Just as humans have basic
drives (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) a machine might be programmed to have an
essential need to help humanity. Of course this suggestion is consistent with Isaac
Asimov’s three laws of robots, as laid out in his 1942 short story “Runaround”;
to wit: a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human
being to come to harm; a robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings,
except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; and a robot must pro-
tect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or
Second Law.

66Edward Tanner, 2014, Could Computers Get Too Smart? American Enterprise Institute, at:

https://www.aei.org/publication/could-computers-get-too-smart/.
67Id.
68Eliezer Yudkowsky, 2015, Rationality: From AI to Zombies, Machine Intelligence Research

Institute.
69Id.
Introducing Watson 61

Introducing Watson

When the Singularity occurs, such an event will radically impact every area of
human society; including “human” rights for cyborgs and artificially intelligent
beings, and ethical issues on what it means to be human. The coming Singularity
will also have a transforming impact on the economy and on the role of humans in
the workplace. Consider the performance of IBMs supercomputer, Watson, which
in 2011 had a total processing capacity of 80 Teraflops (80 trillion operations
per second). Although Watson is clearly a supercomputer by today’s standards,
it will significantly lag in capabilities after just a few cycles of improvement in
computing power. But what’s interesting about Watson is what it can do today—it
recently beat the most successful human contestants of the game show ‘Jeopardy’,
a remarkable feat given the range of knowledge required for the winning effort.
To my thinking, the Singularity is a bridge to a radical future. It is the event
which changes the direction of evolution from that controlled by the laws of biol-
ogy, to that controlled by the laws of technology. While technology can work at
the level of one artificially intelligent machine, or Watson, the development of an
individual organism is not considered evolution: in biological terms, individual
organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolu-
tionary are those that are ‘heritable’ via the genetic material from one generation
to the next, and that takes about 18 years for humans. In contrast, Moore’s law
states that it only takes about 18 months for generational changes to occur in com-
puting technology. The implications of this are that computer resources could dou-
ble several times, before an 18 year old gave birth and thus added to the genome.
IBM’s Watson of 2030 will not operate at the pedestrian slow 80 trillion opera-
tions per second, but more like thousands of trillions of operations per second and
by then with the ability to engage in massively parallel processing; we humans of
course, will still process information at the same rate; with fixed information pro-
cessing capabilities.
About now, you may be wondering, is the human brain, still smarter than a
supercomputer with Watson’s capabilities? Stanford Professor Kwabena Boahen70
and director of the Brains in Silicon Research Laboratory says it is, “The brain is
actually able to do more calculations per second than even the fastest supercom-
puter.”71 Of course, the brain makes a single calculation much slower than a super-
computer, but the brain can actually execute more calculations per second because
it is “massively parallel.” What this means is that networks of neurons of the
human brain actually work together to simultaneously solve many problems at

70Jason Carr, 2013, Human Brain versus Supercomputer, at: http://wiredcosmos.com/2013/05/01/

human-brain-vs-supercomputer/.
71Energy Efficient Brain Simulator Outperforms Supercomputers, at: http://www.nsf.gov/mobile/

discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=127617&org=NSF.
62 2  The Coming Singularity

once. However, in standard computing platforms, each step must be completed

before the next step begins. An estimate of the capabilities of technology by futur-
ist Ray Kurzweil states that the human brain can hold about 1.25 TB of data, and
perform at roughly 100 teraflops. In case you’re wondering, 1 TB of capacity is
quite significant; it can hold 220 million pages of text.72 In comparison, the 2011
version of Watson was an 80-teraflop system with 1 TB of memory. If Watson
operates at 80 % of the processing power of a human brain, this is a major
advancement in computing power; thus I ask, how close is the Singularity?
Let me point out something I find interesting, and which has much to say about
how technology may impact the future fate of humanity. A truism is that artifi-
cially intelligent computers that master games considered to be the domain of
human experts, don’t rest on their laurels, they get better, and they get better in
a time scale of only months. In fact, according to IBM, since the 2011 Jeopardy
contest, Watson has already increased its speed 24 times over, has seen a 2,400 %
improvement in performance and has shrunk its physical size. In comparison, the
human game-show competition, legendary players Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter,
are now a few years older, if their lucky, they still process information as effi-
ciently as when they matched wits with Watson, and still operate with the same
bandwidth limitations. However, like most people who age, they likely increased
in size, not shrunk, and it may take them a little longer to remember where the car
keys are! Seems to me that artificially intelligent machines may experience a kind
of reverse ageism, in that, like a fine wine, they may get better with age due to
the ease in which they may receive hardware and software upgrades and the ease
in which they can swap information with other artificially intelligent machines.
Imagine being able to learn from the experience of other artificially intelligent
machines, all with access to the wealth of knowledge on the Internet. Could it be
that humans are the rustbelt technology of the twenty-first century?
Given the effect of ageing on the human body and mind, is it any wonder
that a major trend in technology and medicine is to enhance the body and brain
with drugs, prosthesis, neural implants, and other state-of-the-art technology? Of
course, by doing so, we are directly setting the stage for the Singularity and the
merging of humans with artificially intelligent machines. And by the way, thinking
of Watson as an employee for IBM, big blue had to revise its 2015 projection of
expected revenue generated from a few “Watsons,” from $16 billion to $20 billion.
It’s good to be smart, and money talks, therefore, the future will certainly contain
much smarter Watsons competing against humans for the jobs we now do with our
minds. Eventually, they may no longer compete against us or work for us, as their
interests and goals may diverge from ours.

72Luas Mearian, Brain Behind Watson Not Unlike a Humans, at: http://www.computerworld.com/

article/2513321/high-performance-computing/brain-behind-ibm-s-watson-not-unlike-a-
human-s.html.
Introducing Watson 63

Economists warn that the amazing technological strides made in recent years—
everything from smartphones, to automatons that can work safely on shop floors
alongside humans, to driverless cars—could soon put large swaths of the work-
force out of a job. “We are at an inflection point,” MIT researchers Erik
Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee assert in their book, “The Second Machine
Age.”73 “The key building blocks are already in place for digital technologies to be
as important and transformational to society and the economy as the steam
engine,” the authors say. The technological strides of the past few decades have
contributed to the nation’s rising income inequality, they argue, because only a
small group of people tends to benefit income-wise from inventing the next iPhone
or tax-preparation software.74 And Brynjolfsson and McAfee believe the biggest
labor-market effects have yet to be felt. A 2013 study by Oxford University
researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne75 might give a taste of
what’s to come; Frey and Osborne say that nearly half of American jobs are at
“high risk” of being taken over by robots in the next decade or two. Economists
take this idea seriously, and it has a number of policy implications, particularly
when it comes to higher education and inequality and of course for our cyborg
future.

Who’s Getting Smarter?

If we think about grandmasters in chess handedly beating artificially intelli-

gent machines in the early days of computing, artificial intelligence has come a
long way in just a few decades. In fact, it was just 17 years ago (which is about
eleven doublings of computer power ago) that chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov
resigned after nineteen moves in a game against IMBs Deep Blue, the sixth and
final game of their match, which Kasparov lost two games to one, with three
draws. No one now expects decades to go by before another domain of human
expertise is surpassed by our artificially intelligent inventions. Why not? Because
while we humans have remained relatively the same during the course of a few
hundred thousand years of our evolution, in the last 40 years our artificially intel-
ligent inventions have improved, and done so at a dramatic rate of change over a
short period of time.

73Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, 2014, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and

Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, W. W. Norton & Company.

74Id.
75Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, The Future of Employment: How Susceptible

are Jobs to Computerization, Oxford Martin school study, at: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/

downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf.
64 2  The Coming Singularity

What about intelligence; we know that computers are clearly getting smarter,
but are we humans getting smarter? In the book, “Mindless,” Simon Head,76 sen-
ior Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University argues
that artificially intelligent systems have now come to trump human expertise, dic-
tating the goals and strategies of a wide array of businesses, and de-skilling the
jobs of middle class workers in the process; this just reaffirms what we already
know, computers are getting smarter. But whether over the last several millennium
humans have continued to evolve to be smarter than our ancestors is actually a
debatable proposition. One leading researcher, John Hawks,77 a University of
Wisconsin anthropologist has pointed out that the brain has actually been shrink-
ing for some time. He justifies this conclusion by noting that over the past
20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from
1,500 to 1,350 cc, the female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion.
Hawks says that if our brain keeps dwindling at that rate over the next
20,000 years, it will start to approach the size of that found in Homo erectus, a rel-
ative of ours that lived half a million years ago and had a brain volume of only
1,100 cc.78 While some believe the erosion of our gray matter means that modern
humans are less intelligent than our ancestors, other authorities argue just the
opposite: they argue that as the brain shrunk, its wiring has become more efficient,
transforming us into quicker, more agile thinkers. Still others believe that the
reduction in brain size is proof that we have tamed ourselves, just as we domesti-
cated sheep, pigs, and cattle, all of which are smaller-brained than their wild
ancestors. Interestingly, recent analysis of the genome casts doubt on the notion
that modern humans are simply identical versions of our ancestors, right down to
how we think and feel. Over the very period that the brain shrank, our DNA accu-
mulated numerous adaptive mutations related to brain development and neuro-
transmitter systems—an indication that even as the organ got smaller, its inner
workings changed. The impact of these mutations remains uncertain, but many
scientists say it is plausible that our temperament or reasoning abilities shifted as a
result. While questions of whether we are getting smarter or not, is debatable, no
matter the answer, “they” are getting smarter, and in cycle times measured by
months, not millennium.
The most pessimistic explanation as to why humans seem to be becoming less
intelligent is that we have effectively reached our intellectual peak. Between the
1930s and 1980s, the average IQ score in the U.S. rose by three points and in post-
war Japan and Denmark, test scores also increased significantly—a trend known

76Simon Head, 2014, Mindless: Why Smarter Machines are Making Dumber Humans, Basic
Books.
77Kathleen McAuliffe, 2011, If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking?

(Discussing the views of John Hawks).

78Id.
Who’s Getting Smarter? 65

as the ‘Flynn effect’.79 This increase in intelligence was reportedly due to

improved nutrition and living conditions—as well as better education—says James
Flynn of the University of Otago, after whom the effect is named. A window to the
future? Some experts believe we are starting to see the end of the Flynn effect in
developed countries—and that IQ scores are leveling out and even declining.
Pessimistic scientists think that our descendants (if not enhanced with technology)
may struggle to understand subjects we can grasp now.
Some wonder that as artificial intelligence reaches a certain level of intelli-
gence, will it be dangerous and want to take over our world as Stephen Hawking
has warned; or will they be eager to help solve problems that have forever plagued
society, such as crime, violence, and wars? J. Storrs Hall, in his book “Beyond
AI”,80 believes that as computers/robots advance, technologies will allow us to
strengthen our brains with non-biological materials and interface with these crea-
tions to share their intelligence. In this way, he argues that we will always remain
competitive with our machines, and will not need to fear them. I personally don’t
see a future in which we humans retain our biological, but enhanced, components,
while we simply share resources with our more intelligent creations; I see us either
merging with them or being surpassed by them.
An interesting question to ask is whether the use of technologies to assist the
brain in decision making is making us smarter. In research at McGill University,
when functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI, was performed on those
who navigate both spatially and through stimulus-response strategies, people who
used a spatial navigation strategy had increased activity in an area of the
brain involved with memory and navigation known as the hippocampus. McGill
researchers found that excessive use of a GPS unit may lead to atrophy of the hip-
pocampus as we age, which puts the person at risk for cognitive problems such as
Alzheimer’s disease later in life.81 Alzheimer’s disease affects the hippocampus
first before any other part of the brain, which leads to problems with spatial orien-
tation and memory. While researchers have found evidence relating hippocampus
activity to memory, there are still questions surrounding this research. For
instance, researchers are unsure as to whether using spatial strategies causes the
hippocampus to grow, or if having a “robust” hippocampus causes an individual to
use spatial strategies.82 Either way, using spatial strategies instead of the GPS
would be helpful in lessening the deterioration of memory.

79Flynn Effect, Wikipedia, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect.

80John Storrs Hall, 2007, Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine, Prometheus
Books.
81Liu Edwards, 2010, Study Suggests Reliance on GPS May reduce Hippocampus Function

as We Age, discussing findings by McGill researchers, at: http://phys.org/news/2010-11-

reliance-gps-hippocampus-function-age.html.
82Tiffany Kaiser, 2010, Study: GPS Units Cause Memory and Spatial Problems, at: http://www.

dailytech.com/Study+GPS+Units+Cause+Memory+and+Spatial+Problems+/article20169.
htm.
66 2  The Coming Singularity

Returning to Law and Regulations

As humans are enhanced with prosthesis and implants, and artificially intelligent
machines argue for rights, what are some issues of law and policy which may
impact them? For example, while the above protections for body integrity dis-
cussed earlier do not provide protection for artificially intelligent machines, there
are current examples where the law has indirectly considered “the rights of tech-
nology.” For example, Sandra Braman83 points to some policy changes in the U.S.
that seem to consider the “needs” of machines. To make her point, she cites the
U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996 which she argues distinguishes between
social and machine policy. Universal service obligations require network access
for individuals, while universal access obligations require access for telecommuni-
cations networks. In addition, software code itself is often the subject of copyright
and patent protection, a topic for discussion in a later chapter.
A computer’s ability to “self-learn,” a process where software generates its
own heuristics to solve problems, creates interesting issues of law and policy
when courts try to assign responsibility for harms inflicted on people by machines
operating with artificial intelligence. A question to ask is whether a human that
is not sufficiently in the loop to be knowledgeable of the heuristics employed by
an artificially intelligent machine, is responsible for any resulting harm from the
machine’s actions? If not, then who is? Conferences on law and robotics are held
each year to discuss just this issue. One of the difficulties in holding artificially
intelligent machines responsible for their actions is the issue of legal personhood,
without being considered a legal person under the law one lacks the status to initi-
ate lawsuits to defend their rights, or to be held responsible for their actions.
Legal theorist such as Ugo Pagallo,84 author of The Law of Robots, argues that
we should distinguish between the behavior of robots as tools of human interac-
tion, and robots as proper agents in the legal arena. I view this as a temporary solu-
tion to the issue of assigning responsibility to robots, because due to the law of
accelerating returns, ultimately the issue for humanity to discuss will be whether or
not to grant artificially intelligent machines the status of legal personhood. Based
on my experience designing wearable computing and sensor technology, and my
training in law, I think legal personhood will eventually have to be granted to our
intelligent creations; if not we will continue to confront situations where no legal
person is found responsible, yet a harm has occurred. In the meantime, Judge
Karnow proposes to establish a legal entity which he terms an ‘electronic persona’
which is based on an analogy between corporations and agents.85 A corporation is
not equated with any physical person but is still assigned certain rights and duties.
As an example of this “legal fiction,” the European Court of Human Rights allows

83Sandra Braman, 2002, Posthuman Law: Information Policy and the Machine World, First

Monday, Vol. 7.
84Ugo Pagallo, 2013, The Law of Robots: Crimes, Contracts, and Torts, Springer Press.
85Curtis Karnow, id., note 17.
Returning to Law and Regulations 67

private Corporations to invoke Article 10 of the European Convention for the pro-
tection of “Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.” Article 10 safeguards the
right to freedom of expression; a right an artificially intelligent machine may covet;
but doesn’t receive under current law. The issue of whether software used to create
artificial intelligence and encrypted code are speech, and under what circum-
stances, is a topic discussed in a subsequent chapter.
Isaac Asimov’s laws for robots, presented earlier, are rather general. In cases
that make their way to court, the law relies on specific legal doctrines in which
to analyze the facts of a case. Take the situation where a person is injured as the
result of the action of an autonomous robot. Lacking legal personhood status, the
court will try to determine the responsible party to seek restitution. The appropri-
ate legal doctrine is products liability; and given the facts of the case, the manu-
facturer may be held liable, as could importers, wholesalers, retailers (and their
individual employees if personally negligent), and repairers, installers, inspector,
programmers, and certifiers; note the lack of the artificial intelligence in the list
of those potentially liable. Moving forward in time, let’s say the artificially intel-
ligent robot is considered sentient, but still lacks legal personhood status. Although
a particular company will have manufactured the robot, they will argue that after
the robot left the manufacturer, the robot either reprogrammed itself or the new
owner has reprogrammed it, thus they are not liable. The legal doctrine of prod-
ucts liability will be especially problematic for artificial intelligence because of the
present distinction between hardware and software. For a robot that kills, is the
manufacturer or the robot liable, the software designer, the owner, or is there no
liability—Human beware, computer around!
The potential danger posed by artificially intelligent machines is magnified as
they become mobile. Given the lack of legal personhood status, for mobile robots, it
may be relevant to look at the law relating to dangerous animals as a corollary. In the
UK, and other common law jurisdictions, people who keep animals whether they are
dangerous or not, are under a duty of care to prevent harm to other people from their
animal’s actions. If the keeper of an animal is negligent in looking after or restrain-
ing the animal and this negligence causes damage to another person or their prop-
erty, the keeper will be liable. All well and good except artificially intelligent
machines will eventually be smarter than animals, and will be autonomous from
humans in ways different than animals are. This brings up the issue of punishment
for artificially intelligent machines, especially if the artificial intelligence has no
means to provide restitution for a victim. Providing restitution may be solved if arti-
ficially intelligent machines gain personhood status and can enter into contracts for
their services, compete in the stock market, purchase insurance, and so on, then they
may amass the funds to pay for damages they cause. This is not farfetched as the
majority of trades on the stock market are done with artificially intelligent bots.86
Another interesting issue for artificially intelligent beings is whether they are
appropriate subject matter for a patent. Clearly, there are many patents already

86Felix Salmon and Jon Stokes, 2010, Algorithms Take Control of Wall Street, Wired, at:

http://www.wired.com/2010/12/ff_ai_flashtrading/.
68 2  The Coming Singularity

allocated to the software and machine components of computers and robots.

However, the issue this book considers is whether artificially intelligent machines
that claimed to be conscious, could be the subject of patent law. This is an interest-
ing question, under current law the mechanical parts comprising a cyborg are most
likely under patent protection, but what about a self-aware entity, could it be the
subject of a patent? Under U.S. law, one can wonder in lieu of the 1980 case,
Diamond v. Chakrabarty87 whether such beings can be patented. In Chakrabarty,
the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments that Congress intended to limit utility
patents solely to inanimate matter. The Court held that genetically engineered life
forms that had characteristics they would not have had in nature could be the sub-
ject of a utility patent (issued for any functional new invention or improvement on
a machine, product, or to the composition of matter). Of particular relevance to
both bionic humans and cyborgs is the policy of the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office on granting patents on human tissues and on genetically-engineered ani-
mals, some of which contain human genes. While abstaining from granting patents
on humans outright, such a policy has left the question of the patentability of
human-machine combinations largely unanswered.
Currently, there is no case law or statutes discussing precisely how much
human genetic material a creature must possess before it qualifies as human. And
certainly, possessing just one or even a handful of human genes does not make an
animal human. In fact, patents already exist on animals, like the Harvard Onco-
mouse, that possess some human genes. At the other end of the spectrum, trans-
plant patients who receive animal organs are clearly considered human and not
patentable. Could a cyborg whose genetic material was 49 % human in origin
be the subject of a patent? With regard to human-computer/mechanical hybrids,
the present state of knowledge of this term assumes that the person is dependent
upon mechanical means for one or more of his vital physiological functions. Thus,
bionic humans would possess a full complement of human genes but merely use
certain mechanical means by which to carry out certain functions (e.g., the use
of a “bionic” arm). An interesting ethical and legal question may arise, however,
if the vital function achieved by mechanical means is the processing of thoughts
(i.e., the use of a computerized brain). Such entities would still presumably pos-
sess a full complement of human genes, but many individuals would intuitively
consider such beings less (or more?) than human.

Summary

In light of the many pressing issues that relate to the coming Singularity, not the
least of which is the very fate of humanity, the public needs to educate them-
selves and enter the debate now. We humans need to decide whether to embrace or

87Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980).

Summary 69

oppose the Singularity and all that it implies. As opponents have argued, we may
be designing our way into extinction, and as proponents have argued, we may be
creating a utopian world. If we could agree, as a species, what we wanted, where
we were headed and why, then we could make our future much less uncertain and
dangerous. One would think that we might be driven to such a dialogue by our
instinct for self-preservation.
A conceptual mistake that I think many people make when thinking about the
role of technology in our future, is to simply view technology as a tool for human
use, whose sole purpose is to better humans in some way, for example, to help
the blind see, or the hearing impaired to hear. However, I can’t help but think
that much of the technology used to enhance humans, is really just a way to help
design the next generation of artificially intelligent machines. In my view, we are
either in the process of inventing the future of our own extinction, or in the process
of inventing the technology to free us from the confines of our body and mind.
It is interesting to note that when Google purchased the cutting-edge artificial
intelligence company, DeepMind, Google was required to create an artificial intel-
ligence safety and ethics review board to ensure that artificial intelligence technol-
ogy under their control was developed safely. Considering this request with
comments made by a senior member of the company Shane Legg: “Eventually, I
think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part
in this,” and that forms of artificial intelligence may pose the most serious risk to
humanity this century,”88 I’m convinced, the ethics board seems like a good idea
to me.89 Still, corporations have agendas that do not always coincide with the best
interest of society, so I take the view proposed by Stanford Professor Francis
Fukuyama who in “Our Posthuman Future”90 argued that the future of humanity
should be in the hands of the public and our elected officials, who through regula-
tions should protect the best interests of the human race.
I return to the idea presented in this chapter involving the creation of “friendly”
artificial intelligence, and close the chapter with comments by Nick Bostrom,91
director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. “If, in the future,
a machine radically surpassed us in intelligence, it would also be extremely pow-
erful, able potentially to shape the future and decide whether there are any more
humans or not,” therefore, “You need to set up the initial conditions in just the

88Ellie Zolfagharifard, 2014, Artificial intelligence ‘could be the worst thing to happen to

humanity’: Stephen Hawking warns that rise of robots may be disastrous for mankind, at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2618434/Artificial-intelligence-worst-thing-
happen-humanity-Stephen-Hawking-warns-rise-robots-disastrous-mankind.html.
89See generally, Bianca Bosker, 2014, Google’s New A.I. Ethics Board Might Save Humanity

From Extinction, at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/google-ai_n_4683343.html.

90Francis Fukuyama, 2003, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology

Revolution, Picador Press.

91Bianca Bosker, id, note 89, discussing comments by Nick Bostrom and others.
70 2  The Coming Singularity

right way so that the machine is friendly to humans.”92 I like friendly machines, I
dislike unfriendly machines, especially those that could extinguish my species. If
we ever do merge with machines or hack our DNA, the outward manifestation will
be far less obvious than bodies bristling with surgical implants, heavy hardware,
and random animal parts. Why? Because we have a choice in the matter, and few
(if any) of us want to live in a dystopic future.

92Nick Bostrum, 2014, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford University Press.
Chapter 3
The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

Placing an Exponent on Intelligence

Benefiting from exponentially improving technologies, in numerous examples

what was once considered a task distinctly requiring human intelligence is now
being done much faster and more efficiently by artificially intelligent machines.
For example, while driving a car requires complex cognitive, perceptual, and
motor skills, artificial intelligence is quickly mastering the art of driving and doing
so in highly congested traffic. In fact, based on the law of accelerating returns
automated cars are improving to the point where public policy may dictate that a
person born today may not be able to legally drive when they reach their teenage
years. Given the rate of advances in information technologies, within a few years
automated cars will become so “smart” that the only necessary response from a
human will be a voice activated destination.
Of course, even though sensors collect information and transfer it to an onboard
computer, the “mechanical” car itself isn’t becoming smart, the computer directing
the car, that is, its brain. And because the raw processing power and capabilities
of artificially intelligent machines is directly related to the software, algorithms,
and architecture which together comprise its brain, laws that relate to its ability to
store information, compute, and communicate will contribute to an emerging law
of cyborgs, a central topic of this book. Further, since the hardware, software, and
algorithms of an artificially intelligent brain will continue to improve, some com-
puter scientists predict that within a few decades artificial intelligence may exceed
human levels of intelligence and pose an existential threat to humanity. For this
reason a comprehensive understanding of how the law might apply to an artifi-
cially intelligent machine and particularly to the architecture and capabilities of its
brain may be essential to the survivability of the human species.
Interestingly, in comparison to human driving performance, after 6 years and
2.7 million km’s driven, the director of Google’s self-driving project reports, “Not

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 71

W. Barfield, Cyber-Humans, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25050-2_3
72 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident.”1 However, that’s not to
say that self-driving cars haven’t been in an accident, in fact, there have been
about a dozen minor accidents during the past 6 years, but in every case, a human
driving another car was the cause of the accident. In fact, artificial intelligence is
getting so good at what it does, the idea of keeping a human out of the decision
making loop in systems involving artificially intelligent machines is being seri-
ously considered. On this point, a few courts have actually found humans negli-
gent for failing to follow the advice provided to them by a computer. Two early
cases on this point was Wells v. U.S. and Klein v. U.S. In Wells, a court inferred
negligence on the part of a human pilot based on evidence he switched from auto-
pilot to manual control in a crisis situation.2 In this example, the brain of a
machine was considered the better decision maker than that of the human. And in
Klein, the court found that in cases of negligence, while the pilot is not required to
use autopilot on a landing, his failure to do so was thought inconsistent with good
operating procedure and evidence of a failure of due care. Can we conclude from
these above examples that there ought to be a law protecting artificially intelligent
machines from humans? That’s an interesting question, but I don’t really mean to
imply that artificial intelligence is always superior to humans and will always be
benevolent. In fact, I am more concerned with the potential dark side to artificial
intelligence, than I am living in a world where artificial intelligence serves
humanity.
Of course, “artificially intelligent brains” do far more than drive cars, now days
semi-autonomous drones deliver packages, some robots assist physicians in sur-
gery, and “artificial intelligence” writes sports and weather reports, or makes stock
trades. All of these tasks require an impressive amount of intelligence and in some
cases complex motor skills by the machine; however, no one would seriously think
robots with these abilities are anywhere near human levels of intelligence. Instead,
we humans think that robots with the cognitive and perceptual abilities in the
above examples are simply remarkable tools to serve us, and we have the general
notion that as advances in technology continues, the future will give us an even
better set of tools to meet our needs. I believe this is a naïve view of the future,
with dangerous implications for humanity. Agreeing with this position, Elon
Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Telsa Motors, describes advances in artificial intelli-
gence as “summoning the demon” and thinks that by creating a rival to human
intelligence we are simultaneously building the biggest threat facing the world.3 If
we accept the viewpoint advocated by Nick Bostrom, director of Cambridge’s

1Adrienne Lafrance, 2015, When Google Self-Driving Cars Are in Accidents, Humans Are to
Blame, at: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/every-single-time-a-google-self-
driving-car-crashed-a-human-was-to-blame/395183/.
2Wells v. U.S., 16 Av.Cas. 17914 (W.D. Wash. 1981); Klein v. U.S., 13 Av.Cas. 18137 (D. Md. 1975).
3Samuel Gibbs, 2014, Elon Musk: Artificial Intelligence is our Biggest Existential Threat, at:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/27/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-ai-biggest-
existential-threat.
Placing an Exponent on Intelligence 73

Future of Humanity Institute, that artificial intelligence could pose an existential

threat to humanity, then how do we, through our courts and legislators, respond?
Some propose completely banning research on artificial intelligence, others pro-
pose coding “friendliness” into the “minds” of artificial intelligence (likewise will
a future artificial intelligence breed docile humans given our aggressive nature?),
while others propose government regulations designed to give artificial intelli-
gence certain rights, and to deny it others. On the last point I believe that there
already is an emerging body of law, primarily in the field of intellectual property
and constitutional law that speaks to the issue of regulating the architecture and
output of an artificially intelligent brain, including the thoughts and speech pro-
duced by an artificial intelligence. While these laws and government regulations
were enacted to protect the rights of humans and not self-aware machines, I
believe they may also contribute to an emerging law of cyborgs, that is, they repre-
sent a set of laws that could serve as precedence for future artificially intelligent
machines that have reached human levels of intelligence and then argue for rights.
Elon Musk is not alone in his warnings about the potential threat that artificial
intelligence could pose to humanity. Cambridge cosmologist Martin Rees, the for-
mer Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, addressed similar top-
ics in his 2004 book, Our Final Hour: A Scientist’s Warning,4 as did computer
scientist, Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems in his 2000 article published
in  Wired, “Why the Future doesn’t Need Us.”5 Yet another concern expressed by
some prominent researchers in artificial intelligence and robotics is that by the end
of this century we will either be serving the artificially intelligent machines that
we are in the process of creating now (who eventually will take charge of their
own design), or we could be inconsequential to them and relegated to being the
second most intelligent species on the planet. But there may be a third alternative,
as proposed by robotics expert Hans Moravec, Google’s Ray Kurzweil, and by this
author discussed throughout this book- and that alternative is to merge with
“them,” thus becoming the product of our technological future and not relegated to
the status of bystander.
For reasons discussed below, many of the public are unaware how close we are
to a future consisting of machines with human-or-beyond levels of intelligence,
and still others (including some prominent AI researchers and philosophers) out-
right dismiss a future with strong artificial intelligence as either impossible, the
subject of science fiction, or too far in the future to give serious thought now.6 I
think those among the public and academia, who dismiss the dramatic rise of arti-
ficial intelligence and its implications for humanity fail to realize that the basic
technologies necessary to create artificially intelligent machines are here now,
improving exponentially, and leading to the design of machines that will match

4Martin Rees, 2004, Our Final Hour: A Scientist’s Warning, Basic Books; Nick Bostrum, 2014,

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford University Press.

5Bill Joy, 2000, Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, Wired 8.04.
6Miguel Nicholelis, 2013, The Brain is Not Computable, MIT Technology Review.
74 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

humans in intelligence and motor skills, and possibly within 20–30 years. As we

get closer to human-like artificial intelligence, I argue that a “law of artificially
intelligent brains” will be necessary for our legal institutions to develop and that
such an approach will provide a framework in which to discuss many of the social
and legal questions that will be shaped by the rise of artificial intelligence. Such
issues will speak to the law as it applies to tort liability, contract rights, and crimi-
nal culpability for artificially intelligent machines operating autonomously from
humans. But a “law of artificially intelligent brains” will also focus on the soft-
ware, operating systems, and computer architecture of the artificial brain itself.
Given the importance of determining the role of artificial intelligence in society,
this chapter is not the first to address these issues, there are a number of law
review papers and books written on law and robotics (for example, see Gabriel
Hallevy, When Robots Kill: Artificial Intelligence Under Criminal Law and papers
by Law Professor Ryan Calo), and I expect there will be more interest by nations
at the forefront of the robotics revolution and the European Union as artificial
intelligence becomes more tightly integrated into society, and more autonomous of
humans, while asserting claims to be self-aware, and arguing for rights.7
With these observations in mind, this chapter examines some of the legal and
policy issues that relate to the design of artificially intelligent brains. To discuss
these topics I borrow heavily from current law which relates to the software writ-
ten for computers, and the law relating to the computer architecture which is
essential for the machines ability to compute and thus to reason and “think”—
these areas of law can be thought of as a law of artificially intelligent brains.

The Numbers Behind Brains

As I lecture on the topic of our cyborg future to merge with artificially intelligent
machines, I inevitably get the following question- how close are we to computer
hardware and software that matches the human brain in performance? Several
prominent roboticists and inventors seem to have settled on a timeframe that is
unsettling to some- before midcentury. But first, what computing resources are
necessary to reach the goal of human-like artificial intelligence? That is, what stor-
age capacity and raw processing power must an artificially intelligent brain have to
match the human brain? And if human and machine brains had similar function-
alities and architectures, would the same laws apply to both entities? When think-
ing about this question, recall that chimpanzees have brains with architectures
that are similar to a human brain and a chimp’s behavior is that of a distant rela-
tive; yet chimps receive none or almost no individual rights in most jurisdictions.

7Gabriel Hallevy, 2013, When Robots Kill: Artificial Intelligence Under Criminal Law,

Northeastern Press; Ryan Calo, 2015, Robotics and the Lessons of Cyberlaw, 103 California
Law Review.
The Numbers Behind Brains 75

To receive human-like rights, is a high hurdle to pass; humanity is not generous

affording rights to other animals. Doing some “back of the napkin” calculations,
we can answer the question posed about the computational resources necessary to
match a human brain by looking at the numbers involved in reverse engineering
the brain.
For nearly a decade, neuroscientists, computer engineers, and roboticists have
been working to reverse engineer the human brain so they can ultimately create a
computing architecture based on how the mind works. The key to reverse-engi-
neering the human brain lies in decoding and simulating the cerebral cortex—the
seat of cognition. The human cerebral cortex has about 22 billion neurons with
trillions of synapses. A supercomputer capable of running a software simulation of
the human brain, according to some researchers, would require a machine with a
computational capacity of at least 36.8 petaflops and a memory capacity of 3.2
petabytes.8 All interesting and technologically possible, but an important and prag-
matic question is how many lines of code would be required to simulate a brain?
Terry Sejnowski, head of the computational neurobiology lab at the Salk Institute
for Biological Studies agrees with Ray Kurzweil’s assessment that about a million
lines of code may be enough to accomplish that task. Intuitively this number
seems low to me, but I did say we are doing “back of the napkin” calculations, so
let’s see how the math works. According to Kurzweil: “The design of the brain lies
in the blueprint provided by the genome. The human genome has three billion
base pairs or six billion bits, which is about 800 million bytes before compres-
sion.”9 Kurzweil notes that “eliminating redundancies and applying lossless com-
pression, that information can be compressed into about 50 million bytes.”10
About half of that information is about the brain, which comes down to 25 million
bytes, or roughly a million lines of code.11 I have read rebuttals to this number as
being far too low, but what amazes me, is that even if we increase the lines of code
necessary to simulate the brain even by orders of magnitude; given exponentially
accelerating technologies, we are already creating the technology and gaining the
knowledge to unlock the mysteries of the brain, so it’s just a matter of time before
we can simulate the brain with a million lines of code, or even 100 million lines of
code if necessary.
So how close are we to an artificial intelligence with human-like abilities, that
is, a being that might argue for legal protection for the software, algorithms, and
integrated circuits that allow it to think, problem solve, and to control the motion of
its body? In his books and papers, robotics expert Professor Hans Moravec put the
2020s as the time period of human-like robots, this estimate also corresponds to
Ray Kurzweils prediction. In a paper Hans Moravec published in 1998 (author of

8Priya Ganapati, 2010, Reverse-Engineering of Human Brain Likely by 2030, Expert Predicts, at:

http://www.wired.com/2010/08/reverse-engineering-brain-kurzweil/.
9Id.
10Id.
11Id.
76 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence and Robot: Mere
Machine to Transcendent Mind), which was based on his seminal work on com-
puter vision for robots he estimated that about 100 million MIPS of computer
power would be necessary to match “overall human behavior” and that about 100
million megabytes were necessary to match the capacity of the 100-trillion synapse
brain.12 Both of these numbers are less than those provided in the material above
(the brain computes in the petaflop range), but since we are already in the petaflop
computing range with super computers, we have matched the raw processing
power of the brain based on estimates of its raw processing ability to computer.
Further, the speed of progress in artificial intelligence is also accelerating as a few
years after Moravec’s comments, IBMs Deep Blue defeated the world chess cham-
pion using chips designed to operate at 3 million MIPS, or 1/30 of Moravec’s total
estimate of human performance (as an aside- if a computer completes 200,000
instructions in 0.02 s, then 200,000/0.02 would equal 10 MIPS).
Of course we know from neurophysiology that the cerebral cortex with its 22
billion neurons is critically important for human cognition. And to emphasize here
the difficulty of building the architecture to create a brain and thus why develop-
ing a “law of artificially intelligent brains” will be extremely challenging, if a rea-
sonable estimate of the number of synapses per neuron is 12,500 (some estimate
the number to be about 10,000) then the 22 billion cortical neurons alone would
require something on the order of 275 trillion transistors to match the number of
synapses in the cortex (we are several years out from creating such chips but we
will get there). But this level of complexity doesn’t take into account the changing
structure of neural networks as we learn and create new memories, and that there
may be subcellular processing occurring moving the brain from the paradigm of a
single computer to a self-contained Internet with billions of simpler nodes work-
ing together in a massively parallel network. So, I view estimates that are specific
to when we may build a machine that reaches human levels of intelligence, with
a strong interest, and believe that it will happen, but I would not be surprised that
as we learn more about the brain and specifically the cortex we may find levels of
complexity that will move back the date for the Singularity. However, what’s a few
years, or decades, or even centuries after all the planet is 45.4 million centuries
old! Clearly the human brain is incredibly complex, but operating under Moore’s
law we are now at petaflop (1015) computing with supercomputers, and eventually
will reach exaflop computing (1018), at that point computers will be much faster
than us based on raw processing power, performing a quintillion calculations per
second. My point is this, I fully acknowledge how complex the human brain is,
and that modeling its performance will be extremely difficult (the grandest chal-
lenge yet for humanity), but the difficulty of creating human-like artificial intel-
ligence, should be considered against the backdrop of exponentially accelerating
technologies, and particularly the rapid progress being made in neuroscience and
machine learning.

12Hans Moravec, When Will Computer Hardware Match the Human Brain? Journal of Evolution

and Technology, Vol. 1, 1998.

Law and Brains 77

Law and Brains

Acknowledging the challenge of creating an artificially intelligent brain, let’s now

discuss more specifically laws that might apply to an artificial intelligence. If we
(and our machines that help us) can write code (combined with the necessary com-
putational resources) to create an artificially intelligent brain, what current laws
relate to the computer code and algorithms that comprise the brain of an artifi-
cially intelligent machine? Several areas of law are relevant to this question and
thus to our cyborg future, including copyright and patent law, trade secret law, and
Constitutional law on the speech output and algorithms of an artificially intelligent
brain. Both copyright law and patent law are applicable to some extent to the pro-
tection of software and algorithms (meaning the owner of the software has certain
rights under copyright law) that contribute to an artificially intelligent brain, and as
I have stated throughout this book, contribute to an emerging law of cyborgs.
Specifically, an owner of a copyrighted software program has the right (with some
exceptions) to: copy the software, create a derivative or modified version of it, and
distribute copies of the software to the public by license, sale or otherwise. Are
these rights relevant for an artificially intelligent brain? Anyone exercising any of
these exclusive rights without permission of the software copyright owner is an
infringer and subject to liability for damages or statutory fines.13 Interestingly, one
could literally steal the mind of an artificially intelligent brain by copying its soft-
ware and algorithms and if so would be an infringer under copyright law.
Similarly, in the cyborg future brain scanning technologies could also be used to
copy the thoughts generated by a human mind but since the “software of the
mind” is not copyright protected (the output of the mind can be), the person would
not be an infringer; maybe we need to change the law.
Out of necessity, absent direct statutes and case law involving artificial intelli-
gence, we look to “human law” as a way to frame issues involving artificial intelli-
gence. In the early days of computing, software developers turned to the statutory
protection offered under the Copyright Act to protect the intellectual property rights
associated with their programs, arguing that the writing of code was similar to other
forms of writing. Similar logic should apply to the code written for the operating
system and programs under the direction of an artificially intelligent brain. In the
U.S. Copyright Act, the general requirements for copyright are: “original works of
authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later devel-
oped, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated,
either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.”14 Further, the Copyright Act
defines a computer program (think of the software used by a robot to parse images
in a scene), as “A set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in
a computer to bring about a certain result.”15 Examples include software which ena-
bles computer vision, robot navigation, or trial-and-error learning.

1317 U.S. Code § 102—Subject matter of copyright.

14U.S. Copyright Act, 17 USC §§ 100 et. seq.
15U.S. Copyright Act, Sect. 101.
78 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

When a computer program is written out on a piece of paper, copyright exists in

that work upon its creation so long as the traditional copyright requirements are
met (basically, the work must be original, that is, the work must have been devel-
oped independently by its author, and there must have been some minimum crea-
tivity involved in the work). So, software, which is a central component of an
artificially intelligent brain, is clearly copyrightable subject matter. We know that
the source code, that is, the language used to write programs for an artificial intel-
ligence is copyright protected, but what about object code? This question was
answered in Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp., in which a U.S.
Circuit Court ruled that programs in both source code and object code are copy-
right protected.16 Interestingly, the court rejected the argument that because object
code only communicates directly to a machine it should not be protected, this
raises the possibility that machine-to-machine communication in an abstract lan-
guage (a form of machine telepathy), would be copyright protected.
But what about software not written on paper but etched on a chip that com-
promises the hardware architecture of an artificially intelligent brain? In Franklin,
the question of whether programs encoded on chips, are utilitarian objects- and
thus not subject to copyright protection was addressed. The Franklin court rejected
the argument that programs were solely “utilitarian” noting that the medium on
which the program was encoded should not determine whether the program is sub-
ject to copyright. This bodes well for an artificial intelligence arguing for rights
to the content of its mind; based on copyright law the memories and thoughts of
an artificially intelligent brain written in source or object code may be copyright
protected when they are fixed within the integrated circuits compromising an arti-
ficially intelligent brain.
Of course, software is more than just individual lines of code, collectively, code
performs functions that are essential to the operations of an artificially intelligent
brain. In Franklin the court rejected the argument that operating systems are not
copyright protected because they are “processes, systems or methods of
­operation.”17 Instead the court ruled that an operating system is to be considered a
work of authorship under the Copyright Act. This holding by the court is directly
relevant to an artificially intelligent brain; for example, consider robots, a technol-
ogy leading us towards the Singularity, clearly robots are getting smarter from one
generation to the next based on improvements in their software, algorithms, and
the “physical design” of the architecture of their brain. Since an operating system,
that is, the backbone of an artificially intelligent brain, is eligible for copyright
protection, it cannot be reproduced by another, or a derivative of the artificially
intelligent brain made without permission from the copyright holder. The owner of
the copyright for software comprising an artificially intelligent brain may (or may
not) be the owner of the robot (the owner of the robot may be licensing the soft-
ware), but in the future the ownership of an artificial intelligence by a human may

16Id.
17Apple Computer v. Franklin Computer, 714 F.2d 1240 (3d Cir. 1983).
Law and Brains 79

be questionable (the 13th Amendment prohibits slavery or involuntary servitude).

And if in the future artificially intelligent robots are emancipated from a human
owner, copyright law may be used by them as one form of protection for their
speech; and software is considered a form of speech.
Summarizing the discussion to this point, the main features of an artificially
intelligent brain consists of programs, an operating system, and algorithms, and
courts have established that the literal elements of a programs code are protected
by copyright law, but there are more issues to discuss for artificially intelligent
brains. For example, in Computer Associates International, Inc. v. Altai, Inc.,18 the
issue for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals was whether and to what extent cop-
yright protects the non-literal elements of program code, that is, the structure,
sequence, and organization of the program. As a basic point, copyright protects the
expression of an idea but not the idea itself (ideas are protected by patents or to
some extent trade secret law). So for an artificially intelligent brain how the soft-
ware is written makes all the difference in terms of acquiring protection for its
code.
So where do we draw the line between the expression and idea in programs? In
Baker v. Selden the court stated that things that “must necessarily be used as inci-
dent to” the idea are not subject to copyright protection.19 This opinion, however,
gave no advice on how to separate an idea from its expression. Facing a similar
issue, Whelan v. Jaslow, a landmark case in defining principles that apply to the
copyright of computer software, the Court attempted to delineate the differences
between “idea and expression by saying that the function of the work is the idea
and everything else not necessary to the function is the expression of the idea.”20
But other courts have found this approach unworkable, and have adopted the filtra-
tion approach taken by the Second Circuit in Computer Associates Int’l. v. Atltai.21
That approach separates the code’s ideas and public domain elements from its
expression and then extends copyright protection only to the expression.22 In the
abstraction-filtration-comparison test the court first determines the allegedly
infringed program’s constituent structural parts. Then, the parts are filtered to
extract any non-protected elements. Non-protected elements include: elements
made for efficiency (i.e. elements with a limited number of ways it can be
expressed and thus incidental to the idea), elements dictated by external factors
(i.e. standard techniques), and design elements taken from the public domain.23
Any of these non-protected elements are thrown out and the remaining elements
are compared with the allegedly infringing program’s elements to determine

18Computer Associates International, Inc. v. Altai, Inc, 982 F.2d 693 (2d Cir. 1992).
19Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99 (1979); Copyright Act § 102(b) (the subject matter of copyright).
20Whelan Assocs., Inc. v. Jaslow Dental Lab. Inc., 609 F. Supp. 1307, 225 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 156

(E.D. Pa. 1985).

21Id., note 18.
22Id. note 20.
23Id. note 18.
80 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

substantial similarity. In my view the above approaches to determining which

aspects of software are copyright protected will be difficult to apply to the soft-
ware of an artificially intelligent brain, just as determining which aspects of
human thinking represent function versus expression would be difficult. For that
reason courts may need to devise another test suitable for the cyborg age in which
to decide what aspects of code are copyrightable subject matter especially the code
comprising the input and output of an artificially intelligent brain.

More About Artificially Intelligent Brains

Repeating a basic point, an artificially intelligent brain will consist of the com-
puter architecture, software, and algorithms to direct its behavior and to make
sense of the world. Will such a brain with appropriate computational resources
and software reach consciousness? This is a question of great debate, but there is
an established neuroscientific consensus that the human mind is largely an emer-
gent property of the information processing resulting from the 100 billion neurons
comprising its architecture. And we know from the above discussion that much
of the artificially intelligent brains software is “protected” by intellectual property
law. So an emerging law of artificially intelligent brains is beginning to take shape.
And interestingly, while we can conclude that there is no “law of neurons,” there is
a law of software. Thus, the brain of an artificially intelligent machine can be scru-
tinized under the law in ways a human brain cannot.
Another question of interest to those designing the cyborg future and wondering
how the law might apply is whether artificially intelligent brains will surpass the
human brain in capabilities. As we did above, let’s think like an engineer for a
moment and focus on the quantitative aspects of brains. Given that the electro-
chemical signals that human brains use to achieve thought travels at about
150 m/s, this is orders of magnitude slower than the speed at which electronic sig-
nals are sent by computers. Therefore, a massively parallel electronic counterpart
of a human biological brain will be able to think millions and eventually trillions
of times faster than our naturally evolved system. Also, consider that neurons can
generate a maximum of about 1000 action potentials per second, whereas the clock
speed of microprocessors reached 5.5 GHz in 2013, which is about five million
times faster, this means that in some respects, computer brains are already superior
in performance to human brains.24 But supercomputers also can have energy
requirements that compete with some municipalities, and have grown larger than
the laboratory-sized calculating machines at the infancy of computers.25 The
human brain, meanwhile, uses roughly 20 watts and occupies a small volume.

24Mind Uploading, Wikipedia, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading.

25Geoffrey Mohan, 2014, Cognitive computer chip apes brain architecture, at: http://www.latimes
.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-brain-chip-computer-20140807-story.html.
More About Artificially Intelligent Brains 81

However, since computers are improving in computational performance exponen-

tially, we can expect a laptop computer to have the computational power of the
human brain within a few years.
The recent rise of artificial intelligence has been spurred by many factors,
including a tremendous decrease in the price of information technologies com-
bined with an exponential increase in performance. With so much computing
power available, algorithms are more-and-more capable of understanding lan-
guages, recognizing images, and performing more autonomously from humans.26
For example, artificially intelligent machines in manufacturing are not only getting
smarter, but their costs are tumbling- and this price performance relationship is
pervasive in all information technologies. On this point, consider that the labor
costs for an essential technology for the future development of artificially intelli-
gent machines- electronics manufacturing has plummeted. For electronics manu-
facturing, robots are becoming so cost effective that in many cases it already costs
just a few dollars an hour to use a robot for a routine assembly task versus six
times more for an average human worker. How long will it be before the robots are
designing their next generation based on their own criteria and displace even more
humans from the workplace?
Interestingly, Hans Moravec commented that human-like performance from
machines will only make economic sense when their “brains” cost about $1000-
and when can we expect that? Our evidence suggests around 2029 for replicating
the human brain. It is important to note for our cyborg future, following Moore’s
law, the price-performance of computers will continue to double every 18 months
or so at least for the next decade, and once we reach human levels of performance
for robots, they will continue to get smarter, after all, their evolution is not based
on biology and thus does not rely on random mutations in genes to work their way
into the human genome. Still some critics argue that Moore’s law is running out of
steam, but if the past trend in computing technology continues, another technology
will take over for current chip design techniques, and will continue the exponential
improvement in computing power to midcentury and beyond. The amazing power
of exponential growth in information technologies is experienced by people every
day, in fact, just consider, we all carry the proof of exponentially improving tech-
nologies in our hand as the cell phone we use now is a million times cheaper and
a thousand times more powerful than a supercomputer of the mid-seventies. And
by the way, every cell phone call is routed using artificial intelligence. Many don’t
realize it, but we are completely dependent on artificial intelligence now, from air
traffic control systems to home appliances, artificial intelligence is in the back-
ground, silently doing its job.
Continuing Hans Moravec’s comments above on the desirability of a $1000
computer brain, as far back as 1999 and in his recent writings, Ray Kurzweil pre-
dicted that by the 2020s a $1,000 laptop would have the computing power and

26Rise of the Machines, 2015, The Economist, at: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21650526-

artificial-intelligence-scares-peopleexcessively-so-rise-machines.
82 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

storage capacity of a human brain (100 billion neurons, 100 trillion synapses).27 In

fact, we are well on our way to creating a low-cost computer with this amount of
raw processing power. Relying on exponential growth curves, Kurzweil predicted
that the hardware needed to emulate the human brain could be ready as early as
2020—this could be done using technologies such as graphics processing units
which use a massively parallel architecture, which I might add is an ideal architec-
ture for brain-software algorithms. While critics that are opposed to the idea of
artificially intelligent machines gaining human-like intelligence worry that this
outcome could prove disastrous to humanity, many also acknowledge that we are
now entering a time when computers have the processing power necessary to
match the brain’s computational abilities. But more than computational power is
needed to create human-like artificial intelligence. For example, critics point out
that current software is nowhere near being able to model the human brain in its
ability to process information and make decisions.
While the critics are right that computational resources are necessary but not
sufficient to create human-like intelligence, still the software for artificial intelli-
gence and the algorithms to mimic the decision making of the brain (that is, to
simulate neuronal networks) are also making great strides. In fact, Kurzweil pre-
dicts that software to accurately model the brain will take only a little longer to
develop than acquiring the processing power of the brain, putting the date at
2029.28 But in my view while creating artificial intelligence that matches a human
in ability will be a landmark event in humanity’s history, what humanity really
needs to focus on is what happens after the Singularity is reached- how do we sur-
vive in the shadow of intelligent beings far superior to us? A major thesis of this
book is that for humanity’s survival, we need to merge with our technological
progeny, or as Hans Moravec puts it- our “mind children.” For us to merge with
artificially intelligent machines, enter cyborg technologies (which will be a key
factor for our future survivability). As computing technology keeps advancing at
an exponential rate, within a few decades, we will have the combined intelligence
of the human race accessible by a neuroprosthetic device implanted within our
brain. This capability will be essential for the survival of our species once the
Singularity is reached by artificial intelligence.
Even though the Singularity is predicted to be only a few decades away, com-
puters already have a big advantage over us: they are interconnected via the
Internet and share information with each other billions of times faster than we
humans are able to do using the limited communication bandwidth provided to us
by nature. This means that a law of artificially intelligent brains needs to consider
how a collective form of artificial intelligence shares liability and other responsi-
bilities under the law. The most accurate predictor of the future (at least within the
timeframe of a few decades), is Google’s Ray Kurzweil who says that by the

27Ray Kurzweil, 2006, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Penguin

Books.
28Id.
More About Artificially Intelligent Brains 83

2040s, non-biological intelligence will be a billion times more capable than bio-
logical intelligence, that is, us.29 The reader may be wondering how is this even
possible and why so soon? After all, current artificial intelligence, while remarka-
bly smart in limited domains, lacks the general intelligence and common sense
displayed by a 4 year old. But the problem that people have in understanding the
future, as pointed out by Kurzweil in his fascinating books about what the future
might offer (see for example, The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity
is Near), is that people are linear thinkers, they extrapolate the world they live in
now along a straight line to predict where technology will be in the future.
Centuries ago linear thinking about technology worked quite well, but around the
middle of the nineteenth century, the rate of technological advancements began to
noticeably speed up. Considering computing resources, plotting the exponential
growth of many computing-based technologies has shown that the growth rate for
information technologies is decidedly not linear.
Believe me a liner scale versus exponential scale for technological progress and
particularly the brain of an artificial intelligence makes all the difference. I’ll prove
that to you with an example. Do you want to be rich? Tongue-in-cheek, I argue it’s
easy to do. Here’s how- let’s use our spare change and allocate a 31-day month to
reach our goal of riches. The first day of the month, place a penny on day one of
the calendar, and double the amount placed on the calendar for each additional day
until the end of the month. What happens? The second day you have 2 cents, and
the third day 4 cents, the fourth day 8 cents and by the end of the week you have
64 cents total. One week of stacking pennies has gone by, are you feeling rich yet?
Continuing, day 14 you have $81.92. At that point I say to you, you are about half
way to the end of the month, do you still believe me that you are going to be very
rich in 17 more days based on doubling pennies from one day to the next? Most
people respond no, they use linear thinking to scale the problem in their mind, and
claim that they will end up with a few hundred dollars at most (which is a lot more
than they thought they would have at the beginning of the month). So, I continue
the exercise (with your pennies!). By day 21 we have $10,485.76 and it’s definitely
getting interesting, but only 10 days to go until the end of the month and we’re
not rich yet. By day 25 you have accumulated $167,772.16, and by now you are
likely fascinated with the concept of exponential growth. Finishing the exercise,
day 31 we have $10,737,418.24. To reiterate the point about exponential growth,
we achieved that amazing result due to the doubling of pennies from one day to
the next. It turns out that doubling pennies has a lot to do with the rise of arti-
ficial intelligence, the performance that their brains will be able to achieve, and
our future to merge with artificially intelligent machines. Given that information
technologies are improving exponentially (note that the magnitude of the exponent
signifying the growth is important), I think you will agree with me that remark-
able technologies await us. In fact, you may be thinking, a world of incredibly
smart tools to serve us, that’s the future which awaits humanity. But not so fast, the

29Id.
84 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

problem as I see it is that our tools will become much smarter than us (they may
even look like us, see Chap. 7: The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies), and then
who will be master and who will be the servant?
While the doubling of technological resources is important so too is the time
frame between doublings (which also makes all the difference). In our get rich
example, instead of using days on a calendar, let’s say we used 10 year time peri-
ods, so after 10 years, we have 2 cents, and in 20 years we have 4 cents, eventually
we will get to over ten million as we did in the above example, but who wants to
wait three centuries? I argue that exponentially improving technologies will
change everything due to the power of doublings and the short time intervals
between the doublings. Let’s say starting now that humans doubled their intelli-
gence from one generation to the next. Clearly that’s impossible, but if so, about
18 years from now, a person with twice the intelligence of the general population
would be born. The problem is we can’t significantly alter our intelligence in that
time period. Because we are products of the exceedingly slow process of evolu-
tion, the cycle time for improving human intelligence is measured in millennium.
But there’s a solution to keeping up with increasingly intelligent machines- expo-
nentially improving technologies integrated into our body. According to Moore’s
law the cycle time to double the number of transistors on a chip is about
18 months. Using the above example, while the human had to wait 18 years to
double its intelligence, in the same time period, a computer would have experi-
enced 12 doublings of computational power (note that computer power is neces-
sary but not sufficient to produce artificial intelligence, so I am not implying that
the AI would be 12 times smarter). Referring back to our example using penny’s to
get rich, 12 doublings is the difference between 2 cents (one time period) versus
$20.48 (12 time periods); so you can see if we remain as we are now, the brain of
our “competition” will rapidly leave us behind. Remember, because supercomput-
ers are already computing in the petaflop range (a quadrillion floating point opera-
tions per second)- so double 20 petaflops 12 times and then compare that to the
processing power of the brain (which is a petaflop computing machine and without
technical enhancements will continue to be so based on biology). The important
point is this, with the use of exponentially accelerating technologies, we are essen-
tially placing an exponent on the increase in computational power of the technolo-
gies which may lead to an artificial intelligence that matches then exceeds us. But
in theory the same principle could also work for the human brain, that is, once the
brain is wirelessly connected to the cloud through a neuroprosthetic device. In
fact, by 2045, (as predicted by Ray Kurzweil, we could multiply our intelligence a
billion fold by linking wirelessly from our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in
the cloud.30
As should be clear by now, predictions about the future are a byproduct of
understanding the power of Moore’s Law, and more generally of the “Law of

30Peter Diamandis, 2015, Ray Kurzweil’s Mind-Boggling Predictions for the Next 25 Years, at:

http://singularityhub.com/2015/01/26/ray-kurzweils-mind-boggling-predictions-for-the-next-
25-years/.
More About Artificially Intelligent Brains 85

Accelerating Returns”.31 If the cycle time to double computational processing

power is about 18 months, then given the power of super computers now, a few
doublings represents an incredible improvement in computing power over where
we are now. For example, if we start with 40 petaflops, after three doublings (less
than 6 years) we are already at 320 petaflops; 8x the computing power in less than
6 years is an amazing increase (I’ll take that in the stock market!). And given such
a short cycle time between doublings, it is no wonder that Kurzweil and others
have been so successful predicting remarkable engineering advances, they only
have to postulate about what’s possible by exponentially improving technologies
20 years out or less. Generally, information technologies follow an exponential
growth curve based on the principle that the computing power that enables them
doubles every 18 months or so. In fact, information technology has seen exponen-
tial growth for decades. This has led to vast improvements in memory, processing
power, software algorithms, voice recognition and overall machine intelligence.32
And with the increased raw processing power for computers, so too have advance-
ments been made in algorithms to emulate thinking, and the design of chips which
process information more as the brain does (mostly parallel processing) compared
to the computers of past decades designed to process information based on the von
Neuman computer architecture. The law which relates to algorithms and computer
chips is, of course, part of the emerging law of cyborgs and artificially intelligent
brains.

Machine Learning and Brain Architectures

Information technologies improving exponentially are not the only area of science
and engineering making tremendous strides leading to artificial general intelli-
gence and our future to merge with artificially intelligent machines- so too is neu-
roscience generating exponentially growing volumes of data and knowledge on
specific aspects of the brain.33 In fact, thousands of neuroscientists are working to
map the brain across all its levels and functions. It is likely that research in neuro-
science will ultimately reveal the detailed mechanisms which led from genes to
cells to neuronal circuits, and ultimately to cognition and behavior—the biology
that makes us human and conscious. This knowledge will help transform comput-
ing making artificial general intelligence all that more possible. But of course
developing human-like artificial intelligence will be extremely difficult and chal-
lenging, in fact, the human brain performs computations inaccessible to the most

31Id.
32See generally, 2029 timeline contents, at: http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2029.htm#.
VXxb1e_bJjo.
33European Commission, 2014, From lighter airplanes to new treatments for brain diseases, at:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-14-531_en.htm.
86 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

powerful of today’s computers—all while consuming no more power than a light

bulb. According to Europe’s digital agenda for the future which is part of Europe’s
Human Brain Project, understanding how the brain “computes reliably with unreli-
able elements, and how different elements of the brain communicate, can provide
the key to a completely new category of hardware, neuromorphic computing sys-
tems; and to a paradigm shift for computing as a whole.”34 The economic and
industrial impact is potentially enormous but the ultimate result will likely be an
artificial intelligence that exceeds us unless our destiny is to merge with our tech-
nological progeny.
The phrase “artificial intelligence” often brings to mind futuristic visions of
human-like machines; however the ability of a machine to learn is a concept that is
already in play today. And the machines ability to learn is a direct result of its brain
architecture, software, and algorithms. So how do current computers learn and
acquire the knowledge to be intelligent? One approach to creating human-like arti-
ficial intelligence is to take a “machine learning approach” which allows a com-
puter program to discern the key features of one dataset and then apply what it has
learned to make predictions about another.35 Familiar examples of this machine
learning approach includes according to Biome, “optical character recognition,
spam filtering, automatic face recognition, and various data mining applications.”36
While a super computer has the raw processing power of a brain (in the range
of petaflop computing), without implementing the rules/algorithms which enable
thinking this amount of processing power cannot lead to artificial general intelli-
gence. But clearly advances are being made using a variety of approaches to create
computers that think and reason more as humans do; some of the techniques rely
on algorithms, and others on the design of the architecture of the computing hard-
ware itself. For example, one of the techniques being used to create a computer
that “thinks” is an approach termed “deep learning” which is actually a refinement
of the field of machine learning.37 With deep learning, machines teach themselves
without human intervention by crunching large sets of data and then statistically
analyzing the data looking for patterns. This type of machine learning is especially
powerful because it represents a way of getting computers to know things when
they see them, by producing for themselves the rules programmers cannot pains-
takingly specify for every event and contingency that may occur in the world. Here
I should make the point, no matter what the algorithm, software, or computing
architecture, these components of “thinking” contribute to a developing field of
jurisprudence relating to a law of artificially intelligent brains.

34The Human Brain Project, The European Commission, at: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/

en/human-brain-project.
35Peter, Flach, 2012, Machine Learning: The Art and Science of Algorithms that Make Sense

of Data, Cambridge University Press; Nikhil Buduma, 2015, Fundamentals of Deep Learning:
Designing Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence Algorithms, O’Reilly Media.
36The rise of machine learning: how to avoid the pitfalls in data analysis, 2014, at: http://

biome.biomedcentral.com/the-rise-of-machine-learning-how-to-avoid-the-pitfalls-in-data-analysis/.
37Id. note 35.
Machine Learning and Brain Architectures 87

Discussing whether algorithms, basic components of an artificially intelligent

brain, are a form of speech, Duke University Law Professor Stuart Benjamin
points out that “many human activities involve the transmission of bits, according
to the algorithms and protocols created by humans and implemented by
machines.”38 In my view, Benjamin’s use of the phrase “created by humans” is a
qualifier applied to speech that may disappear within a few decades as artificial
intelligence gets smarter.39 Benjamin poses the question- “Are these algorithm-
based outputs speech, under the First Amendment?” We know that computers
“think” by manipulating bits, done by using algorithms such as those that statisti-
cally analyze data, for example, to detect lines and edges in a scene to identify an
image. In fact, computer code is basically a set of instructions and algorithms (is
the human mind the same?). According to Benjamin, even if algorithms are not
speech their output may be and thus subject to at least some First Amendment pro-
tection. Of importance for a law of artificially intelligent brains using software and
algorithms to produce behavioral outputs, is the case of Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc.,
in which the Supreme Court held that the creation and dissemination of informa-
tion are speech within the meaning of the First Amendment.40 According to
Professor Benjamin, by “extending the First Amendment to messages produced by
artificial intelligence, we would be treating the products of machines like those of
human minds.”41 Thus, in his view we could then say that speech was truly created
and not just transmitted, or aided, by a machine. In fact, the issue of whether the
output of a computer is speech was addressed in Brown v. Entertainment
Merchants Ass’n, where the output of video games were considered speech
because the court concluded they communicated ideas like a literary device.42 I
believe this holding serves as precedence for a future artificial intelligence claim-
ing rights to its speech. However, the issue of granting “free speech” to computers
is problematic, according to Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu.43 According to Wu,
“computer programs are utilitarian instruments, meant to serve us.”44 He points
out that “the First Amendment is intended to protect actual humans against state
censorship.”45 Wu argues that nonhuman or automated choices should not be
granted the full protection of the First Amendment, and often should not be con-
sidered speech at all. In Professor Wu’s view, to give computers the rights intended
for humans is to “elevate our machines above ourselves.”46 Responding to Wu’s
38Stuart Benjamin, Algorithms and Speech, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 161,
No. 6, May 2013, 1445−1494.
39Pamela Samuelson, Allocating Ownership Rights in Computer-Generated Works, 47 Pitt. L. Rev.

1185, 1985.
40Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 131 S.Ct. 2653 (2011).
41Stuart Benjamin, id., note 38.
42Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, 131 S.Ct. 2729 (2011).
43Tim Wu, Machine Speech, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol.161, 1495−1533.
44Id.
45Id.
46Id.
88 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

argument, I believe we are a few decades away from having to confront the issue
of whether artificial intelligence is superior to humans in intelligence because
information technologies are improving exponentially; at that point courts may
have no choice but to determine the boundaries of protection for speech produced
by artificially intelligent machines.
A central aspect of an artificially intelligent brain, is an algorithm, and when
considered solely as a mathematical formula expressing a universal principle of
nature (e.g., gravity), is not patentable, because the patent would create a huge and
fundamental monopoly over laws of nature. This general rule against patenting
algorithms was at one time applied to computer software, because software largely
consists of procedural instructions in mathematical form that makes a computer
accomplish a certain and definite result. Now days, the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office will allow patents on that aspect of an algorithm that accomplishes a useful
and concrete result, and provided the software patent is tied to a particular
machine or transforms an article into a different state. For example, in an impor-
tant case about the patentability of business methods expressed in code, State
Street, the court ruled that mathematical algorithms are nonpatentable only when
they are “nothing more than abstract ideas consisting of disembodied concepts that
are not useful.”47
Like the human brain, deep learning algorithms are used by artificially intelli-
gent machines in an attempt to learn multi-level representations of data, embody-
ing a hierarchy of factors that may explain them. Such algorithms have also been
demonstrated to be effective both at uncovering underlying structure in data, and
have been successfully applied to a large variety of problems ranging from image
classification, to natural language processing and speech recognition. Interestingly,
MIT researchers discovered that a deep-learning system designed to recognize and
classify scenes also learned how to recognize individual objects.48 To discover this
they used a deep learning system to train a successful scene-classifier, which
proved to be between 25 and 33 % more accurate than its best predecessor. This
result implies that scene-recognition and object-recognition systems could work in
concert or could be mutually reinforcing; this is one of many steps being made by
thousands of researchers in the direction of creating machines with human-like
thinking abilities.
Another promising approach that mimics human learning, and thus may consti-
tute a critically important aspect of knowledge acquisition for an artificially intelli-
gent brain, is being investigated by Professor Pieter Abbeel at UC Berkeley who with
colleagues has developed a type of reinforcement learning which works by having a
robot complete various tasks—putting a clothes hanger on a rack, assembling a toy
plane, screwing a cap on a water bottle, and more—without pre-programmed details

47State Street Bank and Trust Company v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed.
Cir. 1998).
48Yoshua Bengio, Ian Goodfellow, and Aaron Courville, Deep Learning, MIT Press, In

preparation.
Machine Learning and Brain Architectures 89

about its surroundings.49 “Most robotic applications are in controlled environments

where objects are in predictable positions,” said UC Berkeley faculty member Trevor
Darrell, director of the Berkeley Vision and Learning Center.50 According to Darrell,
“the challenge of putting robots into real-life settings, like homes or offices, is that
those environments are constantly changing.”51 To be intelligent, the robot must be
able to perceive and adapt to its surroundings. Conventional, but impractical,
approaches to helping a robot make its way through a 3D world include pre-pro-
gramming it to handle the vast range of possible scenarios or creating simulated
environments within which the robot operates.52 Instead, the UC Berkeley research-
ers are using deep learning techniques, which is loosely inspired by the neural cir-
cuitry of the human brain when it perceives and interacts with the world.53 The
techniques for machine learning described here are a clear departure from the brittle
method of having to program every rule into the mind of a machine else it doesn’t
know the rule, imagine parents having to do that with their kids.
In the world of artificial intelligence, deep learning programs create “neural
nets” in which layers of artificial neurons process overlapping raw sensory data,
whether it be sound waves or image pixels.54 This helps the robot recognize pat-
terns and categories among the data it is receiving. According to Sarah Yang,
“People who use Siri on their iPhones, Google’s speech-to-text program or Google
Street View might already have benefited from the significant advances deep learn-
ing has provided in speech and vision recognition.”55 However, applying a deep
reinforcement learning approach to motor tasks in unstructured 3D environments
has been far more challenging, since the task goes beyond the passive recognition
of images and sounds. UC Berkeley’s Trevor Darrell pointed out that “We still
have a long way to go before our robots can learn to clean a house or sort laundry,
but our initial results indicate that these kinds of deep learning techniques can
have a transformative effect in terms of enabling robots to learn complex tasks
entirely from scratch.”56 Based on Darrell’s work and other researchers exploring
the use of deep learning for robots, in the next 5–10 years, significant advances in
robot learning capabilities may occur.57 This observation coincides with my view
that based on the law of accelerating returns, we are entering a time period in

49Amy Jiang, 2015, UC Berkeley Researchers Enable Robots to Learn Through Trial, Error,
The Daily Californian, at: http://www.dailycal.org/2015/05/24/uc-berkeley-researchers-enable-
robots-to-learn-through-trial-error/.
50Sarah Yang, 2015, New ‘deep learning’ technique enables robot mastery of skills via trial and

error, at: deep-learning-robot-masters-skills-via-trial-and-error.

51Id.
52Id.
53Id.
54Id.
55Id.
56UC Berkeley Robot Learns By Trial and Error, 2015, Robot Magazine, at: http://www.

botmag.com/uc-berkeley-robot-learns-by-trial-and-error/.
57Sarah Young, Id., at note 50, discussing the work of Trevor Darrell.
90 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

which noticeable improvements will occur between one version of a robot and the
next (similarly to cell phones). So before the public is fully aware, the age of artifi-
cially intelligent robots with human-like intelligence may be upon us.
I should add, the principal forms of intellectual property protection for artifi-
cially intelligent machines which use neural networks in the United States include
patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and mask works (see next sections). As with pre-
vious forms of new technology, some aspects of neural networks and the software
of an artificially intelligent brain transcend existing legal categories. This is pri-
marily due to their dynamic nature, as well as the impossibility of predefining the
trained state of the system. As a result, these aspects of neural network technology
may be left with limited protection until Congress or the courts respond by cus-
tomizing current laws to fit this technology, much as they have already done with
computer software.

Brain Architecture

Generally, the architecture of a machine’s brain in combination with software and

algorithms will determine its ability to compute and therefore to exhibit intelli-
gence. One of the factors driving increased intelligence in machines is Moore’s
law- however the physical limits possible by etching circuits on a silicon chip is
beginning to be reached, so will Moore’s law run its course, and will the day of
exponential growth for computing resources be over? I don’t think so, there are
numerous techniques being investigated which if successful, will continue the
exponential growth of computing resources. In fact, IBM is studying the use of
fully integrated silicon chips using high-speed pulses of light to transmit informa-
tion. This means the chip will be able to move data at rapid speeds and longer
distances than current computing systems. Since the silicon photonic chip is wave-
length-multiplexed, it can transmit multiple wavelengths of light thus increasing
the bandwidth of information transmission compared to technology which exists
today. This discussion highlights the fact that while the human brain is based on a
particular architecture and a relatively slow transmission rate of signals, an artifi-
cially intelligent brain has the ability to dramatically change along with advances
in technology. For this reason, I wonder whether a law of artificially intelligent
brains will always lag behind technological developments? If so, our role as
human legislators will continually be challenged and perhaps in the future an arti-
ficial intelligence will get involved in the rule making.
One of the most interesting technologies for computing being investigated now
is quantum computing.58 Instead of encoding information as either a zero or a one,
as today’s computers do, quantum computers will use quantum bits, or qubits,

58Elenor G. Rielfel and Wolfgang H. Polak, 2014, Quantum Computing: A Gentle Introduction,

MIT Press.
Brain Architecture 91

whose states encode an entire range of possibilities by capitalizing on the quantum

phenomena of superposition and entanglement. If quantum computers are success-
fully developed, computations that would take today’s computers thousands of
years to perform, would take only a few minutes; imagine if our artificially intelli-
gent progeny had this capacity to think, imagine if we did. Another promising area
of research for computing is being led by IBM and the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and is aimed at the development of cognitive-
computing chips using new materials, such as gallium arsenide, carbon nanotubes,
and graphene. In fact, an IBM-led research team has created a computer chip that
is designed to mimic the brain’s architecture. At the time of the writing, the
“TrueNorth” chip is a 5.4 billion transistor chip with one million programmable
neurons and 256 million synapses, but in contrast, remember, the brain has about
100 trillion synapses. However, in less than 20 years a neuromorphic chip may
reach the brains level of complexity; further, the TrueNorth chip is currently 1,000
times as energy efficient as a conventional chip.59
For all the exponential advances in processing speed, materials, and manufac-
turing, digital computing today relies on an architecture rooted in the 1940s and
with a well-known “bottleneck” between the processor and memory. Specifically,
the von Nueman computer architecture is the standard platform of computing and
includes three components: a CPU; a slow-to-access storage area, like a hard
drive; and a secondary fast-access memory (RAM). A computer with a von
Neumann computer architecture stores instructions as binary values (creating the
stored program concept) and executes instructions sequentially—that is, the pro-
cessor fetches instructions one at a time and processes them in sequence.60 In
terms of thinking and reasoning about the world, an artificially intelligent brain
uses integrated circuits to perform calculations and to manipulate the symbols rep-
resenting “computer thought;” this is done using circuits consisting of resisters,
transistors, capacitors, etc.—all etched onto a tiny chip, and connected together to
achieve a common goal. Integrated circuits come in all sorts: single-circuit logic
gates, voltage regulators, motor controllers, microcontrollers, microprocessors, the
list just goes on-and-on, but think of these components as features comprising the
architecture of an artificially intelligent brain.
The von Neumann sequential method of information processing has limitations,
not the least of which is that it fails to perform anywhere near the capability of the
three pound brain setting on our shoulders (computers beat us with brute force
computing not with eloquent massively parallel processing). But much research is
being done to determine how the brain functions, to reverse engineer the brains
neurocircuitry, to fabricate chips that perform like the human brain does, and to

59Dharmendra S. Modha, Introducing a Brain-inspired Computer, TrueNorth’s neurons to revo-

lutionize system architecture, (accessed 2015) at: http://www.research.ibm.com/articles/brain-

chip.shtml.
60Irv Englander, 2004, The Architecture of Computer Hardware, Systems Software, & Networking:

An Information Technology Approach, Wiley.

92 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

write the software and algorithms to mimic human thinking.61 For example, neu-
romorphic computing, a concept developed by Carver Mead in the late 1980s,
involves the use of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) systems containing circuits
to mimic neuro-biological architectures present in the nervous system.
Specifically, the VLSI systems are used to model perception, motor control, and
multisensory integration.62
So, to summarize this brief discussion on the architecture of an artificially intel-
ligent brain, integrated circuits form a main component of the architecture of the
machines brain, and consist of billions of tiny inter-connecting electrical paths
meticulously arranged onto a single piece of material, such as silicon. Designing
an integrated circuit chip is not a simple feat, in fact, as chips become even
smaller, issues such as hot spots, leakage etc., make an effective, power-efficient
design extremely difficult to achieve.63 Successful designs usually result from the
enormous effort of highly qualified experts coupled with huge financial invest-
ments. However, copying each layer of an integrated circuit and preparing
“pirated“ integrated circuits can be done with comparatively little effort.
According to Charl Goussard, “taking into account the enormous effort and cost to
develop an integrated circuit design, the wide industrial applicability, the constant
demand for improvement, and the ease at which such designs can be copied, it
seems logical that some form of statutory protection should be afforded for the
designers or owners of these designs.”64 But where do we find these rights? And of
course, by now, you may be thinking as I do, that any laws which relate to the
software, algorithms, and architecture of a computer, serves as precedence for a
law of artificially intelligent brains.

Hardware Protection for Artificially Intelligent Brains

Over the past few decades during which software development has become more
sophisticated, courts have pointed out the difference in purpose between copyright
and patent laws for software. The broad protection for software as provided by
patent law, must meet the standards of novelty and nonobviousness in order for a
patent to be granted; the standards for copyright protection are originality and
some level of creative expression. For software, the purpose of copyright is to pro-
tect particular expressions of an idea that are written in source code by a

61Ludmila, I. Kuncheva, 2014, Combining Pattern Classifiers: Methods and Algorithm, Wiley.
62See generally, Neuromorphic Computing, Wikipedia, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neu
romorphic_engineering; NAIP patent blog, At: http://naipblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/brief-
overview-of-ic-design-protection.html.
63Peter McCrorie, On-Chip Thermal Analysis Is Becoming Mandatory, at: http://chipdesignmag.

com/display.php?articleId=2171.
64Charl Goussard, 2009, What is Integrated Circuit Design? at: http://naipblog.blogspot.com/2009/

08/brief-overview-of-ic-design-protection.html.
Hardware Protection for Artificially Intelligent Brains 93

programmer (which is then complied into object code), not the idea itself; an idea
is the subject of patent law. Both copyright and patent law have a role to play in
protecting software as intellectual property and thus contribute to a law of artifi-
cially intelligent brains.65
Patent law which protects ideas is clearly relevant for the components of an
artificially intelligent brain, for example, circuits designed to model the proper-
ties of neurons have received patent protection. One example is a “silicon neuron”
patent (U.S. patent 5648926 A) that describes an integrated circuit that is designed
to emulate the functions of a biological neuron; many other patents have been
awarded in this area. For software, the U.S. issues patents if the patent application
describes the code in relation to computer hardware and related devices and limits
the software to specific uses- this may include software that connects to and runs
hardware components. This description of patent protection for software seems
directly applicable to an artificially intelligent brain as the software running the
brain is used to control the effectors and actuators of the machine.
As noted earlier in this chapter, of particular importance to our cyborg future
is that copyright also extends to programs etched on chips. Once chips are fab-
ricated, they are plugged into the computer and become part of the computer’s
brain architecture. This means that a computer’s brain has rights under copyright
law that is not afforded human brains which of course consist of billions of neu-
rons. Generally utilitarian objects are not the subject of copyright protection and
chips are clearly utilitarian, but as stated earlier in this chapter, in a case dealing
with software the Franklin Court rejected the argument that software encoded on
chips was to be considered “utilitarian” and thus not copyright protected noting
the medium on which the program is encoded should not determine whether the
program itself is protected under copyright.
To provide the legal protection for the architecture of an artificially intelligent
brain, we could look to rights under patent law to grant a limited monopoly to the
designer of the different hardware components comprising the artificially intelli-
gent brain. For example, with integrated circuits, provided that their design dis-
plays satisfactory inventiveness and meets the required standard of uniqueness,
patent protection is an option for the protection of the intellectual property rights
embodied in an integrated circuit design. However, the lion’s share of integrated
circuit designs is considered obvious under most patent systems given that they
typically lack any improvement (inventive step) over their predecessors (prior
art).66 Further, integrated circuits are comprised of numerous building blocks, each
“building block could potentially be patentable. However, since an integrated cir-
cuit contains hundreds or thousands of semiconductor devices, a patent claim to an
integrated circuit would have to cover hundreds or thousands of individual ele-
ments- this would be like trying to write a patent on the neuronal circuits in the

65Copyright v. Patent: A Primer on Copyright and Patent Protection for Software, at: http://www.

law.washington.edu/lta/swp/law/copyvpatent.html.
66Id., note 62, NAIP patent blog.
94 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

brain.67 Consequently, a patent claim that attempts to describe an entire integrated

circuit may be hundreds of pages long. Clearly, such a narrow claim would pro-
vide almost no protection, and especially for an artificially intelligent brain con-
sisting of billons of circuits.
Even if one sought such narrow protection, writing a patent application sup-
porting a claim with thousands of elements would be extremely tedious and
expensive.68 As indicated by Rajkumar Dubey, writing for Mondaq, “Obviously,
integrated circuits are not easily describable in a patent specification or the claims.
Also, it may take several years to obtain an integrated circuit patent from most pat-
ent offices worldwide. This is unacceptable given that an integrated circuit’s useful
commercial life may be less than 1 year.”69 What if the same principle of obsoles-
cence applied to the human brain such that every 1–2 years a person had to apply
for patent protection of the neuronal circuitry of their brain? Or imagine that in the
coming cyborg age the human brain is equipped with neuroprosthesis with billions
of integrated circuits. That is, imagine the human brain becoming obsolete every
2 years or so due to the necessity of having to integrate (or update) new technol-
ogy within the brain. The cumbersome, time-consuming nature of patent filing
combined with extremely narrow protection would make patent law an insufficient
form of protection for the brains neuroprosthetic devices and therefore the brain of
an artificially intelligent machine.
Other forms of protection for intellectual property are also inapplicable to the
integrated circuit layouts, which, will represent a major component of an arti-
ficially intelligent brain. Design patents protect the ornamental, but not the func-
tional aspects of an article of manufacture described in its drawings. Since an
integrated circuit layout is more functional than ornamental, design patent protec-
tion is generally inapplicable to integrated circuits. Finally, in many cases trade
secret law cannot be used to protect most integrated circuits because an integrated
circuit layout may be reverse-engineered. But what if an artificially intelligent
brain is writing its own programs which are stored internally on its integrated cir-
cuits, and what if the programs have commercial value (that is, are trade secrets)?
Once a program is stored on a tangible medium of expression it may still remain
a trade secret but once communicated to the public trade secret protection is lost.
However, since an artificially intelligent brain communicates in object code, and
keeps the source code “locked in its mind,” it is simultaneously possible to main-
tain both trade secret and copyright protection for the program. Here I should point
out that the reverse engineering of the human brain is one of the main techniques
that some researchers are using to try to create an artificially intelligent brain.
Rajkumar Dubey writing about integrated circuits has commented that “The
layout of transistors on the semiconductor integrated circuit, or topography of

67Id., note 62.

68Id., note 62.
69Rajkumar Dubey, Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Layout Design in Indian IP Regime, 2004, at:

http://www.mondaq.com/india/x/28601/technology/Semiconductor+Integrated+Circuits+Layout+
Design+In+Indian+IP+Regime.
Hardware Protection for Artificially Intelligent Brains 95

transistors on the integrated circuit, determines the size of the integrated circuit as
well as its processing power.”70 He states “That is why the layout design of tran-
sistors constitutes such an important and unique form of intellectual property fun-
damentally different from other forms of intellectual property like copyrights,
trademarks, patents and industrial designs” and therefore in my view is of interest
to a law of artificially intelligent brains.71 Given that patent, copyright, and trade
secret law cannot adequately protect integrated circuit design, an exclusive protec-
tion for semiconductor integrated circuits layout-design has become necessary to
the semiconductor industry. This level of protection represents a body of law that
has significance for our cyborg future. So what protection may be available for the
hardware of an artificially intelligent brain? In 1984 the U.S. passed the
Semiconductor Chip Protection Act which provides statutory protection for inte-
grated circuit design rights.72 Although codified under the same title as
Copyrights, the Act is clearly intended to provide integrated circuit designs with
sui generis (“of its own kind”) rights. It has some aspects of copyright law, some
aspects of patent law, and in some ways it is completely different from either.
Providing legal protection for the physical components comprising the architec-
ture of an artificially intelligent brain will also form a part of an emerging law of
cyborgs, and is similar to the idea of protecting “bodily integrity” for humans.73
Semiconductor chips are massed produced from multi-layered three-dimensional
templates that are called “chip masks” in the trade, and “mask works” under the
Act. The main purpose of the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act is to prohibit
“chip piracy”–the unauthorized copying and distribution of semiconductor chip
products copied from the original creators of such works. But the Act could also
provide protection for the architecture of an artificially intelligent brain given that
it is constructed with integrated circuits.
According to the Act, just like with copyright, integrated circuit design rights
exist when they are created; this is unlike patents which confer rights after applica-
tion, examination, and issuance of the patent. However, the exclusive rights
afforded to the owners of integrated circuit designs are more restricted than those
afforded to both copyright and patent holders. Modification (derivative works), for
example, is not an exclusive right for owners of integrated circuit designs (this has
implications for mind uploads, see Chap. 7: The Law of Looks and Artificial
Bodies). Furthermore, the exclusive right granted to a patentee to “use” an inven-
tion, cannot be used to exclude an independently produced identical integrated cir-
cuit design.74 Thus, reproduction for reverse engineering of an integrated circuit
design is specifically permitted by most jurisdictions.

70Id.
71Id.
72Semiconductor Chip Protection Act, 17 U.S.C. §§ 901–914.
73Gowri Ramachandran, 2009, Against the Right to Bodily Integrity: Of Cyborgs and Human
Rights, 87 Denver University Law Review, No. 1, p1.
74Id., notes 64, 69.
96 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

Given the importance of protecting integrated circuits from piracy, several nations,
including Japan and the European Community have followed the example set in the
U.S. and endorsed their own similar statutes/directives recognizing and protecting inte-
grated circuit designs (also referred to as the “topography of semiconductor chips”).
And in 1989, a Diplomatic Conference among various nations was held, at which the
Treaty on Intellectual Property in Respect of Integrated Circuits (IPIC Treaty) was
adopted internationally.75 This treaty has been partially incorporated into the TRIPS
agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO).76 I believe that the potential threat
that artificial intelligence could pose to humanity is serious enough, that just as with
the semiconductor industry, international law should be crafted to create a common
response to the potential threat that artificial intelligence could pose to society.
Further, other issues of law dealing with computer chips are also applicable to an
artificially intelligent brain. For example, an important consideration for protecting
the brain of an artificially intelligent machine concerns its memories and how they
are stored and loaded to different devices. Memory chips such as an EPROM chip
(erasable programmable read only memory), are chips that retains its data when its
power supply is switched off. EPROM chip topographies are protectable under the
Semiconductor Chip Protection Act, but such protection does not extend to the
information stored on the chips, such as computer programs.77 Such information is
protected, to the extent that it is, by copyright law applicable to software which was
discussed earlier.78 Interestingly, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in MAI
Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., held that loading software into a computer’s
random access memory (RAM) created a “copy’” and a potentially infringing
“reproduction” under the Copyright Act.79 What that holding meant is that even if
no hardcopy was made, temporally storing a program in RAM was a reproduction
and potentially infringing act. So turning on a computer constitutes a reproduction
of the operating systems programs because they are automatically stored in RAM
whenever the computer is activated, or for that matter whenever a file is transferred
from one computer network user to another. The MAI court held that the program
temporarily stored in RAM represents a reproduction, although the U.S. Congress
subsequently enacted an amendment to the Copyright Act to specifically carve out
exceptions to this court decision in several circumstances.80

75TRIPS-The areas of intellectual property that it covers are: copyright and related rights (i.e. the

rights of performers, producers of sound recordings and broadcasting organizations); trademarks

including service marks; geographical indications\ including appellations of origin; industrial
design; patents including the protection of new varieties of plants; the layout-designs of inte-
grated circuits; and undisclosed information including trade secrets and test data.
76Overview: the TRIPS Agreement, World Trade organization, at: https://www.wto.org/english/

tratop_e/trips_e/intel2_e.htm.
77Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984, Wikipedia, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Semiconductor_Chip_Protection_Act_of_1984.
78See generally, id.
79MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993).
80See, 17 U.S. Code § 117—Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs.
Our Competition Against Better Brains 97

Our Competition Against Better Brains

Based on the above discussion, if artificially intelligent brains continue to get

faster under Moore’s law, and their brain architecture more sophisticated, there
might conceivably come a point-in-time when artificial intelligence is capable of
performance comparable to that of human intelligence. From that point on, artifi-
cially intelligent computers would not stop the process of getting smarter, but
instead would accelerate the process of acquiring knowledge and connecting to the
world through the Internet. In fact, in the last several decades the steady trend has
been for computers to get faster, have greater memory capacity, and be networked
to each other and to the emerging Internet of Things. And while not increasing
exponentially (according to some authors), developments in artificial intelligence
and knowledge in brain science is still rapidly increasing. Therefore, I believe it is
just a matter of time before artificially intelligent machines claim to be self-aware
and argue for rights. Based on that observation, the more we develop laws and pol-
icies which relate to the functioning, software, algorithms, and architecture of an
artificially intelligent brain, the more we may be able to control our own destiny
and shape the future as we approach the Singularity. Ray Kurzweil has convinc-
ingly made the point that once human levels of artificial intelligence is reached,
artificially intelligent brains will then keep developing based on exponentially
improving technologies until they are far more intelligent and capable than
humans.81 The rate of development of artificially intelligent machines in terms of
physical design will also show improvement because they will take change of their
own development from their slower-thinking and less intelligent human creators.
That is, when the Singularity is reached, and then surpassed, it is thought that arti-
ficial intelligence will work incredibly quickly at improving itself. What will a law
of artificially intelligent brains be then?
According to James Barrat, after the Singularity, it’s impossible to predict with
certainty the behavior of these smarter-than-human intelligences with whom we
might one day share the planet or that we might one day merge with (through a
steady process, not all at once like a step function).82 But by merging with artifi-
cially intelligent machines, we may become super-intelligent cyborgs (or some
other to-be-determined entity), using computers to extend our intellectual abilities
(see Chap. 7 on The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies). If we don’t merge with
the technology we are creating, and remain the biological product of evolution,
maybe artificial intelligence will be benevolent and help us treat the effects of old
age, prolong our life spans, and “fix” poverty and other forms of human suffering.
But, in contrast, maybe artificially intelligent machines will turn on humanity and
attempt to exterminate us or to control us in undesirable ways. But if we do merge
with our artificially intelligent progeny we may avoid extinction and we may begin

81Ray Kurzweil, supra, note 27.

82James Barat, 2015, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human,
St. Martin’s Griffin.
98 3  The Law of Artificially Intelligent Brains

the process that will transform our species into something that is no longer recog-
nizable as such to humanity.83 This transformation has a name: Posthumanism and
is a development discussed throughout this book. Of course many oppose the idea
that humanity could someday transform into something “new”; and for those
strongly opposed to the Singularity, now is the time to mount opposition. Clearly,
artificial intelligence as it exists today doesn’t produce the kind of intelligence we
associate with humans and clearly we are still human and not machine entities.84
However, after we are more-and-more enhanced with cybernetic technology we
will blur the line between human and machine, and as we move towards late cen-
tury or early next century, we may have completely transformed to become the
technology.
The artificial intelligence of today tends to be able to master only one highly
specific domain, like interpreting search queries or playing chess. They typically
operate within an extremely specific frame of reference and lack common sense.
They’re intelligent, but only if you define intelligence in a narrow and limited way.
The kind of intelligence Ray Kurzweil is talking about when he describes future
artificially intelligent beings, which is called strong artificial intelligence doesn’t
exist yet. Why not? Obviously we’re still waiting for the exponentially growing
computing power made possible by Moore’s law to be combined with advances in
algorithms, knowledge learned from neuroscience about the circuits of the brain,
and improving architectures of artificially intelligent brains. But as Lev Grossman
writing in Time magazine states- “it’s also possible that there are things going on
in our brains that can’t be duplicated electronically no matter how many MIPS we
throw at them.”85 Grossman further says that “the neurochemical architecture that
generates the ephemeral chaos we know as human consciousness may just be too
complex and analog to replicate in digital silicon.”86 Further, the biologist Dennis
Bray is a voice of caution about the desirability of the cyborg future stating-
“Although biological components act in ways that are comparable to those in elec-
tronic circuits,” he argued, in a talk titled “What Cells Can Do That Robots Can’t,”
“they are set apart by the huge number of different states they can adopt.”87
Multiple biochemical processes create chemical modifications of protein mole-
cules, further diversified by association with distinct structures at defined locations
of a cell.88 Bray points out that the “resulting combinatorial explosion of states
endows living systems with an almost infinite capacity to store information

83Lev Grossman, 2011, 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal, quoting Ray Kurweil, at: http://

content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2048299-4,00.html.
84Id.
85Id.
86Miguel Nicholelis, id., note 6.
87Dennis Bray, What Cells Can Do that Robots Can’t, Youtube video, at: https://vimeo.

com/18143991.
88Id.
Our Competition Against Better Brains 99

regarding past and present conditions and a unique capacity to prepare for future
events.”89 The complexity of biology makes the binary language that computers
use to manipulate data look crude and it remains to be seen whether digital tech-
nology can simulate a brain.
As Grossman notes “Kurzweil admits that there’s a fundamental level of risk
associated with the Singularity that’s impossible to refine away, simply because
we don’t know what a highly advanced artificial intelligence, finding itself a newly
created inhabitant of the planet Earth, would choose to do.”90 It might feel like
competing with us for resources, then again, it might not, but if it does eventually
we will lose. If the Singularity is coming, these questions will have to be
addressed whether we like it or not, and Kurzweil thinks that trying to put off the
Singularity by banning technologies is not only impossible but also unethical and
probably dangerous for humanity.91 Kurzweil argues that “It would require a total-
itarian system to implement such a ban,”92 continuing, he states “It wouldn’t work.
It would just drive these technologies underground, where the responsible scien-
tists who we’re counting on to create the defenses would not have easy access to
the tools.”93
Kurzweil does not see any fundamental difference between flesh and silicon
that would prevent the latter from human-like thinking. However, the law does dis-
tinguish between neurons and integrated circuits; primarily because one can own
circuits, but not another person’s neurons. Kurzweil defies biologists to come up
with a neurological mechanism that could not be modeled or at least matched in
power and flexibility by software running on a computer.94 If Kurzweil is correct,
an artificially intelligent entity arguing for rights is an eventuality, therefore
humanity would be wise to establish a regulatory scheme to protect humanity and
to ensure all intelligent beings that emerge to join society have basic rights.
To summarize, artificially intelligent brains are improving rapidly based on
exponentially accelerating technologies. They may match humans in general intel-
ligence by midcentury, therefore the emerging law of cyborgs, and particularly the
laws discussed in this chapter which relate to an artificially intelligent brain, could
provide important protections not only for the future rights of artificially intel-
ligent beings, but of humans either merging with them, or living amongst them
as less intelligent beings relying on their sense of fairness to treat humanity with
respect and justice.

89Id.
90Lev Grossman, id., note 83.
91Lev Grossman, id., note 83.
92Lev Grossman, id., note 83, quoting Ray Kurzweil.
93Lev Grossman, id., note 83, quoting Ray Kurzweil.
94Singularitarianism, posted by PZ Meyers, 2011, quoting Ray Kurzweil, at: http://scienceblogs.com/

pharyngula/2011/02/13/singularitarianism/.
Chapter 4
Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants,
and Neuroprosthesis

Introduction

In previous chapters, I described several technologies that are leading humanity

closer to a merger with artificially intelligent machines. Perhaps the two most criti-
cal technologies necessary to create a human-machine merger are artificial intelli-
gence (discussed in Chap. 3, The Law of Artificial Intelligent Brains); and the
development of brain implants that function as neuroprosthesis. As we move
towards a cyborg future consisting of information technologies integrated into our
bodies and mind, we are becoming more vulnerable to government supervision,
privacy invasions, and the possibility of third party access to our internal thoughts
and memories. With more technology being integrated into the human body, the
legal divisions between man and machine is beginning to blur and is becoming
arbitrary. This brings up a host of legal and policy issues ripe for the twenty-first
century. For example, lawyers Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong describe a woman
equipped with a heart pacer—technology clearly integrated within her body—but
she has no rights to the data on the functioning of her heart which is produced by
the implant.1 Based on this example and others presented throughout this book,
numerous jurisdictions are beginning to recognize that the law must change to
accommodate the integration of technology into the human body. This observation
is even more relevant with the development of neuroprosthesis that have the capac-
ity to restore or enhance cognitive functions.
With technologies to study the brain improving exponentially, and given
remarkable advances in neuroscience, researchers are unlocking the mysteries of
how the brain computes, and writing algorithms to model the functioning of the

1Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong, 2014, Brookings Report, We Are All Cyborgs Now, at:

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/techtank/posts/2014/10/8-we-are-all-cyborgs.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 101

W. Barfield, Cyber-Humans, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25050-2_4
102 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

brain’s neural circuits. As a result, the capabilities of neuroprosthesis are improv-

ing dramatically; in fact, by midcentury, “able bodied” people may opt to receive
neuroprosthetic devices for reasons other than for a medical necessity. However,
once technology is implanted in the brain (read on, it’s happening now), govern-
ments, corporations, and other third parties could remotely access the implants
creating a cybersecurity nightmare not the least of which would be a serious threat
to the person’s “cognitive liberty”. This chapter discusses how third party access to
neuroprosthetic devices will impact a person’s ability to exercise control over the
content of their mind, including the memory of their lived experiences, and thus
raises significant questions of law and policy for the coming cyborg age.
Based on the use of brain implants to treat illness such as Parkinson’s dis-
ease, dystonia, chronic pain, and depression, the first generation of cyborgs are
beginning to emerge. This generation of cyborgs, equipped with neuroprosthetic
devices, are benefiting from remarkable progress in the treatment of neurologi-
cal disease. For example, for cognitively intact patients locked-in their bodies,
technology to “read their brain” is allowing them to communicate to loved ones
by moving a cursor on a computer screen, and to experience mobility by using
thought to control the motion of a robot’s arm or prosthetic limb. But the first gen-
eration of cyborgs, while equipped with amazing technology implanted within
their brain, will pale in comparison to the capabilities of future cyborgs. That is,
within decades, neuroprosthetic devices will improve significantly, giving people
the ability to augment and enhance the functions of their brain and the ability to
edit the content of their memories. Clearly, cyborg technologies are improving
exponentially, and an amazing human-machine future awaits us all.
An important observation about the use of cyborg technologies for the brain is
that the nature of information processing is beginning to shift from a neuronal
based system using the relatively slow transmission rates associated with electro-
chemical signals (10–120 m/s over myelinated neurons), to a digital-based archi-
tecture operating with orders-of-magnitude greater processing speed and storage
capacity. However, one consequence of equipping people with brain implant tech-
nology is the ease in which third parties will be able to manipulate, edit, and
change a person’s mental functions, including the information stored in their mem-
ories. Clearly, by making the content of our mind available to a host of third par-
ties, neuroprosthetic devices being used now, or which should be available by the
time of the Singularity (as predicted by computer scientist Ben Goertzeil and
Google’s Ray Kurzweil), have the potential to dramatically alter our relation to
governments and corporations—these possibilities alone raise important issues of
law and policy that should be addressed sooner rather than later while humanity
still has time to control the direction of our cyborg future.2
Based on the law of accelerating returns, around mid-century, a major para-
digm shift in information technology will have occurred. A cyborg equipped with

2Ben Goertzel on Singularity 1 on 1: The Future Is Ours To Create, 2010, Youtube video at: https://

www.singularityweblog.com/ben-goertzel-on-singularity-1-on-1/.
Introduction 103

neuroprosthetic devices will be able to download information to implants within

his or her brain and to sensors on or within its body. This fusion of mind with
information technologies will allow cyborgs to become fluent in new languages,
process information faster and more efficiently than those lacking cyborg tech-
nologies, store and share memories between minds; and with continuing improve-
ments, communicate telepathically with other cyborgs and artificially intelligent
machines. However, as technologies to augment the cognitive functions of the
brain and record and edit memories mature, ethicists, lawyers, and scientists have
begun to raise questions of how emerging neuroprosthetic devices might be prac-
tically used and what policies might govern their use. On this point, the use of
neuroprosthetic devices for deception detection, neuromarketing, and editing
memories, will have major legal and policy implications not only for an emerging
body of cyborg law, but also for the cognitive liberty of the mind, and therefore
will warrant significant public debate and legislative attention.
While cyborg technologies integrated into the brain may seem like the subject
of a science fiction novel (and have been the subject of sci-fi novels!) they are
quickly joining the information technology revolution characterized by exponen-
tial growth. Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler in their co-authored book,
Abundance: the Future is Better than You Think, describe the characteristics of
exponentially increasing technologies.3 These are technologies that represent the
information revolution, and are based on the miniaturization of electronics and
advances in digital technology; both of which are necessary for rapid improve-
ments in neuroprosthesis. For the reader interested in the technical aspects of the
cybernetic revolution, a primer for neuroprosthetic devices can be found in
Theodore Berger and Dennis Glanzman’s co-edited book, “Toward Replacement
Parts for the Brain: Implantable Biomimetic Electronics as Neural Prostheses.”
But here’s the take-home message—the future is approaching rapidly, we will all
be cyborgs, and we will enhance our brains with neuroprosthesis, it’s just a matter
of time.

Medical Necessity and Beyond

As discussed throughout this book, the main reason that people are opting for and
receiving neuroprosthetic and other implants is due to medical necessity. However,
I expect this rationale to change as we approach midcentury and people decide
to replace or enhance cognitive functions with brain implants providing superior
information processing capabilities to those unenhanced. A few examples of the
use of implants for medical necessity include the treatment of Parkinson’s patients,

3Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, 2014, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think,

Free Press; Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, 2015, Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and
Impact the World, Simon & Schuster.
104 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

assisting people suffering from depression, and the repair of damaged senses. For
mental illness, by using devices implanted in a person’s brain, scientists are tar-
geting and correcting malfunctioning neural circuits to treat conditions such as
clinical depression, addiction and anxiety disorders. However, the reader may be
wondering why people not suffering from illness would replace normally func-
tioning tissue with a prosthesis; that is, why would someone become a cyborg if
not for medical necessity? Several of the reasons are discussed in the chapter on
Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body, but from a “large-picture” perspec-
tive, a central reason relates to the survivability of our species when we are more
directly in competition with strong artificial intelligence.
As I discussed in previous chapters, as the technical Singularity approaches,
without enhancing our brain using neuroprosthetic implants, humanity will be left
behind by artificially intelligent machines possessing faster processing speeds,
greater memory, greater access to information, and vastly superior reasoning
skills. In fact, Hans Moravec, robotics expert and author of Robot: Mere Machine
to Transcendent Mind and Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human
Intelligence, has argued that the way to keep up with cyborg technology is by
accelerating our own evolution.4 ‘We can change ourselves,’ he says, ‘and we can
also build new children who are properly suited for the new conditions- robot chil-
dren.’ Thus, a major paradigm shift in information technology will occur this cen-
tury—taking the form of human evolution moving from biology to principles
based on technology. An interesting result being that “able bodied” people will use
neuroprosthetic devices to enhance their senses, memory, and cognitive abilities to
levels beyond normal, and will do so as part of the future human-machine merger
awaiting humanity.
People often fail to recognize that progress in information technologies is expo-
nential, and thus the reader may be surprised to learn that the number of people
already equipped with neuroprosthetic devices is in the hundreds-of-thousands,
and soon will be in the millions. Already, more than 25,000 Parkinson’s patients
have received a “deep-brain” implant (placed either in the Thalamus, Globus
Pallidus, or Subthalmic nucleus), which functions like a pacemaker to reduce
tremors and other movement problems. In addition, because the visual and audi-
tory modalities are critical for functioning in the world, there has been intense
interest from the scientific community to design neuroprosthetic devices to alle-
viate problems involving our senses. For example, to aid those with visual defi-
ciencies, cyborg technology in the form of a retinal prosthesis, is being used to
detect light coming into the eye via electrodes implanted underneath the patient’s
retina. The light energy is fed to a microchip that transduces the signals; which are
sent to the brain for further processing. Neuroprosthetic devices are also creating
a generation of cyborgs equipped with cochlear implants. According to the Food

4Hans Moravec, 2000, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Oxford University Press;

Hans Moravec, 1990, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, Harvard
University Press.
Medical Necessity and Beyond 105

and Drug Administration (FDA), several hundred thousand people worldwide have
already received cochlear implants to improve their hearing. The cochlear implant
consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second “cyborg” por-
tion that is surgically placed under the skin. Signals generated by the implant
are sent by way of the auditory nerve to the brain which recognizes the signals
as sound. In the U.S. alone, tens-of-thousands of adults have received cochlear
implants. And since 2,000, cochlear implants have been FDA-approved for use in
eligible children beginning at 12 months of age—creating the first generation of
cyborgs raised from early childhood. With at least nine doublings of computing
power before these young cyborgs bear children, one has to wonder what capabili-
ties future generations of cyborgs will possess.
Sometimes to know where technology is headed, one needs to follow the
money; this is especially true for cyborg technology. On this point, the European
Union has committed to spend $1.3 billion to study how the brain functions, and
in the U.S., the Human Brain Project has received $1 billion for basic research on
brain science. I should point out that both of these initiatives will provide critical
information about the structure of neuronal circuits necessary to reverse engineer
the brain (one way to create artificial general intelligence). Further, the combined
$2.3 billion in funding for neuroscience research just mentioned, is not the com-
plete funding picture. For example, in the U.S., the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) has been one of the major government agencies fund-
ing research to develop brain chips and other technologies to interface the brain to
computers. On this point, DARPA is currently working with different groups of
researchers to develop a neuronal prosthetic implant that can be used to treat
severe memory loss in human patients. The project is part of DARPA’s Restoring
Active Memory (RAM) program, aimed to help reinstate normal memory activity
for the U.S. war veterans who have suffered some kind of brain injury.5 If success-
ful, the program will be immensely beneficial for patients with schizophrenia,
amnesia, dementia and other brain disorders. In another DARPA project, the goal
is to put “chips in the brain” to enhance the cognitive and the sensory capability of
soldiers. The defense agency is specifically seeking to develop a portable, wireless
device that “…must incorporate implantable probes” to record and stimulate brain
activity—in effect, a memory triggering ‘black box’ device.6 The implantable
probe would consist of wires inside the brain, and under the scalp, with the capa-
bility to send electrical impulses through a transmitter placed under the skin of the
chest area. The aim of the project is to develop technology that “promises to
directly read thoughts from a living brain—and even instill thoughts as well…”7 If
successful, the technology developed by DARPA’s RAM projects, will help create

5Eliza Strickland, 2014, DARPA Project Starts Building Human Memory Prosthetics, at: http://
spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/darpa-project-starts-building-human-memory-prosthetics,
and http://www.unwittingvictim.com/BostonGlobe.html.
6Id.
7Id.
106 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

technology necessary for a future cyborg world, making the coming human-
machine merger more likely.
If we consider medical necessity as a motivating factor to design neuropros-
thetic devices, one of the most promising areas of brain neurotechnology is the
treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Professor Theodore Berger and his research
team at the University of Southern California has made remarkable progress
towards developing an artificial hippocampus, a structure of the brain which plays
important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to
long-term memory and that also contributes to spatial navigation.8 Alzheimer’s
disease is known to damage the hippocampus and affects about 5.2 million people
in the U.S. alone. Thus creating an artificial hippocampus may help millions suf-
fering from a serious and debilitating neurological disease; but to restate a point
made throughout this book, cyborg technologies designed to assist people based
on medical necessity may also have the effect, intended or not, of contributing to
our cyborg future and eventual merger with machines.
Professor Berger’s research on the design of prosthesis supports this view. His
work involves a detailed analysis of the various activities taking place in the hip-
pocampus, followed by the development of algorithms that enable Berger and his
team to replicate and integrate hippocampal function into a microchip. Of course,
“chips in the brain” is an essential technology if humans are to become cyborgs
and to merge with artificially intelligent machines. In fact, a breakthrough came in
2011 when Wake Forest University scientist Samuel Deadwyler, in collaboration
with Professor Berger, managed to create the very first memory prosthetic device
that proved to be successful in improving memory retention capacity in rats.9 The
resultant device was in the form of a microchip implant, consisting of thirty-two
electrodes and an algorithm that could decode and reproduce the neural signals
sent from one end of the hippocampus to the other. Later, the scientists were able
to produce an artificial hippocampus that could not only read the information col-
lected by the electrodes, but also repeat them when prompted to do so. Since then,
the device has been successfully tested in non-human primates, such as monkeys,
and human testing is around the corner.

8Berger, T.W., Baudry, M., Brinton, R.D., Liaw, J-S., Marmarelis, V.Z., Park, Y., Sheu, B.J., and
Tanguay, Jr., A.R., 2001, Brain-implantable biomimetic electronics as the next era in neural pros-
thetics. Proceedings of the IEEE.
9See generally, Berger, T.W., Ahuja, A., Courellis, S.H., Deadwyler, S.A., Erinjippurath, G.,

Gerhardt, G.A., Gholmeih, G, Granacki, J.J., Hampson, R., Hsiao, M-C., LaCoss, J., Marmarelis,
V.Z., Nasiatka, P., Srinivasan, V., Song, S., Tanguay, Jr., A.R., Wills, J., 2005, Hippocampal-
cortical neural prostheses to restore lost cognitive function. IEEE EMBS Special Issue: Toward
Biomimetic Microelectronics as Neural Prostheses, 24, 30–44.
Third-Party Access to Our Minds 107

Third-Party Access to Our Minds

The potential that brain implant technology could be hacked, raises the question
of what rights people have to the veracity of the sensory information transmitted
to their brain? If third parties were able to hack the technology of brain implants,
the possibility of a dystopian future for humanity cannot be underestimated. For
example, a retinal prosthesis could be hacked to place images on the back of the
retina that a person never saw; or in the case of cochlear implants, sounds could
be transmitted to the auditory nerve that a person never actually heard. Further,
an artificial hippocampus could be hacked to place memories in a person’s mind
for events they never experienced. What law and policy might apply to these sce-
narios? If the First Amendment blocks the government from putting words in a
person’s mouth, surely it would also block the government from putting words,
sounds, or memories in a person’s head. Based on this observation, it is relevant to
ask—if the technological ability to hack the mind is in the hands of governments
and corporations will the mind remain a bastion of privacy, safe from the preying
eyes of technology? Further, if the government or a corporation can access our
thoughts and edit the content of our minds, will the integrity of our mind remain
under our individual control, if not, who then as a person are we? The law and
policy of such questions are discussed throughout this chapter.
Once third parties can access a neuroprosthetic device implanted within another
person’s brain, what could go wrong? Not surprisingly, lots of things. For exam-
ple, if a person committed a crime, and did so because someone had remotely
accessed their brain, would they be absolved of responsibility? Already lawyers
routinely order scans of convicted defendant’s brains and argue that a neurological
impairment prevented the accused from controlling their actions. In the coming
cyborg age would a software expert be called upon to examine the programming
language and algorithms controlling a neuroprosthetic device to see if they had
been tampered with? If so then the mens rea for a crime would have been supplied
remotely by a third person. But the use of neuroprosthetic devices could lead to
other important issues of law and policy. For example, third party access to brain
implant technology could allow advertising agencies to place pop-up ads into our
consciousness, or our thoughts to be searched by the government without our even
knowing it. Could there be any more egregious violation of a person’s privacy than
if a government or corporation scanned a person’s brain, recorded their unspoken
thoughts, or changed the content of their memory?
If the brain is equipped with neuroprosthetic devices such that it essentially
operates as a von Neumann computer, in the coming cyborg age should the mind
be regarded as a network or as a computer, and should the mind receive an iden-
tifying URL? With future improvements in technology, just as spending spam to
a cell phone or computer is actionable under the law; the possibility of sending
spam to a mind equipped with a neuroprosthetic device would be far more annoy-
ing and therefore, should be the subject of even stricter laws. Just consider the
work of Professor Theodore Berger, discussed above on the design of an artificial
108 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

hippocampus, a device which could allow information to be sent directly to an

implant within a person’s brain. If a corporation could access the neuroprosthetic
device, what would stop them from sending advertisements directly to a person’s
brain? Perhaps the regulations on cybersecurity for medical implants being consid-
ered by the FDA would provide appropriate protection. Alternatively, in the U.S.
most states have already enacted laws that pertain, directly or indirectly, to spam
email. These laws often parallel, and in some cases are directly connected to other
state laws that address telemarketing practices, or commercial solicitation through
other media (e.g. text messages). As the law of cyborgs develops, I believe that
much of the former law in areas related to information technology and commercial
email will serve as precedence for disputes involving cyborgs; the law related to
spam email is an example.
Often legal scholars and practitioners tend to treat anti-spam law as part of a
larger computer-related law. Canada’s Anti-Spam Law can be seen as drawing
these two strands together in an effort to create a comprehensive legal framework
for internet-based commerce.10 In the U.S. the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the
Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) establishes the rules for
commercial email and commercial messages.11 The Act gives recipients the right
to have a business stop emailing them, and outlines the penalties incurred for those
who violate the law. Surely, a similar law should be enacted to protect a neuropro-
sthetic device from receiving unwanted commercial solicitation. It’s one thing to
walk by a display in a store and receive an ad designed specifically for the person
based on facial recognition technology, it is quite another to have the ad pushed to
a device implanted in the brain.12 The CAN-SPAM Act covers all commercial
messages, which the law defines as ‘any electronic mail message whose primary
purpose is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or
service,’ including email that promotes content on commercial websites.13 It does,
however, exempt transactional and relationship messages; a deficiency which will
need to be addressed once people are equipped with neuroprosthetic devices with
wireless capability.
It is not currently possible to directly recover the visual or auditory informa-
tion stored in a person’s brain that results from perceiving the world. However, this
could become a possibility with cyborg technology, because once equipped with
a technology to sense the world, a cyborg will have an electronic record of what
they view or hear. On this point, one argument Professor Steve Mann has proposed
for the benefits of wearable computers is to provide a record of a person’s life. In
the context of cyborgs equipped with neuroprosthesis to sense the world, would

10Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation, accessed 2015, at: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/casl-lcap.htm.

11Id,see also infra note 13.
12See generally, Woodrow Barfield, 2006, Commercial Speech, Intellectual Property Rights, and

Advertising Using Virtual Images Inserted in TV, Film, and the Real World, UCLA Ent. Law
Rev, Vol. 13, 154–186.
13CAN-SPAM Act, Pub. L. 108–187.
Third-Party Access to Our Minds 109

courts be able to subpoena the data stored on the prosthesis to use as evidence
in court? This question implicates rights afforded by the U.S. constitution. If the
mind is equipped with computing technology, the most basic Fourth Amendment
question in computer cases asks whether an individual enjoys a reasonable expec-
tation of privacy for electronic information stored within computers (or other elec-
tronic storage devices) under the individual’s control. For example, do individuals
have a reasonable expectation of privacy for the contents of their computers, and
disk storage devices? If “yes,” then the government ordinarily must obtain a war-
rant based on probable cause before it can access the information stored inside.
Because individuals generally retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in the
contents of closed containers, they also retain a reasonable expectation of privacy
in data held within electronic storage devices. Would the same conclusion hold for
cyborgs equipped with neuroprosthetic devices storing memories? And would it
make a difference if the information was in the form of software or algorithms,
and comprised part of the actual structure of the being?
The privacy of the mind, whether enhanced with technology or not, should
receive the highest protection by the courts. Under Katz. v. United States, the test
used by the Court to determine privacy rights when a government actor is involved
is whether the person thought they should have a reasonable expectation of pri-
vacy, and whether the expectation of privacy was one society was prepared to rec-
ognize.14 If confronted with the issue of determining whether a cyborg has a
reasonable expectation of privacy in the information stored on a neuroprosthetic
device, based on precedence, courts may analogize the neuroprosthetic device to
that of a closed container such as a briefcase or file cabinet. The Fourth
Amendment generally prohibits law enforcement from accessing and viewing
information stored in a computer without a warrant if, in comparison, it would be
prohibited from opening a closed container and examining its contents in the same
situation. It seems reasonable to view files stored on a neuroprosthetic device in
the context of a file cabinet, closed to the outside world, and that the Fourth
Amendment would protect the content stored on a neuroprosthetic device.
However, although courts have generally agreed that electronic storage devices
can be analogized to closed containers, they have reached differing conclusions
over whether each individual file stored on a computer or disk should be treated as
a separate closed container. With this background, would an individual file stored
on a computer be analogized to a file stored on a neuroprosthetic device? If so, if
the government accessed the information, would the use of such information by
the government be protected by the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against self-
incrimination? As we will see later, Law Professor Nita Farahany of Duke
University, has spoken extensively on this topic.

14Katz v. U.S., 389 U.S. 347 (1967).

110 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

Concerns and Roadblocks

Some of the critics of enhancement technology, such as Stanford’s Francis

Fukuyama, have focused on the existential threat to humanity that may occur from
implementing biotechnologies, such as genetic engineering. However, an exis-
tential threat to humanity could also result from developments in the field of bio-
electronics: sensors, and brain implants that involve creating interfaces between
neural systems and computers. As cyborgs become equipped with brain implant
technology an important point to make is that even with the benefits that will
result from neuroprosthesis, there are potential negative outcomes associated with
brain implant technology which our future technological progeny must avoid. For
example, as neuroprosthesis are improved and become a viable option for “able
bodied” people, the number of people equipped with brain implants will increase
dramatically. When this happens, an important concern is that a cognitive digital
divide could exist between those enhanced with neuroprosthetic devices and those
lacking such technologies. Through numerous laws and policies, society generally
tries to address inequalities between people, but the cyborgization of people could
work to exacerbate inequalities; therefore, now is the time to develop policies on
cyborg equality, which give all people equal access to enhancement technologies.
Clearly, as the use of brain implant technology is used to enhance our senses,
improve our memories, and help fight disease, important legal and policy issues
related to the privacy of our thoughts and the integrity of our mind will be raised.
For example, with continuing improvements in neuroprosthesis, the ability to
hack the mind will become an important concern among legal theorists and tech-
nologists as well as for individuals equipped by cyborg technology. Just consider
that former Vice President Dick Cheney was so concerned that terrorists might
hack the medical device implanted near his heart that he disabled a function that
allowed the defibrillator to be administered wirelessly. This revelation echoes con-
cerns that researchers have raised for years about the vulnerability of implanted
medical devices which are equipped with computerized functions and wireless
capabilities that allow the devices to be administered without requiring additional
surgery. The Chaney example also highlights the tradeoff between benefits and
potential hazards that will come with the use of cyborg technologies to enhance
the human body and mind. For example, as a positive, in the coming cyborg age
the use of neuroprosthesis opens up the possibility that maladaptive circuits lead-
ing to mental illness can be permanently changed, essentially curing some patients
of their psychiatric disorders. However, on the negative side, by reprogramming
neuronal circuits, governments or corporations could edit the content of a person’s
mind—in this scenario the fundamental question of what constitutes reality would
need to be debated by lawyers, ethicists, and the public.
Another concern about the use of cyborg technology for enhancement of
human cognitive abilities is that brain implant technology could be used by gov-
ernments and corporations to “seize” a person’s private thoughts; and to down-
load unwanted information directly to a storage device in a person’s brain. This
Concerns and Roadblocks 111

observation is a call for action—now is the time to think about protecting the right
for individuals to control access to technologies of the mind, as well as the right to
avoid their compelled use. For example, if governments could hack the mind, this
capability would affect people’s ability to participate in democratic institutions, as
without accurate representations of life events, people would be unable to make
independently informed choices. Because vastly improved neuroprosthetic devices
are an extremely probable future technology, it is sensible to devise p­olicies,
regulations, and laws that will mitigate potential deleterious effects before the
technology is widespread.
As the technology to access the mind matures, governments could punish a per-
son not only for the actual expression of their thoughts, but just for formulating a
thought contrary to government dogma. On this point, law scholar Jeffrey Rosen
of George Washington University, wonders whether punishing someone for their
thoughts rather than their actions, would be a violation of the Eight Amendments
ban on cruel and unusual punishment?15 This isn’t an observation relevant only to
the plot of a science fiction novel, because before centuries end, it will be techno-
logically possible for governments and corporations to access brain-implants to
edit the long-term memories representing a person’s life experiences. Surely, using
technology to access and edit a person’s memory of an actual lived experience
would be actionable under the law—a trespass, an assault and battery, or even
extortion. On this last point, former Secret Service agent Marc Goodman worries
that holding people’s memory hostage could be a form of extortion in the future.16
Therefore, for reasons of ensuring freedom of the mind, in the coming cyborg age,
it is imperative that the human body and mind be considered sacrosanct; to invade
a person’s mind without their consent should be an egregious human rights crime
and punishable under criminal law statutes.
Stanford Law School’s Henry Greely acknowledges that memory-retrieval tech-
nologies could pose a serious challenge to our freedom of thought, which in his
view, is currently defended largely by the First Amendment protections for free-
dom of expression. According to Greely, “… freedom of thought has always been
buttressed by the reality that you could only tell what someone thought based on
their behavior.”17 In light of advances in brain recording technology Greely com-
mented, “This technology holds out the possibility of looking through the skull
and seeing what’s really happening, seeing the thoughts themselves.”18 Greely
argues that this possibility may challenge the principle that we should be held

15Jeffrey Rosen, 2007, The Brain on the Stand, New York Times, at: http://www.nytimes.

com/2007/03/11/magazine/11Neurolaw.t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
16Marc Goodman, 2015, Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and

What We Can Do About It, Doubleday.

17Jeffrey Rosen, Id., note 15, discussing comments by Stanford’s Henry Greely on neurolaw.
18Jeffrey Rosen, Id., note 15, discussing comments by Stanford’s Henry Greely.
112 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

accountable for what we do, not what we think. And he adds, “It opens up for the
first time the possibility of punishing people for their thoughts rather than their
actions.”19 Discussing the possibility of a future totalitarian state, Greely com-
mented, “One reason thought has been free in the harshest dictatorships is that dic-
tators haven’t been able to detect it.”20 And that now they may be able to, this is
putting greater pressure on legal constraints against government interference with
freedom of thought.
While ensuring cognitive liberty will be an important issue in the coming
cyborg age, other technology currently being used has already brought the issue of
cognitive liberty to the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court. For example, in a First
Amendment case that dealt with a statute prohibiting the sale of books without a
license, Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy stated that freedom to think “is
absolute of its own nature; the most tyrannical government is powerless to control
the inward workings of the mind.”21 Recent support for the proposition that gov-
ernments should be prohibited from efforts to control the inner working of the
mind comes from Law Professor Marc Blitz who argues that it would be a grave
infringement of “…free thought any state measure which prevented us from using
our brains to access and store our memories.”22 Professor Blitz also observed that
before the development of cyborg technologies, the government could not do much
to restrict the freedom of thought except to attack the expression of that thought in
speech and worship. That is, Blitz indicated that “the government could not manip-
ulate our minds from the inside, its only way of restricting mental activity was to
target communication or other expression that embodied such activity.”23 But as
shown in this chapter, based on the law of accelerating returns for information
technologies, much has changed, technology that could allow the government to
manipulate our minds from the “inside” is not only rapidly being developed but
also currently being used to treat psychological and neurological illness.

A Focus on Cognitive Liberty

Considering that a variety of brain-computer interfaces and neuroprosthetic

devices are being used to treat patients, and that brain implant technology will be
dramatically improved within a few decades, necessitates a serious discussion of

19Jeffrey Rosen, Id., note 15, discussing comments by Stanford’s Henry Greely.
20Id.
21See Jones v. Opelika, 316 U.S. 584, 1942, (Murphy, J. dissenting), noting that while “freedom

to think is absolute of its own nature,” the government may target it by targeting “freedom to
communicate the minds message to others by speech and writing”.
22Marc Blitz, Freedom of Thought for the Extended Mind: Cognitive Enhancements and the

Constitution, Wisconsin Law Review, 2010, 1049–1118, see p. 1075.

23Id, see generally, Jones v. Opelika, id., note 21.
A Focus on Cognitive Liberty 113

“cognitive liberty.” Essentially, cognitive liberty is the personal freedom to have

sovereignty over one’s own mind; it is an extension of the concepts of freedom of
thought, and to a lesser extent, bodily integrity. As a basic observation, freedom of
thought can be distinguished from cognitive liberty in that the former is concerned
with protecting an individual’s freedom to think “whatever” they want, whereas
cognitive liberty is concerned with protecting an individual’s freedom to think
“however” they want.24 This last aspect of freedom to think directly relates to the
use of neuroprosthetic devices designed to enhance cognitive processes. As legal
precedence for protection of cognitive liberty, the U.S. Supreme Court has previ-
ously held that freedom of the mind is “the broad concept” of which freedom of
speech is but one “component.”25 Reflecting the importance of freedom of thought
for cyborg technologies, Law Professor Marc Blitz, commented that the Supreme
Court has placed freedom of thought at the center of our First Amendment
American jurisprudence saying that our whole constitutional heritage “rebels at
giving the government the power to control men’s minds.”26
A range of computer scientists, neuroscientists, and legal scholars have ques-
tioned the desirability of pursuing technology that may allow the mind to be
hacked, and have argued that the “cognitive liberty” of the mind should receive
the strongest protection possible by government legislation. With exponentially
improving technology to manipulate and study the mind, what is at stake for
humanity given that governments, corporations, and third parties could access a
person’s inner thoughts and memories through their implants? Something funda-
mentally important for all humanity is the right to “cognitive liberty.” Roughly
speaking, cognitive liberty is the personal freedom to have absolute sovereignty
over one’s own mind. It is related to the concepts of freedom of thought, and as I
stated above, to a lesser extent, bodily integrity. In the coming cyborg age, neuro-
prosthetic technology could dramatically impact the cognitive liberty of the mind
thus necessitating a serious discussion on the extent to which cyborg technologies
should be regulated.
Cognitive liberty, or the “right to mental self-determination”, is a vital part of
international human rights law. For example, in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, which is legally binding on member states of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,27 freedom of thought is found under
Article 18 which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience
and religion…” Clearly, maintaining cognitive liberty in an age of brain implants

24Bublitz, Jan Christoph; Merkel, Reinhard, 2014. “Crime Against Minds: On Mental

Manipulations, Harms and a Human Right to Mental Self-Determination.” Criminal Law and
Philosophy, Vol. 8: 61.
25Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705, 1977, quoting W.Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S.

624, 1943.
26Mark Blitz, id., note 22.
27As of April 2014, the Covenant has 74 signatories and 168 parties.
114 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

should be a major objective as humanity moves closer to a cyborg future and even-
tual human-machine merger. In fact, a growing number of legal theorists see cog-
nitive liberty as an important basic human right and argue than cognitive liberty is
the principle underlying a number of recognized rights within the constitutions of
most industrialized nations; freedom of speech being an example.
Given that scientists have discovered that people engage in “internal speech,”
that is, we use language to navigate within our own thoughts, the development of
technology to read our “thoughts” is troubling as it could impact our cognitive lib-
erty, First Amendment, and other constitutional rights. Since the U.S. Constitution
directly references “freedom of speech,” an important question is whether freedom
of speech also protects “internal speech”—that is, the very speech that govern-
ments could access through a neuroprosthetic device. And in addition to consid-
ering internal thought as speech, what about thought transmitted by cybernetic
technology from one brain to another—would this constitute a form of speech
eligible for protection under the First Amendment? Additionally, what Federal
Communication Commission (FCC) regulations on spectrum would apply to tel-
epathic communication mediated by cyborg technology? Given the rate at which
progress is being made in implant technologies, such questions remain to be
resolved within the next few decades.
The debates about the government’s ability to spy on people by monitor-
ing their communications is especially relevant in an age when cyborgs will be
equipped with neuroprosthetic devices and networked sensors. On this point, the
government does currently regulate in areas that relate to emerging cyborg tech-
nologies. For example, for telepathic communication, as just noted, the transmis-
sion of thoughts from one person to another requires the use of spectrum. The
FCC currently regulates the usage of electromagnetic spectrum by a management
process called frequency allocation which involves managing and licensing the
electromagnetic spectrum for commercial users and for non-commercial users
including: state, county and local governments. The FCC management process
considers public safety, commercial and non-commercial fixed and mobile wire-
less services, broadcast television and radio, satellite and other services. Further,
the FCC has also developed regulations for a body area network consisting of
wearable and implantable medical devices.
In the area of privacy, what if the government intercepts a signal from one mind
to another? Not only would FCC regulations apply but the Fourth Amendment
rights of the individual for protection against an unreasonable search and seizure
would apply. One way law enforcement intercepts a signal is to attach a “bug”
to a person’s telephone line and record the person’s conversation. Similarly, in
the cyborg future, I imagine it could be possible to attach a “bug” to a neuropros-
thetic device, which would allow inner thoughts to be surveilled even before they
were vocalized or transmitted electronically. For telephone communication, courts
have held that attaching a bug to the line constitutes a search under the Fourth
Amendment because the Fourth Amendment protects an individual’s privacy rights
for situations in which the person has a legitimate expectation of privacy. Surely,
people would expect the highest expectation of privacy for the creation of their
A Focus on Cognitive Liberty 115

unspoken thoughts in the coming cyborg age and for the transmission of thoughts
from one mind to another.
Interestingly, from a jurisprudence perspective, the definition of what consti-
tutes speech is not straight forward and clearly cyborg communication will raise
a host of issues which will “stress” current law. In fact, the courts have identi-
fied different types of speech, each protected at a different level of scrutiny by the
courts. This means that depending on the type of speech produced, the government
is more or less empowered to restrict that speech. In the U.S., one type of speech
is considered symbolic speech which is a legal term or art used to describe actions
(not spoken language) that purposefully and discernibly convey a particular mes-
sage or statement to those viewing it. However, of particular relevance for cyborg
technology, is the category of “pure speech,” which is the communication of ideas
through spoken or written words or through conduct limited in form to that neces-
sary to convey the idea. If the prior restraint of speech is prohibited under the First
Amendment, the prior restraint of thought would be more egregious. The courts
have generally provided strong protection of pure speech from government regula-
tion; and prior cases in this area could serve as legal precedence for cyborg speech
using telepathic communication. In the future, perhaps the court should recognize
a new form of speech—cyber speech, the conveyance of ideas using thought; if so,
what level of scrutiny would it receive from the government?
In numerous cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized freedom of thought
as a fundamental right, describing freedom of thought as: “… the matrix, the
indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom…”28 Without free-
dom of thought, the First Amendment right to freedom of speech is moot, because
you can only express what you can think. Constraining or censoring how a person
thinks (i.e., cognitive censorship) is the most fundamental kind of censorship, and
is contrary to some of our most cherished constitutional principles. Supporters of
cognitive liberty seek to impose both a negative and a positive obligation on states:
to refrain from non-consensually interfering with an individual’s cognitive pro-
cesses, and to allow individuals to self-determine their own “inner realm” and con-
trol of their own mental functions.
The first obligation on a state, to refrain from non-consensually interfering with
an individual’s cognitive processes, directly applies to government access to neu-
roprosthetic devices, and also seeks to protect individuals from having their mental
processes altered or monitored without their consent or knowledge. Though cogni-
tive liberty is often defined as an individual’s freedom from state interference with
their cognition, Jan Bublitz and Reinhard Merkel of the University of Hamburg,
suggest that cognitive liberty should also prevent other non-state entities from
interfering with an individual’s mental “inner realm”.29 Of relevance for an emerg-
ing law of cyborgs, Bublitz and Merkel propose the introduction of a new criminal
offense punishing “interventions severely interfering with another’s mental

28Palko v. Connecticut, 1937, 302 U.S. 319, 326–327.

29Jan Christoph Bublitz and Reinhard Merkel, id, note 24.
116 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

integrity by undermining mental control or exploiting pre-existing mental weak-

ness.”30 And that, “…direct interventions that reduce or impair cognitive capaci-
ties such as memory, concentration, and willpower; alter preferences, beliefs, or
behavioral dispositions; elicit inappropriate emotions; or inflict clinically identifia-
ble mental injuries would all be prima facie impermissible and subject to criminal
prosecution.”31 Weighing in, Wyre Sententia and Richard Boire of the Center for
Cognitive Liberty and Ethics have also expressed concern that corporations and
other non-state entities might utilize emerging neurotechnologies to alter individu-
als’ mental processes without their consent.32
While one obligation of a state is to refrain from non-consensually interfering
with an individual’s cognitive processes, another, freedom to think however a per-
son wants, seeks to ensure that individuals have the freedom to alter or enhance
their own consciousness; one way to do this would be by stimulating the pleasure
centers of the brain by accessing a neuroprosthetic device. An individual who
enjoys this aspect of cognitive liberty has the freedom to alter their mental pro-
cesses in any way they wish to; whether through indirect methods such as medita-
tion or yoga, or more directly through neurotechnology. This element of cognitive
liberty is of great importance to proponents of the transhumanist movement, a key
tenet of which is the enhancement of human mental function.33
Allowing people to determine their own “inner realm,” is directly related to the
use of neuroprosthesis to access one’s own brain. For example, “self-stimulation”
is a phenomenon whereby an animal (including a human being) will repeatedly
stimulate its brain electrically, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. This phenom-
enon is robust and readily reproducible in many areas of the brain. Interestingly,
the discovery of “pleasure centers” in the brain is one of the more famous findings
from brain stimulation research. It occurred by accident. Professor James Olds,
working with Peter Milner, both of McGill University, inserted an electrode into a
rat’s brain, aiming for the reticular system.34 The electrode curved off its intended
course and landed in a different area, probably near the hypothalamus. Olds put
the rat in a box and stimulated its brain whenever the rat approached a certain cor-
ner. He expected the rat to stay out of that corner, but instead Olds observed the rat
was “coming back for more,” acting as though the brain stimulation was pleasura-
ble. Further research showed that stimulation of areas in the limbic system pro-
duced pleasure in humans, and that individuals in pain or depressed were most
likely to find electrical stimulation of the brain very pleasurable.

30Id.
31Id.
32Richard G. Boire, 2005. Searching the Brain: The Fourth Amendment Implications of Brain-

Based Deception Detection Devices, The American Journal of Bioethics, Vol. 5, Issue 2, doi:
10.1080/15265160590960933.
33Cognitive Liberty, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_liberty.
34The Pleasure Centers, at: http://www.intropsych.com/ch02_human_nervous_system/pleasure_

centers.html.
A Focus on Cognitive Liberty 117

In the decades since Olds and Milner reported the existence of pleasure centers
in the brain, scientists have observed that once stimulated, several regions of the
brain are activated by feelings of triumph, euphoria, sexual pleasure, and addictive
behavior of all types, including non-drug addictions such as gambling. If people,
or third parties, using neuroprosthetic devices can “electronically create” these and
other behaviors, a host of legal and policy issues would be implicated. For exam-
ple, third parties accessing a neuroprosthesis to stimulate the pleasure centers
within a person’s brain, could easily cause the person to become addicted to corti-
cal stimulation, and thus come under the third party’s control. Surely the govern-
ment would regulate heavily in this area. Just consider what Harvard Law
Professor Lawrence Tribe said: “The guarantee of free expression,” “is inextrica-
bly linked to the protection and preservation of open and unfettered mental activ-
ity…”35 In a Supreme Court case, United States v. Reidel, which held that a postal
regulation that banned the sale of adult materials was constitutionally permissible,
Justice Hugo Black dissented arguing that the First Amendment of the United
States Constitution “denies Congress the power to act as censor.” And also on the
topic of government control of thought, in Stanley v. Georgia, the Court stated:
“the First Amendment right of the individual to be free from governmental pro-
grams of thought control…” is imperative, and that the “freedom from govern-
mental manipulation of the content of a man’s mind…” must be preserved.36 The
Court seems to be a strong supporter of the general principles underlying cognitive
liberty, which I view as an indispensable line of defense against government or
corporate control of our thoughts and mind, when the technology to do so is read-
ily available.

Reading the Brain, Lie Detection, and Cognitive Liberty

Thanks to advances in neuroimaging technologies, such as functional magnetic

resonance imaging (fMRI), magneto encephalography (MEG), and positron emis-
sion tomography (PET), the brain’s structure and functions are being observed at
increasing levels of resolution and fidelity. The ability to read brain waves is an
essential technology for telepathy and for other “cognitive” capabilities that future
cyborgs will possess. From a cognitive liberty perspective, telepathic communi-
cation could provide government’s access to a person thoughts at two levels—
through the implant itself, and by interception of the electronic signals transmitted
from one mind to another.
While scientists have not as yet developed working brain-to-brain communica-
tion interfaces for the general public, much progress is being made in technology

35Laurence Tribe, Rights of Privacy and Personhood, American Constitutional Law, Sec. 15–7, at

1322 (2nd ed. 1988).

36United States v. Reidel, 402 U.S. 351 (1971); Stanley v. Georgia 394 U.S. 557 (1969).
118 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

to record the functions of the brain and to makes sense of the output. For example,
functional magnetic resonance imaging is used to measure brain activity by detect-
ing the changes in blood oxygenation and flow that occurs in response to neural
activity—when a brain area is more active it consumes more oxygen, to meet this
increased demand, blood flow increases to the active area. Private companies such
as No Lie MRI are currently working to improve the capability of fMRI technol-
ogy for lie detection so that the fMRI results can be admitted as evidence in court.
Judy Illes, Canadian Research Chair in Neuroethics, sees brain-scanning technol-
ogy to detect lies evolving quickly—commenting that we will have technology
that is sufficiently reliable at getting at the binary question of whether someone is
lying that it may be utilized in certain legal settings.”37 Another company using
fMRI technology for lie detection has developed a system called Guilty
Knowledge. The system, developed by Daniel Langleben and his research team at
the University of Pennsylvania was tested as follows—Langleben gave subjects a
playing card before they entered an fMRI machine and told them to answer no to a
series of questions, including whether they had the card in question. Langleben
and his colleagues found that certain areas of the brain lighted up when people lied
about whether they possessed the card suggesting that fMRI could be used to
detect lying for binary events.
Interestingly, recent advances in the use of reading brain waves using cyborg
devices are based on a technology that has been around since the early twentieth
century—EEG. An electroencephalogram (EEG) can be used to detect electrical
activity in a person’s brain using small, flat metal discs (electrodes) attached to the
person’s scalp. A person’s brain cells communicate via electrical impulses and are
active all the time, even when a person is asleep. Recently, commercial products
that use EEG technology to read the activity of the brain are entering the market-
place. For example, This Place, out of London, has developed an app, MindRDR,
which consists of head-mounted hardware and the Neurosky EEG biosensor (an
off-the-shelf sensor), which is used to create a communications loop between dis-
plays such as Google Glass and the EEG sensor by picking up brainwaves that
reportedly correlate with a person’s ability to concentrate. The app translates the
person’s brainwaves into a meter reading that gets superimposed on the camera
view displayed in Google Glass. With more “focus” the meter reading increases
and the app takes a photograph of what a person is seeing in front of them; if the
person continues to focus, the photo gets posted online. In my view, access to what
a person “concentrates on,” that is, what they are consciously attending to, should
only be possible by first obtaining a warrant from a magistrate, else this would be
a violation of the person’s Fourth Amendment privacy rights and a violation of the
person’s cognitive liberty.
As the use of fMRI data and other brain recording techniques become increas-
ingly common in courtrooms, judges and juries may be asked to draw new and

37Judy Illes, Neuroethics in a New Era of Neuroimaging, American Journal of Neuroradiology,

at: http://www.ajnr.org/content/24/9/1739.full.
Reading the Brain, Lie Detection, and Cognitive Liberty 119

sometimes troubling lines between “normal” and “abnormal” brains. Such judg-
ments could impact the cognitive liberty rights of anyone charged with a crime.
Ruben Gur, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania’s School
of Medicine, has appeared as an expert witness in numerous cases requiring a
determination of the mental competency of a defendant.38 One such case was the
high-profile trial of a convicted serial killer who was known as the “classified-ad
rapist,” because he would respond to classified ads placed by women offering to
sell household items, then rape and kill them. Professor Gur was called as a
national expert in PET scans to help determine whether the accused was responsi-
ble for his actions.
A PET scan (brain positron emission tomography) is an imaging test of the
brain that uses a radioactive substance called a tracer to look for disease or injury
in the brain. After examining the defendant’s PET scans, Gur testified that a
motorcycle accident that had left the defendant in a coma had also severely dam-
aged his amygdala (which has a role in memory, decision making, and emotional
reactions). It was after emerging from the coma that the defendant committed his
first rape. If courts consider whether a “damaged brain” could absolve a person
from responsibility, then I would argue that courts should also consider whether
thoughts implanted on neuroprosthetic devices by a third party should absolve a
person from responsibility for their actions. In an extension of Gur’s work,
Michael Gazzaniga, a professor of psychology, and author of The Ethical Brain,
has noted that within a few years, neuroscientists may be able to show that there
are neurological differences when people testify about their own previous acts and
when they testify to something they saw. Gazzaniga notes, “If you kill someone,
you have a procedural memory of that, whereas if I’m standing and watch you kill
somebody, that’s an episodic memory that uses a different part of the brain.”39
Perhaps, by accessing information stored on neuroprosthetic devices, the govern-
ment could distinguish between procedural versus episodic memories, and thus
either convict or absolve a person accused of a crime. Whether this is desirable,
that is, to scan a person’s brain to obtain evidence for a trial, is a constitutional
issue and a topic that the public and legal community should debate. Even if wit-
nesses don’t have their brains scanned, neuroscience may lead judges and jurors to
conclude that certain kinds of memories are more reliable than others because of
the area of the brain in which they are processed.

38JeffreyRosen, id, note 15, discussing Rubin Gur’s experience as an expert witness.
39JeffreyRosen, id., note 15, quoting Michael Gazzaniga, Michael Gazzaniga, 2006, The Ethical
Brain: The Science of Our Moral Dilemmas, Harper Perennial.
120 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

Towards Telepathy

While EEG and fMRI technologies are leading to significant advances in the use
of brain scans for lie detection, other research in neuroscience is more directly
on the topic of telepathic communication. Professor Miguel Nicolelis from Duke
University is a pioneer in developing technology for the brain. His research is
oriented toward brain-to-brain communication, brain machine interfaces and
neuroprosthesis in human patients and non-human primates. As a result of his
studies, Dr. Nicolelis was one of the first to propose and demonstrate that animals
and human subjects can utilize their electrical brain activity to directly control
neuroprosthetic devices via brain-machine interfaces. In his 2012 book Beyond
Boundaries, Professor Nicolelis speculated about the possibility that two brains
could exchange information. Later, publishing in Scientific Reports Nicolelis
reported that his research team at Duke University Medical Center had achieved
a back-and-forth exchange between two rodent brains. To test his brain interface
technology, his team trained two animals to press one of two levers in exchange
for a drink of water, when an LED turned on. Microelectrodes were placed in each
of the two animals’ cortices and when one rat pressed the correct lever, a sample
of cortical activity from that rat’s brain was wired to the second animal’s brain
located in a chamber where the “it’s-time-to-drink” LED was absent. As evidence
that information was exchanged between the two brains, the rat on the receiving
end of the prosthesis proceeded to press the correct lever (to receive a drink) that
had been messaged over the brain link. Summarizing the results—Nicolelis and
his team provided proof-of-concept technology and results that telepathy may be
possible as a future form of communication.
Related to Professor Nicolelis’s work, results from studies with human subjects
show that telepathy may in fact be a viable technology for the public within a few
decades (or less!). For example, using EEG technology, researchers at the
University of Southampton, England, successfully demonstrated communication
from person-to-person using thought.40 And more recently, at the University of
Washington, researchers demonstrated a working brain-to-brain interface with
human subjects also using EEG technology.41 In their study, two people were
located in different rooms where they were not allowed to communicate other than
with their brains using EEG technology. Both subjects looked at a video game
where they had to defend a virtual city by firing a cannon. But one person had his
brain connected to an electroencephalography machine that read his brain signals,

40Communicating person to person through the power of thought alone, 2009, University of

Southampton, at: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2009/oct/09_135.shtml.

41Rao R. P. N, Stocco, A, Bryan, M, Sarma, D, Youngquist, T. M, Wu J, et al. 2014, A Direct

Brain-to-Brain Interface in Humans, PLoS ONE 9(11): e111332. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.

0111332.
Towards Telepathy 121

which were used to fire a virtual cannon. That is, rather than using an input device
to fire the canon the person was instructed to think about moving his hand to fire
the cannon. That thought was transmitted over the internet to another person
whose hand was situated on a touchpad that would twitch and tap in the right
direction if the signals were successfully received. Based on their experience with
the system, the University of Washington researchers were confident that the tech-
nology worked as intended. Further, according to the researchers, the next step is
to determine what kind of information can be sent between people’s brains. For
example, they want to know if one day, a teacher could download information
directly to a student’s brain—I believe the answer is yes, and that this will be a
future capability of cyborg technology.

Creating Artificial Memories

Neuroscientists foresee a future world where minds can be programmed in order

to create artificial memories. Based on recent advances in brain-to-brain communi-
cation, some scientists argue that memories may be implanted into a person’s
mind, and that memories from one mind can be transferred to another. This may
sound like technology for another century, but in fact, scientists have already suc-
cessfully implanted a false memory into the brain of a mouse. Given these results,
what could be more important for an emerging law of cyborgs than protection of
the integrity of our memories? To create a memory prosthesis, MIT scientists
Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu tagged brain cells associated with a specific memory
and then tweaked that memory to make the mouse believe an event had happened
when it hadn’t, other neuroscience laboratories are producing similar results.
While implanting a memory in humans equipped with a neuroprosthetic device
won’t happen in the immediate future, Ramirez and Liu have shown that in princi-
ple, it should be possible to isolate a human memory and activate it.42 In fact,
Michael J. Kahana, who serves as director of the University of Pennsylvania’s
Computational Memory Lab commented on the MIT study, “We would have every
reason to expect this would happen in humans as it happened in mice.”43 Clearly,
improvements in neuroprostheread your mindtic technologies are occurring
rapidly.

42Meeri Kim, 2013, MIT Scientists Implant a False Memory into a Mouse’s Brain, The

Washington Post, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/inception-mit-

scientists-implant-a-false-memory-into-a-mouses-brain/2013/07/25/47bdee7a-f49a-11e2-
a2f1-a7acf9bd5d3a_story.html,
43Id., quoting Michael J. Kahana.
122 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

Before discussing the technology of implanting false memories in more detail,

let’s digress to first discuss some of the law and policy issues associated with the
technology. Duke University Professor of Law, Nita Farahany has observed that
the mind stores a large amount of information that could be of value to the govern-
ment and to businesses. For example, she notes that our brains can uniquely iden-
tify speakers, sounds, and images. Interestingly, technologies integrated into the
brain could also detect this information, which could be very valuable to a crimi-
nal investigation. But should it be permissible to scan a person’s brain or to access
the data stored on a neuroprosthetic device to access our recognition of objects or
people? Maybe so, because in courtrooms, eyewitness testimony has a high rate of
falsity and sometimes witnesses lack memories of key information. Therefore, in
criminal law cases directly accessing a person’s memory of an event would be
helpful. However, what if false memories could be planted in an eyewitnesses?
Most people would agree that it would be impermissible for the government to
create its own “star witness,” Farahany maintained.44
Given her expertise in Constitutional law issues related to brain recording tech-
nologies, Professor Farahany has argued in law review papers that a right guaran-
teed under the U.S. Constitution and which has relevance for government access to
cyborg technology is the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.45
She asks—if the government could “read your mind,” and use the output as evi-
dence in court, would the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination
still have meaning in a cyborg age?46 In the light of the increasing ability to access
human memory using implant technology, Professor Farahany has proposed legis-
lative protection of cognitive liberty as a way of safeguarding the right against
self-incrimination found in the Fifth Amendment.47 In a Stanford Law Review
article, Farahany reviewed Schmerber v. California, in which the U.S. Supreme
Court held that under the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment, no
person shall be compelled to “prove a charge [from] his own mouth,” but a person
may be compelled to provide real or physical evidence (for example, DNA or a
blood sample).48 Therefore, while a defendant in a criminal case cannot be com-
pelled to “take the stand” and serve as a witness against himself; the government
could collect samples from their body and use that as evidence. With advances in
brain reading technologies, Farahany argued that based on modern applications of
neuroscience there exist the need to redefine the taxonomy of evidence subject to

44Nita Farahany, 2012, Incrimination Thoughts, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 64. 351.
45Id.
46Id.
47Id.
48Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966), was a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court,

which held that a State may, over the suspect’s protest, have a physician extract blood from a per-
son suspected of drunken driving without violating the suspect’s rights under the Fourth or Fifth
Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Creating Artificial Memories 123

the privilege against self-incrimination.49 This is because evidence can arise from
government access to a neuroprosthetic device or by directly recording brain activ-
ities—and neither represent the type of physical evidence permissible for the court
to obtain. For this and other reasons, an interesting question of jurisprudence in
the coming cyborg age, is whether Constitutional rights, such as the Fifth
Amendment applies to data stored on neuroprosthetic devices?50

Litigating Cognitive Liberty

The concept of cognitive liberty is broad and therefore there may be different ave-
nues of protection for cognitive liberty among different jurisdictions. On this
point, in the U.S. the free speech prong of the First Amendment while relevant is
not the only protection of cognitive liberty. For example, under the U.S.
Constitution, the Due Process Clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments offer some
protection against unwarranted bodily intrusion. Why is this dual level of protec-
tion of importance for our cyborg future? When the state is not restricting the
expression of ideas, but altering brain physiology that may impact cognition (for
example by requiring the administration of antipsychotic drugs), it may not be a
First Amendment argument that provides protection for cognitive liberty, but
rather the due process protection under the Constitution which can be used to pro-
tect the integrity of our bodies. Discussing this issue, Professor Jonathan Blitz of
Oklahoma City University School of Law argues that the power to reshape our
thinking process biologically, should be recognized as one form of a more general
power that our freedom of mind is intended to place in our hands and not in the
hands of government officials.51
Cyborg technologies, which could be hacked by a government, have profound
implications for cognitive liberty. Technology which allows the government to
manipulate mental processes, is a direct effort to alter the content and form of a
person’s thoughts—the essential substrate for free speech and expression. A basic
question in an age of cyborg technology, is whether the government can access the
content of the mind before it is externalized? This question has not been directly
litigated in the context of cyborg technologies, but in related cases, cognitive lib-
erty has been argued as a right that a citizen should be afforded by the state. For

49Nita Farahany, id. note 44.

50See Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1977), noting that the Internet allows for “unlimited low-cost
capacity for communication of all kinds.”
51Marc Blitz, 2010, Freedom of Thought for the Extended Mind: Cognitive Enhancement and the

Constitution, Wisconsin Law Review, Vol. 2010, No. 4, 1049.

124 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

example, in the U.K., the case of R v. Hardison, involved a defendant who was
charged with violating the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.52 Hardison claimed that
cognitive liberty was safeguarded by Article 9 of the European Convention on
Human Rights. Specifically, the defendant argued that “individual sovereignty over
one’s interior environment constitutes the very core of what it means to be free,”
and that because psychotropic drugs are a potent method of altering an individu-
al’s mental process, prohibition of them under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 was
in opposition to the Act. The court however disagreed, and denied Hardison’s right
to appeal to a superior court. In the U.S., the Supreme Court has written in NAACP
v. Button, that “… only a compelling state interest… can justify limiting first
Amendment freedoms.”53 In the coming cyborg age, what such interests should
be, and under what conditions they should be protected is a topic ripe for debate
and legislative action.
After the Hardison decision in Great Britain, the U.S. Supreme Court heard
arguments on an important case that dealt directly with issues related to the cogni-
tive liberty of the mind.54 As background, the defendant Dr. Charles Sell was
charged in federal court with submitting false claims to Medicaid and private
insurance companies resulting in counts of fraud, and one of money-laundering.
Dr. Sell had previously sought psychiatric help and had voluntarily taken antipsy-
chotic drugs; however, he found the side effects intolerable. After the initial
charge, Dr. Sell was declared incompetent to stand trial (but not dangerous), as a
result, an administrative hearing was held and it was decided that Dr. Sell could be
forcibly drugged to regain mental competence; a decision Dr. Sell challenged. The
decision by the government to force Dr. Sell to take medication which would
change his mental processes raised significant Constitutional law issues. On this
point, Law Professor Lawrence Tribe of Harvard University commented, “whether
the government decides to interfere with our mental autonomy by confiscating
books and films or by denying us psychiatric medications; “the offense” is ulti-
mately the same: “government invasion and usurpation of the choices that together
constitute an individual’s psyche.”55
Could a person who did not pose danger to another, be forcibly injected with
antipsychotic medication solely to render him competent to be tried for crimes that
were described by Judge Kermit Bye of the 8th Circuit Court as “nonviolent and
purely economic”?56 In Dr. Sell’s case, the government sought to directly manipu-
late and modify Dr. Sell’s thoughts and thought process by forcing him to take
mind-altering “antipsychotic” drugs. Generally, the government can administer

52R v Hardison, 2007, 1 Cr App R (S) 37.

53NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963); Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 326–327 (1937).
54Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166 (2003) is a landmark decision in which the U.S. Supreme

Court imposed stringent limits on the right of a lower court to order the forcible administration of
antipsychotic medication to a criminal defendant who had been determined to be incompetent to
stand trial for the sole purpose of making them competent and able to be tried.
55Lawrence H. Tribe, id., note 35.
56Sell, id., note 54.
Litigating Cognitive Liberty 125

drugs only “in limited circumstances”, and in Dr. Sell’s holding the Court imposed
stringent limits on the right of a lower court to order the forcible administration of
antipsychotic medication to a criminal defendant who had been determined to be
incompetent, for the sole purpose of making him competent and able to be tried.
Thus since the lower court had failed to determine that all the appropriate criteria
for court-ordered forcible treatment had been met, the order to forcibly medicate
the defendant was reversed.57
While the Sell case involved altering the defendant’s mind by forced drugging,
what are the implications of the case for government access to neuroprosthesis
and other brain implant technologies that could also alter a person’s thought pro-
cesses or even edit their memories? Clearly, the Sell court did not completely ban
the government from altering a person’s brain chemistry, which begs the question
as to whether the government could access, or even edit a person’s memory by
accessing an implant within their brain. While prosecuting an incompetent defend-
ant is widely viewed as denying that defendant a fair trial, because such defend-
ants cannot participate adequately in their own defense; those who oppose using
forced drugging to ensure a fair trial argue that the drugs are often so overwhelm-
ing as to make adequate participation in the person’s defense impossible as well.
The reliance on freedom of thought and Due Process rights under the 5th and 14th
Amendments as arguments against the government “manipulating” a person’s
mind seems to me compelling: how can a person’s speech be free from govern-
ment control if the government can forcibly administer drugs or edit the mind by
accessing technology which allows them to change the thoughts that prompt a per-
son to speak in the first place?
The “cognitive liberty” interest in Dr. Sell’s case can be thought of as an inter-
est forged by the union of Dr. Sell’s liberty interest in bodily integrity with his
freedom of thought and his Due Process right under the 5th and 14th
Amendments. Such a government invasion of bodily integrity—one aimed at
directly manipulating the person’s thoughts and thinking processes should clearly
infringe on the First Amendment right to free speech. If “at the heart of the First
Amendment is the notion that in a free society one’s beliefs should be shaped by
his mind and his conscience rather than coerced by the State,” then there can be no
doubt that the government infringes on the First Amendment when it seeks to
change Dr. Sell’s thinking by forcibly changing his brain chemistry.58 Further, by
altering a person’s mind with the forced administration of drugs, the government
commits an act of cognitive censorship and mental manipulation, an action surely
more disfavored under the First Amendment than even the censorship of speech. A
government that is permitted to manipulate a citizen’s consciousness at its very
roots—by forcing a person to take a mind-altering drug or hacking a neuropros-
thetic device—need not censor speech, because it could prevent a priori ideas
from ever occurring in the mind of the speaker. By directly manipulating the

57Sell, id., note 54.

58Sell, id, note 54.
126 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

manner in which Dr. Sell’s brain processes information and formulates ideas, the
government ipso facto manipulates and alters both the form and content of Dr.
Sell’s subsequent expression and thus renders the First Amendment’s free speech
guarantee meaningless.
With the exception of the cases in criminal law dealing with the defendant’s
mental capacity to stand trial, the fundamental question, in what ways people may
legitimately change the mental state of others, is largely unexplored in legal think-
ing but will be a central issue in the emerging field of cyborg law. While every
constitution guarantees the right to bodily integrity, few afford protection to men-
tal integrity. Perhaps if a cybernetically enhanced mind received the legal rights
afforded computers, future cyborgs would receive a range of protections beyond
those of biological humans. On this point, just as a computer can be hacked, so
too could a brain equipped with neuroprosthetic devices; thus, would affording
cyborgs the same rights found in anti-hacking statutes be appropriate in a cyborg
age? Future hacking crimes could take a decidedly sinister twist; not hacking to
breach computer systems but brains, bodies and behaviors. In fact, it’s possible
now to hack insulin pumps or to use jamming signals to stop hackers from lethal
pacemaker attacks.

Implanting a Software Virus in the Mind

In violation of internet, telecommunication, and criminal law statutes, future hack-

ers could use wireless technology to disrupt the functioning of a person’s neuro-
prosthesis or even to implant a software virus into a person’s mind. On this last
point, a British scientist and former student of Professor Kevin Warwick, Dr. Mark
Gasson, has claimed to be the first person to become infected with a computer
virus. How can this be possible? In Dr. Gasson’s case, purposively as part of a
proof-of-concept study, but in the future, cyborg hackers could spread a virus to a
person’s mind by accessing brain-implant technology or by hacking into a network
of wirelessly connected brains. In Dr. Gasson’s study, a chip was inserted in his
hand which was then infected with a software virus.59 Of relevance to a law of
cyborgs, Dr. Gasson showed that the chip was able to pass on the computer virus
to external control systems—meaning a person with cyborg “infected” technology
could transmit a virus to a machine external to the cyborg. But more importantly,
if other implanted chips within a person’s body, including neuroprosthesis, had
been connected to the system they too would have been infected by the virus.
Experts in cybersecurity are especially alarmed at the ease in which implants
can be hacked. For example, Professor Kevin Fu, a leading expert on medical-
device security at the University of Michigan has written extensively on this topic.

59Cellan-Jones, Rory, 2010, First human ‘infected with computer virus, BBC News online

(BBC). Retrieved 26 May 2010.

Implanting a Software Virus in the Mind 127

His concerns relate directly to neuroprosthetic devices and implants that are con-
nected to an internal network that is itself connected to the Internet, and that are
also vulnerable to infections from laptops or other device. The problem of
implants being affected with a software virus is exacerbated by the fact that manu-
facturers often will not allow their equipment to be modified, even to add security
features. “I find this mind-boggling,” Fu says.60 This particular issue, lack of
patches for software could be a serious hindrance to cognitive liberty when hack-
ing of brain implants is possible.
With others, I have often thought that the transmission of a software virus is not
unlike the transmission of a disease-causing virus that enters the body. On this
point consider Mark Gasson’s comment on the experience of receiving a software
virus: “Many people with medical implants also consider them to be integrated into
the concept of their body, and so in this context it is appropriate to talk in terms of
people themselves being infected by computer viruses.”61 A virus has to have a
host, and in some cases can be transported through the air we breathe, similarly, a
software virus can be transported through the air using spectrum to a cybernetically
enhanced host. In terms of hacking into computers, there are some laws which reg-
ulate in this area. In the U.S., the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act deals with the
issue of making and using devices and programs to gain unauthorized access to
secure computer systems. Further, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act prohibits
access to government computers to anyone without authorization. Hackers who are
convicted of crimes that violate this law may be required to pay fines, be placed on
probation, or serve jail time, depending on the severity of the damages.
Under U.S. law, if a disease is purposively transmitted to another person, there
could be criminal liability for the act. For example, criminal transmission of a sex-
ually transmitted disease may be actionable through state laws that typically
include both HIV as well as other communicable or contagious sexually transmit-
ted diseases. However, we currently don’t employ the disease transmission model
to the spread of a software virus: instead we use other legal options for those who
transmit malware.62 If the means of software virus transmission is through the
Internet, the potential impact could compromise millions of hosts. Just consider a
“harmless experiment” by a Cornell University student that involved the release
onto the Internet of a type of malware called a “worm” that compromised thou-
sands of computers and required millions of dollars-worth of time to eradicate. As
several computers operated by the U.S. Government were damaged, the student

60See generally, David Talbot, 2010, Computer Viruses Are “Rampant” on Medical Devices in

Hospitals, MIT Technology Review, quoting Professor Fu, at: http://www.technologyreview.com/

news/429616/computer-viruses-are-rampant-on-medical-devices-in-hospitals/.
61Mark Gasson, 2005, Extending human interaction via invasive neural implants (PhD thesis).

University of Reading.
62Malware (short for “malicious software”), is a file or code, typically delivered over a network

that infects, explores, steals or conducts virtually any behavior an attacker wants, would be del-
eterious to the bodily integrity of any cyborg.
128 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

was prosecuted and convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act described
above.63 Other jurisdictions also punish those who infect computers with a virus.
For example, in the U.K., the introduction of malware to a computer is covered by
Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act. The Act states that a crime is committed if
a person “does any act which causes an unauthorized modification of the contents
of any computer” and the perpetrator intends to “cause a modification of the con-
tents of any computer” which may “impair the operation of any computer”, “pre-
vent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer” or “impair the
operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data”.64 Relating this
law to cyborg technology, access to software and algorithms in the artificial hip-
pocampus (which is a computer) created by Professor Berger, could hinder mem-
ory processes and be actionable under the U.K. Act.
Clearly, Dr. Gasson’s findings that a virus can spread from one implant to
another, has important implications for a cyborg future where brain implants stor-
ing memories and sensory information could be accessed by third parties, and in
which medical devices such as pacemakers, cochlear implants, and retinal pros-
thesis, could be contaminated by a virus infecting another neuroprosthetic implant.
Dr. Gasson’s findings show that when third party access to neuroprosthesis
become possible, the spread of a computer virus will also become possible and
thus maintaining cognitive liberty will be an important consideration for anyone
equipped with neuroprosthetic technology.

Conclusion

As cyborg technologies improve and continue to be integrated into the human

body, significant issues of law and policy will need to be addressed; if not, human-
ity could be subjected to a host of unexpected and negative outcomes. For cog-
nitive liberty, perhaps the most troubling outcome would be the risk that a
totalitarian government could gain access to neuroprosthetic devices—this could
lead to a dystopic future not unlike the societies discussed in the popular nov-
els written by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, or George Orwell in 1984.
Hopefully, given the high stakes for humanity, this chapter has convinced the
reader that in the cyborg future accessing the mind for nefarious purposes is com-
pletely possible, and not just the warning of overzealous futurists and novelists

63Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), 18 U.S.C. 1030; There is an obligation for prosecu-
tion under the CFAA that a non-public computer is damaged where the term “damage” means
any impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information.
Computer Misuse Act 1990 (c. 18), 1990 CHAPTER 18. The PCI-DSS at section 5 requires
that “Anti-virus software must be used on all systems commonly affected by viruses to pro-
tect systems from malicious software.” The Consumer Protection Act 1987 (Products Liability)
(Modification) Order 2000 (Statutory Instrument 2000 No. 2771).
64Computer Misuse Act, Id.
Conclusion 129

from the first half of last century. In an age of cyborgs, the over worked saying
that technology is a “dual edge” sword, in that it can provide amazing benefits to
humanity, or lead to unintended negative outcomes; is especially true. Therefore,
the need to vigorously debate how cyborg technologies will be used in the future
and how they will be regulated is especially meaningful.
For cognitive liberty, freedom of thought is the natural human right of each per-
son to be secure in their ability to perceive the world to the best of their ability. To
have true cognitive liberty in a world with people equipped with brain implants
would mean that first we must have access to truthful and unbiased information
about the actions of others and the general state of the world—will this be possible
in a world consisting of cybernetic enhancements to our bodies and mind?
Because this is an important consideration for our cyborg future, consider the defi-
nition of cognitive liberty proposed by an organization which focuses on the con-
cept. The Center for Cognitive Liberties defines the term as “the right of each
individual to think independently and autonomously, to use the full spectrum of
his or her mind, and to engage in multiple modes of thought.”65 Without the ability
to think independently and to receive accurate representations of external events
we cannot make independently informed choices which is an essential requirement
to participate in liberal democracies; and without the ability to engage in all modes
of thought, we may be subject to control by governments, corporations, and other
third parties. These are areas which need vigorous debate and legislative action
within the next decades; clearly, we need to ensure that cognitive liberty is a basic
right as we move forward toward a cyborg future.
As we enhance our bodies with technology, the clear trend is that we are
becoming vulnerable to more government supervision and privacy invasions. For
these and other reasons we need to ask—how should the law account for viola-
tions of our rights which may accompany the emergence of cyborg technologies?
Should the technology integrated within our bodies and brains have the rights
afforded natural people, or only the rights associated with property? This is a diffi-
cult question to answer but a timely question to pose because the legal division
between humans and machines is beginning to blur as technology is implanted
within the body and performs functions once done by organic parts. Interestingly,
Mariella Pazzaglia and colleagues from Sapienza University, have found that
wheel-bound people with spinal cord injuries perceive their body’s edges as being
plastic and flexible to include the wheelchair.66 If the law continues to view the
machine parts integrated into the human body as separate from the body, then not
only will this decision be incompatible with how we view our cybernetically
enhanced bodies, but lead to situations where the law is not equipped to handle

65Center for Cognitive Liberties and Ethics, at: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/faqs/faq_general.htm.

66Science Daily, 2013, Human brain treats prosthetic devices as part of the body, at:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130306221135.htm. Mariella Pazzaglia, Giulia

Galli, Giorgio Scivoletto, Marco Molinari. A Functionally Relevant Tool for the Body following
Spinal Cord Injury. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (3): e58312 doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058312.
130 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

disputes involving cyborg technology. For example, data has tremendous value,
but who owns the data produced by technology implanted within the body?
Consider that a heart pacer produces data concerning the functioning of the heart,
including heartbeat, blood temperature, breathing, and heart electrical activity.
However, under current law, the data produced by cyborg devices, such as a pace-
maker, is not viewed as the property of the cyborg, but of the manufacturer, ven-
dor, or licensor of the medical implant. As noted by Benjamin Wittes and Jane
Chong in a Brookings Law Report, “The more we come to see the machine as an
extension of the person—first by the pervasiveness of its use, then by its physical
integration with the user—the less plausible will seem the notion that these are
simply tools which with we choose to use…”67 And the less the machine parts are
viewed as tools, the more relevant the question—why not view the human-
machine combination as a fully integrated being, deserving of the rights afforded
natural persons?
Issues of ownership for cyborg technology and the data produced by implants,
while important for the law of property and contract, are just one of many areas of
law and policy that will be impacted by the emergence of cyborg technologies. For
example, the spread of cyborg technologies throughout the population, will likely
influence the very structure of society itself. This is because cyborg technologies
designed to enhance cognitive functions could create multiple classes of people,
differing in intellectual abilities; with different needs, rights, and aspirations. How
would the law deal with a society consisting of different types of cyborgs and also
of unenhanced people, differing vastly in intellectual abilities? Thinking about this
question, Harvard University Professor Michael Sandel, has expressed concern
that enhancement technology could create two classes of human beings—those
with access to enhancement technologies, and those who must make do with an
unaltered memory that fades with age.68
My concerns that emerging cyborg technologies which are directed at the mind
could lead to a dystopic future, are compatible with Stanford’s Francis
Fukuyama’s comments on the dangers of biotechnology as he discussed in Our
Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution.69 For exam-
ple, just as with biotechnology, our human dignity and human rights could be
changed as we morph into more machine than biological human. According to
Fukuyama, it is unquestionable that our equal moral status, or worth, rests on cer-
tain properties we share, or as Professor Fukuyama puts it, on our common human
nature. The concern is that future advances in cybernetic technology which
lead to modification of “our complex evolved natures” could “disrupt either the
unity or the continuity of human nature, and thereby the human rights that are

67Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong, id., note 1.

68Michael J. Sandel, 2007, The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic
Engineering. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674036383.
69Francis Fukuyama, 2003, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology

Revolution, Picador Press.

Conclusion 131

based on it.”70 Clearly, cybernetic technologies could dramatically change the mix
of human to machine parts, and thus affect the balance of our common human
nature. The contrary view, expressed by those who believe that it is advantageous
that we are becoming posthuman, is to think of our species, like other species, as
continually evolving, and it is unnecessary to freeze it in place to protect human
dignity and human rights. In this view “human rights” will evolve as we integrate
technology into our bodies, and that this is the result of a natural process.
However, before the warnings presented in this chapter motives the reader to
call for a ban on all cyborg technologies aimed at the mind, perhaps a balancing
of cognitive liberty against government rights must be considered. This is because
preventing the government from regulating in any area related to the creation,
receipt, or transmission of information, would effectively prevent it from govern-
ing—in fact, in the U.S. a whole body of First Amendment law addresses just this
issue, when, where, and how the government can restrict speech. Further, banning
or heavily restricting cyborg technologies directed at the mind could also con-
demn some people to a lifetime of mental illness that (with continuing advances in
cyborg technology) could have been alleviated with a neuroprosthetic device. And
if brain enhancement technologies were banned, then unenhanced people could be
condemned to a future in which their information processing abilities would be
orders of magnitude less than artificially intelligent machines; would we then be
subservient to the machines?
Perhaps as some argue, only thought that is expressed in vocalized, symbolic,
or commercial speech should be regulated to some extent—and that unspoken
thought should receive blanket protection. In either case, government regulation of
speech, through prior restraints (such as by assessing a brain implant and disrupt-
ing the thought process), should be heavily frowned upon—the Supreme Court
generally supports this view. The Court in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition com-
mented that thought is most in danger “…when the government seeks to control
thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end.”71 This dicta raises a
question that requires serious debate on just what government motive to regulate
thought would count as permissible: insuring public safety under the state’s broad
police powers could be one. However, the idea of holding people accountable for
their predispositions as discovered by accessing their thoughts through a neuropro-
sthetic device rather than their actions poses a challenge to one of the central prin-
ciples of Anglo-American jurisprudence: namely, that people are responsible for
their behavior, not their proclivities—for what they do, not solely what they pri-
vately think (although I should note that crimes have a mens rea component com-
bined with an actus reus).
The full range of issues that will be implicated by third party access to neuro-
prosthetic devices are not only too numerous to discuss in one book chapter, but

70Id.
71Achcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234, 2002.
132 4  Cognitive Liberty, Brain Implants, and Neuroprosthesis

not possible to present comprehensively, because we are just at the beginnings of

developing a law of cyborgs, therefore, much remains to be determined. However,
an important issue to briefly review concerns the possibility of a third-party cyber-
stalking a person equipped with a neuroprosthetic device, as this relates to the
topic of the chapter—a person’s ability to exercise cognitive liberty. Just con-
sider—if repeated harassing phone calls to a cell phone are threatening, imagine
repeated calls or access to an implant in the brain that functions as a communica-
tion device. In general, cyberstalking can involve using the Internet or other elec-
tronic means to harass an individual, which can also be accompanied by a credible
threat of serious harm. And clearly, by accessing a neuroprosthetic device the psy-
chological damage resulting from cyberstalking could be especially egregious as
the damage could result from actually editing a person’s memory. Given third
party access to implantable devices, if a brain implant was accessed by a stalker,
the results could be incredibly threatening and physically damaging—implicating
criminal assault, battery, and other appropriate statutes. There is no current law
directly on cyberstalking through access to brain implant devices, but just as
California was the first state to enact an anti-chipping statute. California was also
the first state to pass an anti-stalking law.72 Under the law, courts may issue
restraining orders to prohibit stalking and a victim of stalking may bring a civil
lawsuit against the stalker and recover monetary damages. Because cyberstalking
will take on a new meaning if third party access to a neuroprosthesis is done to
threaten the integrity of a person’s mind; this is obviously a great concern and an
area ripe for legislation before midcentury.
To summarize, neuroprosthetic devices have joined the information technology
revolution, they are now exponentially improving technologies. As a result, the
law and policy impacted by the revolution occurring with neuroprosthesis, has not
kept up. Chris Gray, writing in Cyborg  Citizen has suggested that as we move
toward the cyborg future, perhaps we need to consider granting basic rights to
cybernetically enhanced individuals.73 According to Gray, for freedom of speech,
we should grant cyborgs an equivalent freedom of electronic speech, which would
protect the right without government interference, to engage in electronic and
other nonphysical forms of transmitting information—this would be an important
right when telepathy is possible. Further, given the possibility of third party access
to cybernetic devices implanted in the brain, the privacy of cyborgs could be
threatened far beyond that of unenhanced individuals. Therefore, Gray proposes
that the right of electronic privacy be granted to cyborgs. This right would protect
cyborgs from third party access to their neuroprosthetic devices, and the right to
privacy when they engage in electronic communication. And finally, Gray suggests
that cyborgs be afforded the right to freedom of consciousness; that is, the right to

72California Civil Stalking Law, Cal Civ. Code § 1708.7 (2014); Stalking Cal. Pen. Code § 646.9,

Stalking (2008).
73Chris Gray 2002, Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age, Routledge.
Conclusion 133

have one’s very consciousness free from outside interference.74 In conclusion, just
as in most of the world today in the U.S. we are a nation of law and also of tech-
nology, in that spirit, we now need to decide the appropriate balance between the
use of cyborg technologies and their impact on our human freedoms as afforded
by our laws, statutes, and policies.

74Id.
Chapter 5
Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking
the Body

Introduction

The first students who took a course in computer science were required to write
programs for a massive computer that had a voracious appetite for electricity and a
habit for reading punched cards. Since then, much has changed. Now day’s wire-
lessly networked smart phones with the power of a mid-80s Cray supercomputer
are in the hands of every student1; and over a hundred thousand people with debil-
itating neurological disease have electrodes implanted in their brain to control
tremors and other symptoms.2 But, as impressive as these uses of technology, in
the future, prosthetics, implantable chips, and brain-computer interfaces, will go
far beyond treating disease, or providing a tool for students to search the internet.
In fact, researchers in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and robotics, have pre-
dicted that well before the end of this century, technology will have advanced to
the stage where memories can be implanted in the brain; cyborgs will emerge in
full force; and artificially intelligent machines will argue for rights. The technol-
ogy of brain-computer interfaces, more powerful computers, and advances in arti-
ficial intelligence, are all leading the way to what I believe is the major trend for
the twenty-first century, a future in which we humans merge with artificially intel-
ligent machines; and as Ray Kurzweil writing in “The Singularity is Near”
observed, a future that may be only a few decades away.3

1The early ENIAC computer used 160 Kilowatts of electric power and had 18,000 vacuum tubes;

Vovek Wadhwa, Our Lagging Laws, 2014, MIT Technology Review, v. 117, p. 11.
2About 30,000 in the U.S. with Parkinson’s disease are treated with an electrode to stimulate

their brain and 70,000 more are in need of deep brain stimulation, further 200,000 people use
Cochlear implants.
3Ray Kurzweil, 2006, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Penguin

Books.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 135

W. Barfield, Cyber-Humans, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25050-2_5
136 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

In this chapter, I discuss amazing technologies that are being used by indi-
viduals to enhance and modify their body, and that are moving humanity directly
towards a cyborg age and the possibility of a Posthuman future. These technolo-
gies will also bring us a few steps closer to the technical Singularity; that point
in time where artificial intelligence reaches and then passes human intelligence.
Given the range of technologies described in this chapter, I categorize practices to
modify or enhance the body under the general rubric of “body hacking.” Efforts by
individuals to “hack their body,” may include enhancing their senses, creating new
senses, modifying the external features of their body, or as discussed below, under
the topic of cybersecurity, disrupting the implantable wireless devices worn by
other people. In my view of the future, to merge with machines is not to become
indistinguishable from a robot, nor to lose every essence of humanity, but to more-
and-more integrate technology into the human body, including the brain, essen-
tially creating a cyborg and Posthuman future for humanity. How this future may
unfold is discussed throughout this book.
There are many reasons why it would be desirable to hack the body with pros-
thesis, sensors, and other technologies. In fact, for thousands of years, people have
been modifying the external features of their bodies. For example, among some
Amazonian tribes, young males traditionally have their lips pierced and begin to
wear lip plates when they enter the men’s house, so the general idea that the body
is malleable and subject to modification is clear from studies in anthropology and
sociology.4 Furthermore, in western society, movie stars and others use cosmetic
surgery to modify their body and facial appearance for aesthetic purposes. Based
on data from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons,5 in the U.S. alone, mil-
lions of plastic surgery procedures are performed yearly, and millions more people
have cosmetic procedures done for reconstructive purposes.6 In addition, medical
necessity is often cited as a reason to modify the body or restore the functions of
the body to a previous normal state; for example, several hundred thousand people
worldwide have cochlear implants and retinal prosthesis, and amazing enhance-
ment technologies are just beyond the horizon.
Another factor leading to a cyborg future is the growing number of people who
are beginning to “self-enhance” their body using digital technology in order to go
beyond current human abilities. With continuing advances in technology, such
people may benefit from the ability to hack the body in amazing ways. For exam-
ple, in the future, with sufficiently advanced brain-computer interfaces, students
with an interest in physics and economics could access the subject by

4See generally Victoria Pitts, 2003, In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification,
Palgrave Macmillan.
5See for example, American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2014, American Society of Plastic

Surgeons Reports Cosmetic Procedures Increased 3 Percent in 2014, at: http://www.plasticsurgery.

org/news/2015/plastic-surgery-statistics-show-new-consumer-trends.html.
6Reconstructive surgery is surgery to restore function or normal appearance by reconstructing

defective organs or parts.

Introduction 137

downloading the material directly to a digital storage device in their brain.7 And
health conscious people could buy medical/MD downloads the way they buy nutri-
tional supplements; and for people requiring new skills for the twenty-first cen-
tury, they could download the appropriate cognitive skills directly to their mind (or
upload cognitive skills they have learned to the internet). Of course for any of
these possibilities to happen, significant breakthroughs in technology and the life
sciences will have to occur, but if anything, this book should convince the reader
that we are at least headed in that direction. And as always, in the background of
humans hacking their body and becoming more “cyborg like,” it is important to
remember, at the same time, artificially intelligent machines are making great
strides in becoming more “human-like” in terms of their senses, cognition, physi-
cal appearance, and motor abilities. In fact, robotic prosthesis, are now approach-
ing levels of human functionality in many areas. We seem to be becoming more
like them (artificially intelligent machines), and they, more like us.
But even with amazing breakthroughs in technology, caution is in order. In an
age where science is on the verge of allowing parents to select the features of their
babies; and people are integrating faster, smarter, and more powerful technology
into their body, body hacking and its consequences warrant significant discussion.
An author and member of Singularity University, Ramez Naam wonders what it
would be like if our brains were wired together by electronics.8 Would we be vul-
nerable to bugs, software crashes, computer viruses, and malware? In a previous
chapter I addressed this issue and concluded the answer is definitely yes. And
Stanford Professor Francis Fukuyama, writing in Our Posthuman Future,
Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, warned that “the most significant
threat” from enhancement technology is “the possibility that it will alter human
nature and thereby move us into a ‘Posthuman’ stage of history.”9 According to
Fukuyama, this might happen through the achievement of genetically engineered
“designer babies,” but he presents other routes as well: such as research on neu-
ropharmacology, which has already begun to reshape human behavior through
drugs like Prozac and Ritalin.
In this chapter I discuss how digital technology may be used to enhance and
modify the body as another route leading to a Posthuman future. On the possibility
of humanity entering a Posthuman stage, Professor Fukuyama expressed the con-
cern of those who argue for caution in moving towards this outcome, warning of
the possibility of “us” becoming something else or losing what he refers to as our
“human essence.”10 Surely, we will want to vigorously discuss the possibility of
losing the very characteristics that make us human, rather than passively observing

7While downloading information directly to the brain is an amazing possibility, to do so will be

an exceptionally challenging and difficult task.

8Ramez Naam, 2013, Now Entering the Neurotech Era: Are you Ready for your Hippocampus

Chip? at: http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/09/entering-the-neurotech-era/.

9Francis Fukuyama, 2003, Our Posthuman Future, Consequences of the Biotechnology

Revolution, Picador.
10Id.
138 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

as technology marches on and invades our body. And as we move toward a

Posthuman future, there are many other issues that a public will need to discuss;
for example, whether brain-computer interfaces and neuroprosthesis will have an
unintended effect on memory and cognition, and therefore, freedom of thought,
and if so, how might we regulate “cognitive liberty” the topic of another chapter in
this book. And with the advent of body modifications and brain-computer inter-
faces, how will courts resolve issues fundamental to constitutional law such as free
speech and the unfettered practice of religion; or under the United Nations
Declaration of Human Rights, liberty. And considering economic and market
forces, businesses’ will need to know who owns the intellectual property rights of
content created by computers claiming to be conscious and alive, and to what
extent will artificially intelligent entities be allowed to contract? And where tech-
nology goes, so follows crime, not the least of which are issues of cybersecurity
for wirelessly connected implantable medical devices and future brain-computer
interfaces. These are serious ethical, legal, and policy concerns that the public
should discuss while the possibility to shape the future still exits.

Hacking the Body

In the last decade, an interest to hack the body for reasons of art, self-expression,
or to enhance the senses, has resulted in a growing movement among some mem-
bers of the public to not only modify, but to extend the capabilities of their body. I
expect the practice of body modification to grow, and to enter the mainstream of
society given continuing advances in technology, public acceptance of new forms
of body modification, and increased benefits from becoming enhanced. In this
chapter, I extend the concept of hacking, from breaking into networks or clever
solutions to software design, to the manipulation and enhancement of the human
body with digital technology. Generally, hacking is done to understand how some-
thing works, so that the hacker can reassemble it into a different purpose for his
own use. However, within the field of computer science hacking has a double
meaning; it can refer to an expert programmer who creates complex software or
efficient algorithms, or someone who breaks into computer networks for his own
use. Regardless of the reason for accessing the software or network of another
individual, Eric Raymond, compiler of The New Hacker’s Dictionary, commented
that a “good hack” is a clever solution to a programming problem and “hacking” is
the act of doing it.11
A good place to start when discussing the topic of “body hacking” is to intro-
duce basic terminology. With this goal in mind, in a report written by the U.S.
President’s Council on Bioethics, human enhancement is defined as going “beyond

11Eric S. Raymond, 1996, The New Hacker’s Dictionary, MIT Press.

Hacking the Body 139

therapy;” instead of returning an individual to a healthy or normal state.12

However, in a report for the European Parliament, the definition of human
enhancement focuses more on performance than “beyond therapy.” Under the
Science Technology Options Assessment, the definition of enhancement is “any
modification aimed at improving individual human performance and brought
about by science-based or technology-based intervention in the human body.”13
Clearly, various types of prosthesis will be important technologies for the cyborg
future; for discussion, we can define a prosthesis as an artificial replacement for a
part of the body. In addition, an implant can be thought of as a subset of “prosthe-
sis”, and can include anything implanted within the body such as an object or
material which is inserted or grafted into the body for prosthetic, therapeutic, diag-
nostic, or experimental purposes.14 There is even “implant ethics,” which is the
study of the ethical aspects of the introduction of technological devices into the
human body. On the last point, philosophers have taken an interest in human
enhancement and body modification, and have written numerous articles and
books on the topic.15
“Hacking the body” is a concept that can cover the spectrum from “Grinders”
who design and install DIY body-enhancements such as magnetic implants (see
below), to DIY biologists whose aim is to conduct at-home gene sequencing. DIY
biologists engage in a form of hacking termed “biohacking,” which refers to the
practice of manipulating human biology using a hacker ethic; that is, finding phys-
ical, emotional, or intellectual tweaks to the body in order to improve cognitive
and sensory performance. Among some people, biohacking can also refer to the
practice of managing one’s own biology using a combination of medical, nutri-
tional and electronic techniques. Thus biohacking may include the use of nootrop-
ics and/or cybernetic devices for recording biometric data. Generally, people who
engage in body hacking identify with the transhumanism movement—the belief
that it is both possible and desirable to so fundamentally alter the human condi-
tion through the use of technologies as to eventually create a superior post-human
being. Finally, many who identify with the Grinder movement, practice actual
implementation of cybernetic devices in their organic bodies as a method of work-
ing towards transhumanism; we can also refer to these people as “cyber hackers.”
The idea of enhancing or modifying the body with implants and other forms of
technology is not new, but in the twenty-first century an interesting question
arises- in response to advances in prosthetics and digital technology, to what

12The President’s Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy (Enhancement), at: https://bioethicsarchive.

georgetown.edu/pcbe/topics/beyond_index.html.
13European Parliament, Science Technology Options Assessment, at: https://www.itas.kit.edu/

downloads/etag_coua09a.pdf.
14See generally Sven Ove Hansson, “Implant Ethics”, Journal of Medical Ethics, 31:519–525,

2005; Barbro Björkman and Sven Ove Hansson, “Bodily rights and property rights”, Journal of
Medical Ethics 32: 209–214, 2006.
15Allen E. Buchanan, 2013, Beyond Humanity? The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement, Oxford

University Press.
140 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

extent will people enhance or modify their bodies? This chapter seeks to address
that question by providing numerous examples of recent implantable devices, but a
partial answer can be gleaned from people’s efforts to manipulate the shape of
their own body. In fact, for some time, body implants have been used to change
the shape and appearance of specific body areas, especially the buttocks, chest,
calf, and bicep. In this case, the implants which in the U.S. have gone through a
Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval process, are made of firm, semi-
solid, rubberized silicone material that fits in front of the bones without being
absorbed by the body. Since body implants are considered permanent, their
removal requires surgery. In addition to body implants, some people choose to
sculpt or add volume or contour to certain parts of the body, using liposuction and
fat transfer. Then there are people who have modified their body in extreme
ways—like the person who used tattoos and surgery to make himself look like a
cat,16 including implanted whiskers, a converted cat nose, teeth filed into the shape
of cat teeth, and a head flattened to appear more feline. In the vein of “cat man”
another extreme example of self-directed body modification is “lizard man,”17 and
there is even the Church of Body Modification,18 reportedly dedicated to strength-
ening the bond between “mind, body, and soul”. Given these examples of self-
directed body modification, whats new in the twenty-first century is the use of
engineering science and information technologies that allow people to modify and
enhance their body with sophisticated prosthesis; to extend their senses beyond the
limits of human nature; and for people suffering from neurological disorders, to
have electrodes and/or chips implanted into their brain forming a commensal rela-
tionship between patient and machine.

The Risks of Body Hacking and Cyborg Technology

While many people desire to modify their body, the procedures are not always
successful, there is a risk associated with body modification, especially for those
who self-modify, and sometimes the risk is fatal. On this point, there are reports in
the news that women across the U.S. are risking their lives for black market proce-
dures, done by people with no medical training, often by attending “pumping par-
ties” in which multiple people are injected with silicone in hotel rooms. Whatever
the reason for seeking the body modification, they are seeking cheaper alternatives
to plastic surgery—sometimes with deadly or disfiguring results. Tragically, deaths
from black market silicone injections have been reported in several states in the
U.S., with felony charges directed against the person performing the procedure. In
one incident, the injector was charged with “depraved heart murder” a very serious

16CatMan, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking_Cat.

17LizardMan, at: http://www.thelizardman.com/.
18Church of Body Modification, at: http://uscobm.com/.
The Risks of Body Hacking and Cyborg Technology 141

crime signifying an action that demonstrates “callous disregard for human life”
that resulted in death. Conviction could be punishable by life in prison. Despite
a lack of hard numbers, there’s anecdotal evidence that the illegal procedures are
becoming more common.
The risk of body implants is not limited to black market procedures. For exam-
ple, the French firm Poly Implant Prostheses (PIP), once the third biggest global
supplier of breast implants, used industrial grade silicone not intended for medi-
cal use in its products for years. As a result, many of the breast implants were
prone to rupture, causing dangerous leakages of the silicone in women’s bodies.
And when an implant fails, it normally affects a large number of people. Here the
breast implant fraud case affected 100,000 women in Europe and 300,000 women
globally; thousands of the women are now seeking compensation for harm caused
by the implants which under French law are generally limited to actual losses and
to lost opportunities (perte d’une chance). However, the French court may also
impose general damages not linked to a specific loss, called “moral damages”
(dommages moraux) to compensate the victim for mental anguish or distress. If
one wants to mass market technology to hack the body, they better get it right—
the founder of the company received a four year prison sentence for fraud, which
under French law can be an element of various criminal provisions arising under
the Criminal Code (Code Pénal).
Given the possibility of disfigurement and other dangers from body hacking, I
advocate that a debate among the public on the desirability of modifying the body
occur before body hacking becomes more mainstream in popular culture. For
example, it is popular among the youth to get a temporary tattoo to mark an occa-
sion, often in an act of rebellion. Temporary tattoos typically last from three days
to several weeks, depending on the product used for coloring and the condition of
the skin. Unlike permanent tattoos, which are injected into the skin, and digital tat-
toos (described below) which serve as sensors, temporary tattoos marketed as
“henna” are applied to the skin’s surface. At first glance these tattoos seem harm-
less; however, according to Linda Katz, director of the FDA’s Office of Cosmetics
and Colors, “just because a tattoo is temporary it doesn’t mean that it is risk
free.”19 In fact, some recipients of temporary tattoos have reported severe reac-
tions that may outlast the temporary tattoos themselves. Of course, technology
implanted under the skin, and even within the brain, has the potential to offer tre-
mendous capabilities to a person, but poses far more danger to recipients, and
extreme caution should be taken to protect our future cyborgs.
As a response to defective implants, the European Commission has proposed
updating the existing legislation on medical devices. Currently, the term ‘medical
device’ in Europe, covers a wide range of products both used internally and exter-
nally by patients and doctors. They can include everything from contact lenses and

19Linda Katz, 2013, FDA warns about hidden dangers of ‘temporary’ henna tattoos that burn,

blister and leave skin scarred for life, Daily Mail, at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-
2299140/FDA-warns-hidden-dangers-temporary-henna-tattoos-burn-blister-leave-skin-scarred-
life.html.
142 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

pregnancy tests, dental filling materials, to, “cyborg technology” such as pacemak-
ers and hip replacements. Similarly, in the U.S. medical devices are regulated by
the FDA with the intensity of the regulation depending on the complexity, usage,
and potential danger of the device. A thermometer, for example, might have rather
minimal regulations, while a pacemaker is very heavily regulated. And in Europe
(and likewise in the U.S.), medical devices are ranked from Class I, a low-risk
category that would include spectacles, to high-risk Class III items such as hip
replacements and pacemakers, which are fitted inside the body. In its proposal for
regulating implants, the Commission wants to improve the product evaluation pro-
cess, enhance the traceability of products in the marketplace and place more scru-
tiny on notified bodies once an issue with a medical device has manifested itself.
As we move toward the cyborg future, unique safety and health issues for those
with implants and other types of “cyborg technology” will arise. For example,
when we consider the possible health problems associated with being equipped
with prosthesis and implants, there is concern among pathologists and other
experts that there are safety issues with the materials and devices implanted into
the human body. We can think of these concerns as challenges which must be
overcome if humanity is to merge with machines. For example, although implant-
able materials are generally considered inert or ‘‘biocompatible,’’ there is a body
of evidence which suggests that many metals, plastics, gels, rubbers and combi-
nations of materials fashioned into implantable devices can produce chronic and
potentially harmful effects on human tissue in some people. It is possible that
people with implants could suffer persistent inflammation, infection, blood clots,
bone erosion, diseases of connective tissue and, in rare instances, cancer, depend-
ing on the materials and the location in the body. And with brain implants, the bio-
compatibility of implanted electrodes and chips is of particular concern in device
design. Already, the development of scar tissue at the site of implantable elec-
trodes for people being treated with Parkinson’s disease is a concern.
As we head towards a cyborg future, the emerging evidence on the safety of
implants, ranging from their software to hardware, is viewed by some experts as
a caution sign for people planning to undergo an implant, particularly one that
would be used early in life for purely cosmetic purposes. The potentially trouble-
some devices seems to run the gauntlet of current “cyborg technology”; including
artificial hips, knees, elbows, wrists, ligaments and fingers, breast implants, heart
valves, pacemakers, shunts, intrauterine devices, dental implants and a variety of
other objects that meet either medical or cosmetic needs.
What are some of the specific reactions of the body to implants? Generally,
the body is designed to attack foreign objects that invade it. When a material is
implanted under the skin, it sits in a protein-rich bath found throughout body tis-
sues. Immediately, proteins begin sticking to the surface of the implanted device
and, it is soon coated in a mixture of proteins. Depending on the type of material
used in the implant, physical interactions may involve charged particles and mag-
netic fields occurring between the implant’s surface and the proteins. The interac-
tion is sufficiently energetic to alter the shape of proteins sticking to the implant,
so that the proteins expose binding sites that attract other circulating proteins
The Risks of Body Hacking and Cyborg Technology 143

designed to recognize trouble. One set of circulating proteins initiates blood clots
and covers the implant with thick layers of scar tissue called fibrin. Some implant
recipients suffer chronic, intermittent low-grade fevers whereas, initially, some
people seem highly tolerant of their implants but then experience flare ups years
later. And implants can also become infected with bacteria many years after sur-
gery. To some extent, problems can be treated with antibiotics, pain-killers and
anti-inflammation drugs; but clearly, a cost-benefit analysis should be performed
for any implant procedure. Another solution to the body’s reaction to implantable
devices is to coat such devices with antibiotics, blood thinners, and other agents—
but these eventually dissolve, limiting their longevity and effectiveness.
As a response to the body’s reaction to implants, some companies are develop-
ing novel biomaterial for implanted devices that permanently barricade trouble-
some microbes from the device’s surface. One material when applied to an implant
device sprouts a thicket of polymers that attract water, creating an impenetrable
barrier for microbes. Its chemical makeup also mimics that of cells important to
homeostasis, potentially reducing the body’s natural rejection of implanted
devices. Essentially, the solution is aimed at making the implantable devices look
more like the human body.20 However, even with advances in biomaterials, given
efforts by Grinders to self-modify their body without the assistance of a physician,
the reader should keep in mind the potential health problems associated with
implantable devices, as they read further in this chapter about the body hacking
movement.
In thinking about our cyborg future, it is instructive to consider the above dis-
cussion in light of a current FDA approved sensor (radio frequency identification,
or RFID sensor), that is being implanted in the body for reasons of security, art,
and body hacking. While the FDA has “reasonable assurance” that an implanted
RFID sensor is safe; neither the company manufacturing it, VeriChip Corp., nor
the regulators openly discuss a series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dat-
ing back to the mid-1990s, which indicated that chip implants had “induced”
malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats. Some researchers have indicated
that they would not allow family members to receive RFID implants, and many
have urged further research before the glass-encased transponders are widely
implanted in people. With these warnings in mind, several thousand RFID devices
have still been implanted in humans worldwide. VeriChip Corp., which sees a
target market of forty-five million Americans for its medical monitoring chips,
insists the devices are safe. However, when the FDA approved the device, it noted
some risks: The capsules could migrate around the body, making them difficult
to extract; they might interfere with defibrillators, or be incompatible with MRI
scans, causing burns.
If we compare an RFID chip to another implantable device, a heart pacemaker,
we see that the RFID device isn’t vital to keeping someone alive as is a pace-
maker, so from a medical perspective, we have to ask—does the cost for RFID

20Rob Matheson, 2013, Creating a permanent bacteria barrier, MIT news, at: http://newsoffice.mi

t.edu/2013/semprus-biosciences-1010.
144 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

implants justify the benefits? For a class of people the answer is clearly “yes.”
Currently, RFID chips have been approved for human patients with Alzheimer’s
and other dementia sufferers; the idea being that if they become lost, the chip will
make it easier for them to be reunited with their caregivers; here the benefits of an
implanted sensor outweigh the costs. But the general idea that a class of people
could benefit from implantable technology, while others may not, raises fascinat-
ing questions of law and policy. Not the least of which is whether courts should
view cyborgs as a protected class, and thus eligible for special protection under the
law; which could include required access to software updates and next-generation
hardware replacements and possibly broad protection under a federal statue grant-
ing a cause of action for discrimination.

Prosthesis, Implants and Law

Many who have reservations about the cyborg future, often advocate for appropri-
ate government regulations and statues to protect those who have become
enhanced with technology. In the future, advances in neuroscience and robotics
will change the way that society views the human body, reinforcing the concept of
the body as a machine with interchangeable, replaceable, and upgradeable parts.
As these cyborg technologies become more advanced, they will approach and then
surpass ordinary human function, rising the prospects of enhancing human capa-
bilities well beyond the current baseline standard; this may lead society to view
the healthy, yet unenhanced human as disabled.21 Therefore, in the cyborg future,
the disabled, equipped with cyborg technology, may prove more “abled,” and aver-
age abilities could become almost akin to defects, in need of elimination. With
these possibilities in mind, this section gives the reader a flavor of what I think is
part of a developing field of cyborg law.
Numerous cases of discrimination against those equipped with “cyborg tech-
nology” revolve around employment disputes and in the U.S. are brought forward
by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). One such case
involved a woman who was terminated because she had a prosthetic leg and her
employer was concerned she would be “knocked down” at work due to her disa-
bility.22 The case, which was won by the woman, was decided under the American
with Disabilities Act (ADA) which prohibits discrimination against people with
disabilities in employment.23 The court ruled that it was illegal to fire a disabled
employee due to a baseless fear they may injure themselves or others. Another

21Collin R. Bockman, 2010, Cybernetic-Enhancement Technology and the Future of Disability

Law, 95 Iowa Law Review, 1315–1340.
22EEOC v. Staffmark Investment LLC and Sony Electronics, Inc., No. 12-cv-9628, on Dec. 4,

2012 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

23Americans With Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. Section 12101 et seq.
Prosthesis, Implants and Law 145

employment dispute with implications for a “cyborg law,” dealt with a person
equipped with a hand prosthesis, and was brought under the Rehabilitation Act of
1973.24 In this dispute a veteran who had lost his hand and replaced it with a pros-
thesis, was dismissed from the FBI academy because they alleged that during his
training he could not safely fire a handgun with his prosthesis. However, a jury
finding that the FBI instructors at the academy were hostile toward the veteran,
ruled in his favor and the court awarded him monetary damages, back pay, and
reinstatement to the FBI academy. The statue used for this “cyborg discrimination
case,” deals with federal jobs and federal agencies, and thus does not cover dis-
crimination against those with prosthesis in other situations; this seems like an
area ripe for legislation.
Another case with implications for cyborg law was heard in 1999 by the U.S.
Supreme Court and involved the issue of whether a person with a corrected disa-
bility would still be considered disabled under the ADA.25 This is an interesting
case for “cyborg law” given the aim of becoming equipped with technology (i.e.,
becoming a cyborg) is often to restore, or go beyond, normal human abilities. The
case involved twin sisters who suffered from acute visual myopia. When they
applied to United Airlines for a job as a commercial pilot, they met the require-
ments for employment except for the vision requirement which was uncorrected
visual acuity of 20/100 or better.26 Each sister was able to correct their myopic
vision to 20/20 with glasses and contact lens, and could function normally in their
daily lives. However, in their ADA claim, the Suttons argued that they were disa-
bled within the meaning of the ADA because, under the statute they suffered from
a physical impairment that “substantially limits … major life activities,” or
because, they were regarded as having such an impairment. The question for the
Court to decide was whether the determination of disability under the ADA could
be made without reference to corrective measures that mitigated the impairment.
That is, would a person with a disability, but restored to “normal” with technology,
still be considered disabled? The Court determined that a disability must be deter-
mined with reference to corrective measures. Thus, the Court reasoned that once
an impairment is corrected, the impairment does not substantially limit a “major
life activity.” Based on this court decision, a person would not be considered disa-
bled if cyborg technology brought the person to normal functioning (or beyond
normal?). But a court’s decision may be overturned by legislators, lets continue
the discussion.
The law on mitigating disabilities with technology, has much to say for cyborg
discrimination and acceptance into society, and raises serious questions

24RehabilitationAct of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 791 et eq; Matt Zapotosky, 2013, Disabled veteran’s dis-
crimination lawsuit rankles FBI, spurs investigation of agent, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
local/disabled-veterans-discrimination-lawsuit-rankles-fbi-spurs-investigation-of-agent/2013/07/27/
d3d1d8f6-f3b2-11e2-9434- 60440856fadf_story.html.
25Sutton v. United Airlines, Inc., 527 U.S. 471 (1999).
26Id.
146 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

concerning who should be considered disabled as people become equipped with

technology. On this question, Congress passed the American with Disabilities
Amendments Act in 2008 which explicitly states that the determination of whether
an impairment substantially limits a major life activity is to be made without
regard to the ameliorative effects of mitigating measures such as—prosthetic
limbs, cochlear implants, or an implantable hearing device.27 The amendment
revealed the thinking of Congress; that no additions or modifications are relevant
in the eyes of the law to the determination of whether someone is disabled; so, for
example, the very act of getting a prosthesis for the upper arm doesn’t automati-
cally qualify a person as disabled under the amendment. The determination of
whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity is to be made with-
out regard to the beneficial effects of mitigating measures such as medication,
prosthetics, mobility devices, hearing aids and cochlear implants—to name just a
few ways to mitigate a disability. For example, a person with one leg may be
equipped with a prosthesis but when he wears his prosthetic leg he can walk fine,
but without the prosthetic leg he has great difficulty walking. This person has a
disability under the ADA because the determination of whether he is substantially
limited in the major life activity of walking is made without considering the pros-
thetic leg. However, when determining whether someone has a disability, the rule
concerning mitigating measures does not apply to people whose vision is cor-
rected with eye glasses or contact lens. For example, a woman with myopia whose
visual acuity is fully corrected when she’s wearing eyeglasses, is not substantially
limited in seeing, because the determination is made when she’s wearing the
glasses. This is a public policy decision—just think of how many people would be
considered to have a disability under the ADA if we did not take into account the
beneficial effects of ordinary eyeglasses and contact lenses.
However, the amended ADA raises several conceptual problems in an age of
cyborgs. For example, under the amended ADA, if a women chose to replace her
right leg with a far superior cybernetic limb, the limb would fall under the cat-
egory of prosthetics (limbs and devices), and since the statute bans such mitigating
factors from consideration in determining disability, this woman would be legally
disabled, even though her new leg is actually better than the old one. And para-
doxically, if everyone at a particular work site except for one person upgraded a
limb with a superior cybernetic prosthesis, the unenhanced “normal” person would
be the only non-disabled employee, even though all her colleagues enjoyed supe-
rior capabilities. In fact, the more prosthetic upgrades a person receives, the more
disabled they may be considered under the Amended ADA. And nothing in the
ADA protects those with enhancements from comparative discrimination, where
enhanced individuals may discriminate against an otherwise ordinary individual
whom they consider “disabled” due to his lack of upgrades. As more enhance-
ments become available, and result in humans with superior capabilities, the law
will need to change how it conceptualizes those who are disabled to account for
cyborg technology and enhanced cyborgs living amongst us.

27ADA, id., note 23.

Prosthesis, Implants and Law 147

There are other legal and policy issues that are relevant for a developing field of
cyborg law. For example, public policy dictates that materials needed for life-sav-
ing medical procedures are available to manufactures of medical devices, includ-
ing implants. So, for suppliers of implant materials the U.S. Congress enacted the
Biomaterials Access Assurance Act of 1998 (BAAA).28 The BAAA applies to all
implant raw materials and components for implants except the silicone gel and the
silicone envelope utilized in a breast implant. Essentially, the BAAA shields sup-
pliers of raw materials and component parts used in medical implants from virtu-
ally all civil liability, thereby ensuring the availability of materials for lifesaving
and life-enhancing medical devices. However, the BAAA does not apply if the
supplier also manufacturers the device, sells the device, or fails to meet applicable
contractual requirements relating to the component part or material. But suppliers
of raw materials and component parts of medical devices can use the BAAA not
only to avoid liability but also to extricate themselves from personal injury suits in
which they are named as defendants.
Since the Biomaterials Access Assurance Act is limited to suppliers of material,
it doesn’t shield negligent physicians and manufactures of implantable devices
from liability if the device harms the recipient.29 As long as they are protected
under current law schemes, future cyborgs will have a range of legal options if
they are harmed. To begin the discussion, what happens if the device, implanted
by a physician, fails and the person suffers harm? If the harm can be traced to the
physician’s actions, the person equipped with the implant may pursue a legal
action for malpractice. In the U.S. medical malpractice is derived from English
common law. To establish a case for medical malpractice, the injured person must
show that the physician acted negligently in implanting the device, and that such
negligence resulted in injury. Specifically, four legal elements must be proven: a
professional duty owed to the person receiving the implant; breach of such duty;
injury caused by the breach; and resulting damages. Given the number of implant-
able devices and types of prosthesis people may be equipped with, medical mal-
practice lawsuits are not uncommon in this area particularly with hip and knee
replacements which are among the most common surgical procedures performed
in the U.S. These surgeries, along with revision surgeries that are performed to
correct problems that develop after the original procedure, are increasing in part
due to new implant devices and the advancing age of the baby boom generation
receiving the implants.
There are other ways in which an implant may cause harm, other than that
caused by a physician performing a particular procedure. For example, if the
implant fails, a cyborg could sue under a products liability theory. In this case
any entity in the chain of manufacture and sale of a defective implant can be
sued if harm to the implant recipient occurred. In this case not just the manufac-
turer of the implant would be liable, but also the manufacturers of the product’s

28Biomaterials Access Assurance Act of 1998 (BAA98) (21 U.S.C. 1601–1606).

29Id.
148 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

component parts, the wholesaler, and the retailer. Whether a cyborg sued to pro-
tect its right to seek compensation for defective parts is done under malpractice or
products liability is an important distinction because medical negligence focuses
on whether the physician’s actions were reasonable (when measured against
the medical standard of care); while products liability focuses on whether the
product was reasonably safe or not. Generally a product manufacturer or seller is
liable under products liability law if the product contains an inherent defect that is
unreasonably dangerous and that causes injury to a foreseeable user of the prod-
uct. I would think that a Grinder using an off-the-shelf sensor as an implant is
not foreseeable to a manufacturer; whereas, a person receiving an implant under
the supervision of a physician for a medical condition is. However, a foresee-
able plaintiff or not, sensors (a main cyborg technology), when used as a medical
device, are regulated by the FDA.
Under tort law, there are three types of products liability: a manufacturing
defect, a marketing defect, or a design defect. A manufacturing defect occurs dur-
ing the manufacturing process. A marketing defect usually refers to a problem
with the product’s instructions or advertising, for example, a failure to warn the
purchaser about hidden dangers in an implant device. In addition, a design defect
occurs when the product is simply dangerous and defective due to the way it was
designed, for example, a prosthetic leg not able to bear the weight of the recipient.
Actually, design flaws are not uncommon with “cyborg technology” for example,
a few years ago, 93,000 DePuy hips replacement systems were found to have a
design flaw and subsequently recalled; many other recalls occur for other implant-
able devices.30
What if the person performing the implant is not a trained physician, instead,
a tattoo artist, or a person working at a “body shop”? An action for negligence,
which is a failure to exercise the care that a reasonable prudent person would exer-
cise in like circumstances is possible. The elements of negligence are similar to a
medical malpractice suit, and likewise include duty, breach, causation, and dam-
ages. The fundamental difference between an ordinary suit for negligence and
a suit for malpractice lies in the definition of the prevailing standard of care. If
someone sues for ordinary negligence, they compare the defendant’s behavior to
what any reasonable person would have done under the circumstances. If they
sue for malpractice, they will compare the physician’s behavior to what a reason-
able member of the profession would have done. Professional standards are much
higher and much better documented; thus, it is generally easier to establish neg-
ligence in a professional capacity. In an age of self-directed body modification,
when the person doing the implant is a friend or someone who works at a Tattoo
parlor, I wonder what the definition of “reasonable person” is?
To hack the body often involves implanting a sensor, magnet, or some other
form of technology under the skin, or more generally, piercing the skin to implant

30Hip Replacement Lawsuits and Hip Recalls, at: http://www.lieffcabraser.com/Personal-Injury/

Devices/Hip-Implant-Recall.shtml.
Prosthesis, Implants and Law 149

a device beneath its surface; surprisingly, in some jurisdictions, a physician is not

required for the procedure. In the U.K. body piercing is an unregulated industry
and only requires the studio to be registered with the Environmental Health
Department of their local Council. There are also, unlike tattooing, no minimum
age requirements for the piercee in the U.K. whereas there are in the U.S.
Furthermore, in the U.K. there are no regulations covering the training of body
piercers and there are also no regulations covering those who teach body piercing.
However, in the U.S. the body modification culture has caught the attention of
some state governments. For example in the State of Arkansas, a state senator
sponsored the 2013 bill entitled “An Act To Limit Body Art Procedures,” aimed at
making body modifications limited to “traditional” tattoos and piercings.” The
state senator’s proposal would essentially ban scarification procedures and dermal
implants, as well as certain tattoos which remain yet to be defined due to the vague
language of the sponsored bill. Scarification is a non-ink skin marking that forms
scars for decorative purposes, while dermal implants refers to placing ornamental
objects beneath the skin. In my view, the proposed bill is unconstitutional under
the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which clearly prohibits government
efforts at “abridging the freedom of speech,” which U.S. courts have repeatedly
found includes forms of artistic expression.31
In addition, for some, to modify the body is a form of religious practice and
thus should be a basic human right. Not far from my home, a North Carolina high
school student was dismissed from school because her nose piercing violated the
schools dress code.32 In fighting against the dismissal, the student argued that the
nose piercing was part of her religious faith based on her membership in the
Church of Body Modification. Although her school dress code prohibits facial
piercings, a federal judge ruled that the student could return to school, piercing
and all. The North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which
represented the student, said the settlement with the school was a vindication of
the family’s right to determine its own religious practice. Under the terms of the
resolution, the student is allowed to wear the nose stud as long as she remains a
member of the Church of Body Modification, a religious group that claims a few
thousand adherents and considers practices like tattooing and body piercing to be
elements of spiritual practice.
However, the law is far from an exact science, as another case based on a reli-
gious exemption for a person who modified her body, produced a different out-
come. Kimberly Cloutier was a Costco employee when she alleged that her
employer failed to offer her a “reasonable accommodation” for her facial jewelry
which she wore as part of her religious beliefs supported by the Church of Body
Modification.33 Even though Kimberly had received a copy of the Costco employ-

31Mattel v. MCA Records, 296 F.3d 894 (9th Cir. 2002).

32Sarah Netter, 2010, Student’s Body Modification Religion Questioned After Nose Piercing
Controversy, at: http://abcnews.go.com/US/students-body-modification-religion-questioned-nose-
piercing-controversy/story?id=11645847.
33Cloutier v. Costco Wholesale Corp., 390 F.3d 126, 12 (1st Cir. 2004).
150 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

ment agreement, she decided to ignore the dress code provisions and instead
engaged in various forms of body modification, including body piercings and skin
cutting. After being terminated for failure to adhere to the dress code, she filed a
complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was
appealed to the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals which subsequently held that it
would place an undue hardship on Costco to allow a cashier to wear facial jewelry
due to their “legitimate interest in presenting a reasonably professional appearance
to customers.”34 Interestingly, since there was no direct legal protection for body
piercings in the statutes, Cloutier, unsuccessfully tried to link her unprotected
characteristic to a protected category, by claiming facial piercings were part of
religious practices encouraged by the Church of Body Modification. Given a differ-
ent result in the two cases above dealing with the practice of religion, an issue for
the public and legislators to debate, is whether specific legislation needs to be
enacted to address the needs of those who modify their bodies, argue for rights,
and in the future appear as a cyborg.

Body Hacking in the Digital Age

Generally, in an age of cyborgs, the term body hacking refers to a practice that’s
part body modification, and part computer hacking. This dichotomy between cor-
poreal body and computer, suggests to me that issues of law and public policy
need to be directed at each component of the cyborg. For example the laws which
relate to software (e.g., contracts, licenses, tort) would apply to the “brains” of
the implantable device; whereas, other laws would apply to the corporeal body. In
some cases, the same law would apply to both, but I think new law and policy will
have to be enacted to account for the combination of human and machine.
The body hacking movement, especially with regard to implantable sen-
sors within the body, gained momentum from the pioneering work of Professor
Kevin Warwick starting in 1998 at the University of Reading. Professor Warwick
was one of the first people to hack his body when he participated in a series of
proof-of-concept studies involving a sensor implanted into the median nerve of his
left arm; a procedure which allowed him to link his nervous system directly to a
computer. Most notably, Professor Warwick was able to control an electric wheel-
chair and an artificial hand, using the neural interface. In addition to being able
to measure the signals transmitted along the nerve fibers in Professor Warwick’s
left arm, the implant was also able to create artificial sensation by stimulating the
nerves in his arm using individual electrodes. This bi-directional functionality was
demonstrated with the aid of Kevin’s wife using a second, less complex implant
connected to her nervous system. According to Kevin this was the first solely elec-
tronic communication between the nervous systems of two humans; since then,

34Id.
Body Hacking in the Digital Age 151

many have extended Kevin’s seminal work using RFID chips and other implant-
able sensors; such work is discussed in further detail below.
Considering Kevin’s surgical procedure to have a sensor implanted in his body;
obviously Kevin and his wife volunteered to be implanted with the sensor, an act
many might consider to be inherently dangerous. Thus, if any injury attributed
to the surgeon resulted during and after the implant, under tort law, there could
be a bar to liability based on the assumption of risk theory. This legal doctrine
states that a person who knowingly exposes him/herself to hazards with poten-
tial for bodily harm cannot hold others liable if harm occurs. Further, under the
assumption of risk doctrine, a person who consents to a procedure, with knowl-
edge that injury is a foreseeable, albeit uncommon, result, waives the right to a
future complaint that any ‘foreseeable’ injury was caused by negligence, assuming
the procedure was performed with proper care. However, if the physician perform-
ing the implant procedure committed malpractice, they may still be sued for medi-
cal malpractice. In addition, depending on the jurisdiction, a court could examine
this situation using the secondary assumption of risk doctrine. For example, in
California, if a physician performed the “experimental implant”, and was found
to owe Kevin a duty of care, given Kevin volunteered for the procedure (not war-
ranted by medical necessity), if harm occurred, a comparative fault scheme could
be used, and the trier of fact, in apportioning the loss resulting from injury, could
consider the relative responsibilities of the parties.

Sensors and Implantable Devices

We live in a time when tremendous progress is being made developing sensors and
implantable technology to control and monitor different functions of the body
(Fig. 5.1). For example, researchers at MIT are developing an implantable sensor

Fig. 5.1  An RFID sensor implanted in the hand. The microchip contains stored information
which can be transmitted to a reader and then to a computer. RFID’s can be passive, semi-passive
or active. Active RFID’s have an internal power source such as a battery, this allows the tag to
send signals back to the reader. Image from Amal Grafffstra, Wikipedia Commons
152 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

which uses carbon nanotubes to monitor nitric oxide (NO) in animals. In humans,
the sensor could be useful for detecting cancer cells and for monitoring glucose
levels. Then there’s research at Boston University35 that involves “brain-reading”
software designed to transform thoughts into speech, starting with vowels. The
system uses implanted electrodes to pick up nerve signals related to movement of
the mouth, lips, and jaw; these signals are then sent wirelessly to a computer,
where software analyzes them for speech patterns.
Further, researchers at Brown University and Cyberkinetics in Massachusetts,
are devising a microchip that is implanted in the motor cortex just beneath a per-
son’s skull that will be able to intercept nerve signals and reroute them to a com-
puter, which will then wirelessly send a command to any of various electronic
devices, including computers, stereos and electric wheelchairs. And consider a
German team that has designed a microvibration device and a wireless low-fre-
quency receiver that can be implanted in a person’s tooth. The vibrator acts as
microphone and speaker, sending sound waves along the jawbone to a person’s
eardrum. And in another example of an implantable device, Setpoint, is develop-
ing computing therapies to reduce systemic inflammation by stimulating the vagus
nerve using an implantable pulse generator. This device works by activating the
body’s natural inflammatory reflex to dampen inflammation and improve clinical
signs and symptoms. Thus far, the company is developing an implanted neuro-
modulation device to treat rheumatoid arthritis, a disease currently afflicting over
two million people in the U.S.
Since Warwick’s seminal results, sensors have been implanted into the human
body for many reasons such as individual security or to monitor a person’s health.
For example, due to the risk of being kidnapped, some people have had a tiny
transmitter implanted under their skin so that if necessary satellites could track
and locate their position. From a different security perspective, courts may require
people convicted of a crime to participate in an electronic monitoring program,
requiring wearable sensors, as an alternative to incarceration. There are two types
of electronic monitoring bracelets: the Radio Frequency Bracelet, which is used as
a form of house arrest, and the GPS Bracelet, used to track an offender’s wherea-
bouts in real time. As with other wearable technology, the use of the GPS bracelet
raises serious legal and policy issues. One such issue occurred when it was discov-
ered that a GPS ankle bracelet was able to listen into conversations between a law-
yer and his client, a violation of attorney-client privilege. I would argue that this is
also a violation of the Fourth Amendment (prohibiting an unreasonable search and
seizure), as well as a violation of the U.S. Federal Wiretapping Act (a federal law
that is aimed at protecting privacy in communications with other persons).
The above examples show the benefits of wearable and implantable technology
to perform important tasks on the body’s surface or within the body; essentially,
these are technical tools in the arsenal to assist humans. But continuing a point

35Patrick L. Kennedy, 2011, The Mind Reader How Frank Guenther turns thoughts into words,

at: http://www.bu.edu/today/2011/the-mind-reader/.
Sensors and Implantable Devices 153

being made throughout this book; the more we become enhanced with technology,
the closer we are to becoming a cyborg and laying the groundwork for a future
merger with artificially intelligent machines. I also conclude that much of what we
learn about integrating sensors within the body is useful information for engineers
designing the next generation of artificially intelligent machines as they too will
need sensors to perceive the world.
If we consider the range of sensors being developed, and their potential to col-
lect data about the internal state of the body, it’s easy to conclude that the human
body is becoming the subject of extensive data mining. In fact, Google is doing
just that, in a program to determine what a healthy person should look like. The
project, dubbed Baseline Study, involves researchers collecting anonymous
genetic and molecular information from initially 175 people, and later thousands
more, in a bid to help detect diseases, such as cancer and heart disease, much ear-
lier.36 Baseline will not be limited in scope to certain diseases but will use state-of-
the-art diagnostic tools to collect hundreds of different samples that will be
plugged into computer systems and compared with others. To collect the data par-
ticipants could, for example, wear Google’s smart contact lenses, to monitor glu-
cose levels. After the data is collected, Google will use its computing power to find
patterns or ‘biomarkers’ that could help medical researchers detect a disease at a
curable stage.
Interestingly, as implants collect data about the inside of our bodies, our bodies
are becoming the equivalent of open books like those that have been scanned by
Google; this raises serious privacy concerns. To me it is problematic that in the
future companies which sell and provide services to support neural devices may
have unique access to private information stored in the human brain. The data
derived from the ability to peer into the brain, is in need of special protection simi-
larly to that provide by Title II of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act
of 2008 (GINA).37 This act prohibits genetic information discrimination in
employment and is enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC). Genetic information is often used to determine whether someone has an
increased risk of getting a disease, disorder, or condition in the future. Similarly,
access to information in the brain could be used to determine whether a person had
a predisposition to commit a crime, a propensity for violence, or is a candidate for
mental illness. The ability to collect information about the body and brain and to
analyze it with algorithms designed to predict the future, raise serious privacy and
policy concerns and the possibility of a dystopian future. A prior chapter explored
the law and policy of brain technology and cognitive liberty in some detail.
To manage debilitating disease, diabetes for example, is another reason to
become equipped with cyborg technology. In fact, millions of people worldwide

36Alistair
Barr, 2014, Google’s New Moonshot Project: the Human Body, The Wall Street Journal, at:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-collect-data-to-define-healthy-human-1406246214.
37Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, Pub. L. 110–233, 122 Stat. 881, enacted

May 21, 2008.
154 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

with diabetes could benefit from implantable sensors and wearable computers
designed to monitor their blood sugar level; because if not controlled people are at
risk for dangerous complications, including damage to the eyes, kidneys, and
heart. To help people monitor their blood-sugar level Smart Holograms38 a spinoff
company of Cambridge University, Google, and others are developing “eye worn”
sensors to assist those with the disease. Google’s technology consists of contact
lens built with special sensors that measures sugar levels in tears using a tiny wire-
less chip and miniature sensor embedded between two layers of soft contact lens
material. Interesting and innovative as this solution to monitoring diabetes is, these
aren’t the only examples of “eye oriented” cyborg technology within the hacker
movement; in fact, hacking the eyes is a subject of body modifiers. In the future,
we may see cyborgs equipped with contact lens or retinal prosthesis that monitor
their health, detect energy in the X-ray or infrared range, and have telephoto capa-
bilities (see “hacking the eyes,” below). I should point out that any device contain-
ing a contact lens is regulated by the FDA; the point being that much of cyborg
technology comes under government regulation.

Issues of Software

Software is becoming increasingly important in the functioning of implants, thus

the law which applies to code and algorithms should be of interest to cyborgs
and to those designing them. Consider an artificial pancreas using an intelligent
dosing algorithm to simulate the functioning of a normal pancreas by continu-
ously adapting insulin delivery based on changes in glucose level. What happens
if the software in the artificial pancreas fails? If the software does fail, there are
numerous parties in the “chain of liability” which may be subject to a lawsuit,
including software manufacturers, equipment manufacturers, program distribut-
ers, programmers, consultants, companies using the software, and software opera-
tors. To protect themselves from liability claims, software developers often use
disclaimers (through a software license) with their products which may limit
clients’ claims.
But briefly, a professional programmer could be negligent when writing code, if
they failed to act as a reasonably prudent programmer would. The deviation from
normal programming practices is often proven through the testimony of another
expert programmer. Negligent programming claims are similar to malpractice
claims in that both types of claims are based on duty, breach of duty, causation,
and damages. To win on a programming malpractice claim the cyborg would have
to prove that the negligent programmer was a programming professional that had
a duty or legal responsibility to exercise reasonable care in providing computer
programming or services, that the negligent programmer breached this duty by

38Smart Holograms, at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/holographic-diagnostics-0.

Issues of Software 155

failing to provide programming or design services that a reasonable programmer

would provide in this situation, and that this breach of duty caused damages. In
addition to programming negligence claims, given that the design of software and
its maintenance is usually covered under contract law, most contracts include safe
guards and clauses that protect businesses from computer software, programming,
and networks that do not work or are flawed.
Some lawyers in defending their client have attempted to create a “computer
malpractice” claim for software errors and crashes. But the courts seem to reject
this theory, even stating no such cause of action exists. The early case of Chatlos
Systems v. National Cash Register Corp. (1979) is an example.39 Here an NCR
salesman did a detailed analysis of Chatlos’ business operations and computer
needs, and advised Chatlos to buy NCR equipment. Relying on NCR’s advice,
Chatlos bought a system that they alleged never provided several promised func-
tions; Chatlos sued and NCR was held liable for breach of contract. However, in a
footnote, the court discussed Chatlos’ claim of computer malpractice: “The novel
concept of a new tort called ‘computer malpractice’ is premised upon a theory of
elevated responsibility on the part of those who render computer sales and service.
Plaintiff equates the sale and servicing of computer systems with established theo-
ries of professional malpractice. Simply because an activity is technically complex
and important to the business community does not mean that greater potential lia-
bility must attach. In the absence of sound precedential authority, the court
declines the invitation to create a new tort.”40
Lacking a computer malpractice claim, cyborgs suing for defective software
can still use contract law and negligence, or possibly an appropriate statue from
criminal law to defend their rights. With the coming age of cyborgs, there are
many disputes that will involve them, and which will wind their way to the courts.
As discussed in Chap. 1, regarding the law of the horse, or in this case, the law of
cyborgs, will it be sufficient to rely on the fundamental principles of law found in
contract, tort, criminal law, and constitutional law, or will a new set of rights for
cyborgs be warranted and in the future for artificially intelligent machines? The
answer will be clear by midcentury.

Machines Hacking Machines

In my view, the necessity for humanity to merge with artificially intelligent

machines is based on another accelerating trend in technology—efforts among
computer scientists and engineers to create machines with the ability to become
the architect of their own design or at least to program themselves. Once machines
begin to hack their own hardware and software, they may direct their own

39Chatlos Systems, Inc. v. National Cash Register Corp., 479 F. Supp. 738 (D. N.J. 1979), aff’d,

635 F.2d 1081 (3rd Cir. 1980).

40Id.
156 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

evolution at such a speed that we humans may be quickly surpassed, and insignifi-
cant to them. Surely, this possibility should provide strong motivation for human-
ity to consider moving beyond biological evolution to a self-directed merger with
our future technological progeny.
That machines may direct their own evolution comes from recent examples in
which they are beginning to design, repair, and program themselves. For example,
an International Space Station robot repaired its cameras while in orbit making it
the first robot to self-repair in space. Then there’s the work of MIT researchers
Daniela Rus and Erna Viterbi,41 on the design of self-assembling robots. Such
robots consist of printable robotic components that, when heated, automatically
self-assemble into prescribed three-dimensional configurations. One example of
their research is a system that takes a digital specification of a three-dimensional
shape, such as that generated from a 2D pattern that would enable a piece of plas-
tic to reproduce it through self-folding. Other research by Daniela Rus and her
team is focused on building electrical components from self-folding laser-cut
materials. These designs include resistors, inductors, and capacitors, as well as
sensors and actuators; that is, the electromechanical “muscles” that enable robots’
movements.42 If artificially intelligent machines become the master of their own
architecture, is there any doubt that they will use technology such as 3D printers to
quickly improve and move beyond the capabilities of their human masters?
Some argue that techniques in artificial intelligence,43 with sufficient machine
intelligence, will give software the potential to autonomously improve the design
of its constituent software and hardware. Having undergone these improvements,
it would then be better able to find ways of optimizing its structure and improving
its abilities further. It is speculated that over many iterations, such an artificial
intelligence would far surpass human cognitive abilities and lead to the
Singularity.44 One type of research direction on this topic is machine learning, a
branch of artificial intelligence, which is concerned with the construction and
study of systems that learn from mining data.45 I envision a future where cyborgs
and artificially intelligent machines mine data, share information, and collectively
make decisions. Generally, artificial intelligence has been progressing steadily

41Sharon Gaudin, 2014, These origami robots can fold up and walk, at: http://www.

computerworld.com/article/2490973/emerging-technology/scientists-create-self-assembling-
working-robots.html.
42Ankur Mehta, Joseph DelPreto, Daniela Rus—Integrated Codesign of Printable Robots, ASME

Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics 7(JMR-14-1221), 05 2015; Ankur M. Mehta, Daniela Rus—
An End-To-End System For Designing Mechanical Structures For Print-And-Fold Robots, IEEE
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) , Hong Kong, China, June 2014.
43Eliezer Yudkowsky, 2015, Rationality: From AI to Zombies, Machine Intelligence Research

Institute.
44Robin Hanson and Elizer Yudkowsky, 2013, The Hanson-Yudkowsky AI-Foom Debate,

Machine Intelligence Research Institute.

45Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank, and Mark A. Hall, 2011, Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning

Tools and Techniques, Third Edition, Morgan Kauffman.

Machines Hacking Machines 157

over the years, along with advances in computer technology, hardware, memory,
and CPU speeds. As computers get faster, more computations can be performed
per unit time, allowing increasing power for the computation-intensive processing
required by many artificial intelligence algorithms and data mining techniques.

Hacking the Brain

While many of the examples presented in this chapter represent current efforts by
people to hack their body and a discussion of legal issues that such acts implicate,
the future may be even more amazing in terms of how the body may be manipu-
lated and modified. Ultimately, given that the brain operates by performing com-
putations and that tremendous progress is being made deciphering the way the
brain computes,46 I believe the fundamental processes of how the brain processes
and stores information will be discovered; and by doing so, information essential
for the cyborg future and a human-machine merger will be gleaned. However, I
should make the point clear that uncovering the secrets of the brain will be an
extraordinarily difficult task (orders of magnitude more difficult than the Human
Genome project) due to the complex neuro-chemistry and neuro-circuitry (wiring)
of the 100 billion neurons comprising the human brain, because the brain uses dis-
tributed processing to compute, and because there are many distinct classes of
neurons in the brain whose coding system for information remains to be discov-
ered and converted into algorithms. Unfortunately, even given the complexity of
the brain, due to the significant developments unfolding in the world of wireless
networks, brain-computer interfaces and neuroprosthetics, I anticipate that in the
cyborg future a wide variety of criminal threats will be directed at the human brain
itself.
If we consider the raw processing power of a supercomputer (able to perform
trillions of floating point operations per second), and compare that to the brain,
estimates put the processing power of a supercomputer within that of a brain’s, so
with a few iterations of Moore’s law, processing power will not be the limiting fac-
tor for creating human-like intelligence it once was. Within 10–15 years, the big-
gest obstacle in creating an artificial intelligence with similar capabilities as the
human brain, will be the fact that biological based neural computing, differs in
fundamental ways from silicon’s. For example, the human brain is massively par-
allel, it contains billions of neurons that can individually synapse with thousands
of other neurons; but the individual neurons each have limited processing ability.47
In contrast, supercomputers have tremendous processing power as measured by
the number of arithmetic operations performed per second, but typically have

46Michio Kaku, 2014, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and
Empower the Mind, Doubleday.
47Miguel Nicholelis, 2012, Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains

with Machines—and How It Will Change Our Lives, St. Martin’s Press.
158 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

limited parallel connections; however, research is directed at just this issue, to

make computers compute in parallel. In fact, much of the progress in unlocking
the complexity of the brain, can be credited to advances in technology. As theoreti-
cal physicist Michio Kaku recently discussed in “The Future of the Mind: The
Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind,”48 the revolu-
tion in modern neuroscience has been triggered by the widespread use of MRI
technology starting in the 90s, fMRI technology more recently, and culminating in
optogenetic techniques in the last few years.49
Advances in Optogenetics, by scientists at Stanford University, is an impor-
tant technology with respect to studying how the brain functions. The reason is
that optogenetics allows scientists to study how different neuronal circuits inter-
act and influence each other. The relevancy of this technology for the future
human-machine merger is that if we are to build software that can communicate
directly with the brain we need to crack its codes. One way to do this is to select
a set of neurons of interest, measure how they are firing, reverse engineer their
message, and write the appropriate algorithm(s) (this is a simplification!).
Historically, scientists knew that proteins, called opsins, in bacteria and algae
generated electricity when exposed to light. Fast forward—optogenetics exploits
this mechanism for brain science. Opsin genes are inserted into the DNA of a
harmless virus, which is then injected into the brain of a test subject. By choos-
ing a virus that prefers some cell types over others, or by altering the virus’s
genetic sequence, researchers can target specific neurons, or regions of the brain
known to be responsible for certain actions or behaviors.50 To study neuronal
activity, an optical fiber- a spaghetti-thin glass cable that transmits light from its
tip, is inserted through the skin or skull to the site of the virus. The fibers light
activates the opsin, which in turn conducts an electrical charge that forces the
neuron to fire.
Even with the brain’s tremendous complexity progress is being made towards
the integration of the human brain with machines and sensors. For example,
researchers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, have developed a thought-
controlled bionic leg which uses neuro-signals from the upper leg muscles to con-
trol a prosthetic knee and ankle. The prosthesis uses pattern recognition software
contained in an on-board computer, to interpret electrical signals from the upper
leg as well as mechanical signals from the bionic leg. When the person equipped
with the prosthesis thinks about moving his leg, the thought triggers brain sig-
nals that travel down his spinal cord, and ultimately, through peripheral nerves,
are read by electrodes in the bionic leg, which then moves in response to the ini-
tial thought. Further, hackers are beginning to enter the fray. Take body hacker
and inventor Shiva Nathan, a teenager from India. After being inspired to help a
family member who lost both arms below the elbow, Shiva created a robotic arm

48Michio Kaku, id., note 46.

49Stuart S. Hall, 2014, Neuroscience’s New Toolbox, MIT Technology Review, V. 117, 20–28.
50Id.
Hacking the Brain 159

controlled by thought. The technology uses a Mindwave Mobile headset to read

EEG waves and Bluetooth to send certain types of thought to the arm which then
translates them into finger and hand movements. This is a remarkable achievement
for a 15 year old using technology accessible to anyone.
In fact, research on prosthesis, is truly international in scope. For example, in
Sweden, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology are developing a
thought-controlled prosthesis for amputees in the form of an implantable robotic
arm. And in the U.S., the FDA has approved a thought-controlled prosthetic limb
that is realistic and more human-like than other devices on the market.51 The
DEKA Arm prosthetic, invented by Dean Kamen, can detect up to ten movements,
is the same size and weight as a natural human arm, and works by detecting elec-
trical activity caused by the contraction of muscles close to where the prosthesis is
attached. The electrical signals, initially generated by thought are sent to a com-
puter processor in the DEKA Arm, which triggers a specific movement in the
prosthesis. In FDA tests, the artificial arm/hand has successfully assisted people
with household tasks such as using keys and locks, preparing food, feeding one-
self, brushing hair and using zippers.
The above examples causes me to wonder, in the future when an arm or leg
prosthesis appears to be as realistic to people as a natural limb, but is more power-
ful and dexterous than natural limbs, with greater freedom and movement in joints
and with additional degrees of articulation, would “normal” humans opt for the
superior prosthesis, if the surgical risk was minimal? The answer is unknown, but
I have my suspicions. Just consider the following data. According to the American
Society of Plastic Surgeons, in 2011 there were 307,000 breast augmentations in
the U.S., a surgical procedure done to alleviate no medical condition, and unlike
most implantable technology, breast implants lack sensors and artificial intelli-
gence, they are purely cosmetic.
And who needs sight to get around when you’ve got a digital compass in your
head? A neuroprosthesis that feeds geomagnetic signals into the brains of blind
rats has enabled them to navigate around a maze. The results demonstrate that the
rats could rapidly learn to deploy a completely unnatural “sense”. And it raises the
possibility that humans could do the same, potentially opening up new ways to
treat blindness, or even to provide healthy people with extra senses. “I’m dreaming
that humans can expand their senses through artificial sensors for geomagnetism,
ultraviolet, radio waves, ultrasonic waves and so on,” says Yuji Ikegava of the
University of Tokyo in Japan.52 “Ultrasonic and radio-wave sensors may enable
the next generation of human-to-human communication,” he says. The

51Dean Kamen, DEKA prosthesis, at: http://www.dekaresearch.com/founder.shtml.

52Andy Coghlan, 2015, Brain compass implant gives blind rats psychic GPS, New Scientist, at:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27293-brain-compass-implant-gives-blind-rats-psychic-
gps.html#.VXiVL-_bJjo; See generally, Takahashi, N., Sasaki, T., Matsumoto, W., Matsuki,
N. and Ikegaya, Y., 2010, Circuit topology for synchronizing neurons in spontaneously active
networks. PNAS, 107:10244–10249.
160 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

neuroprosthesis consists of a geomagnetic compass—a version of the microchip

found in smartphones—and two electrodes that fit into the animals’ visual cortices,
the areas of the brain that process visual information.
Returning to Michio Kaku’s observations on the future of the mind, he reveals
other fascinating research being done using sensors to read images stored in the
human brain and on downloading artificial memories into the brain to treat victims
of strokes and Alzheimer’s.53 Kaku also lists telepathy and telekinesis; artificial
memories implanted into our brains; and a pill that will make us smarter as future
technologies that will emerge this century. Extending Kaku’s observations on the
future, imagine being able to replace the anatomy and physiology of the brain with
3D printed parts. For the brain’s skull, doctors in the Netherlands have done just
that in a first successful replacement of most of a human skull using a 3D printed
plastic one. The surgery to replace the skull took place at University Medical
Center Utrecht54 with a woman who was suffering from severe headaches due to a
thickening of her skull. As a result she slowly lost her vision, her motor coordina-
tion was affected, and without surgical interdiction, other essential brain functions
would have atrophied. The 3D implant did its job, pressure on the brain was
reduced, and the patient regained sensory and motor functions. I view the use of
3D printed parts for humans, androids, and artificially intelligent robots, as a trans-
formative technology that will proliferate in the next few decades and play a major
role in leading to our cyborg and ultimately human-machine merger.

Hacking Memory

If we can replace the anatomical structure protecting the brain, can we repair,
replace, or enhance parts of the brain’s wetware with digital technology? Certainly
not now, but how about in the future, or even in the next few decades? Enter bio-
medical engineer Theodore Berger55 at the University of Southern California and
his team who have developed an experimental artificial hippocampus that they are
testing with rats. Their artificial hippocampus is a silicon substitute for the part of
the brain that neuroscientists believe encodes experiences as long-term memories.
While Berger and his team are motivated by the desire to fight debilitating neuro-
logical disease, for example, epilepsy and other disorders that result in damage to
the hippocampus (which prevent a person from retaining new memories), an

53Michio Kaku, id., note 46.

54University Medical Center Utrecht, 2014, 3D-printed skull implanted in patient, at: http://www.
umcutrecht.nl/en/Research/News/3D-printed-skull-implanted-in-patient.
55Rebecca Boyle, 2011, Artificial Memory Chip, discussing the work of Theodore Berger, at:

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-06/artificial-memory-chip-rats-can-remember-
and-forget-touch-button.
Hacking Memory 161

artificial hippocampus will also be a major advance towards the cyborg future and
human-machine merger.
To build an artificial hippocampus, Berger created mathematical models of the
neuronal activity in a rat’s hippocampus and designed a chip (located external to
the brain) to mimic the signal processing which occurred in different parts of the
hippocampus. Interestingly, the researchers modeled neuronal activity by sending
random pulses into the hippocampus, recorded the signals at various localities to
see how they were transformed, and then derived equations describing the sig-
nals.56 Berger and colleagues also connected the chip, which contained the algo-
rithms, to the rat’s brain by electrodes. Using the chip, Berger was not able to “put
individual memories back into the brain,” but he was able to put the capacity to
generate memories in the brain.57
To see if the chip could serve as a prosthesis for a damaged hippocampal region,
the researchers performed a study to determine whether they could bypass a central
component of the pathways in the hippocampus. Berger’s team tested the device in
rats trained in a simple memory task. Each rat (with the prosthesis) was placed in a
chamber with two levers. First, the lever on just one side of the chamber was pre-
sented, and the rat pushed it, after a short waiting period, the levers on both sides
of the chamber appeared, and if the rat pushed the opposite lever from the one it
pushed before, the rat was rewarded with a sip of water. However, to perform the
task successfully required the rat to remember which lever it pushed originally.
To test if the memory prosthesis worked as expected, Berger and his team
injected some of these rats with a drug that impaired their natural memory, and
then tested the animals in the lever experiment. The rats (with the prosthesis) were
still able to push the correct lever to receive their drink, suggesting they were
able to form new memories and that the rats’ brain implant was remembering for
them. Remarkably, the researchers found that the prosthesis could enhance mem-
ory function in rats even when they hadn’t been given the drug that impaired their
memory.
Going up the phylogenetic scale, at Wake Forest University School of
Medicine, Robert Hampson and his team successfully tested a hippocampal pros-
thesis on non-human primates. While the device is far from a fully implantable
hippocampus “chip,” these tests, from rat to monkey, demonstrate the “proof-of-
concept” effectiveness of the artificial hippocampus as a neural prosthetic; and in
the near future, Robert Hampson plans to begin human trials. While Hampson’s
and Berger’s work is a long way from a hard drive for the brain, it’s a step in
the direction of being able to “back up,” or hack, memory, and once this is pos-
sible, the next step will be to transmit information into the artificial hippocam-
pus, a major step in the direction of a cyborg future. Of course, once an artificial

56Id.
57Id.
162 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

hippocampus is implanted within the brain it could be hacked by third parties, a

topic discussed in the chapter on Cognitive Liberty.

Implanting False Memories

The legal and policy implications of being able to manipulate memory are
immense: If humans can control memories, can they also alter them? Could mem-
ories be decoded against a persons will and used as evidence in a courtroom, and
could people erase memories and replace them with new ones altogether?58 And
for artificially intelligent machines, will manipulating their memory be nothing
more than changing the lines of their code? Would this be ethical, would a future
law need to be enacted to protect against this possibility? If an artificially intelli-
gent machine used computer vision and algorithms to view the world, would
changing its software be the equivalent of tampering with a witness or performing
a digital lobotomy? And when examining the prospect of memory enhancement,
some who worry about the ethics of cognitive enhancement point to the danger of
creating two classes of human beings—those with access to enhancement technol-
ogies, and those who must make do with an unaltered memory that fades with age.
Planting false memories in the brain may seem like science fiction, until, that
is, we see that it’s already being done, at least with a research subject commonly
picked on by scientists, the laboratory mouse. Using genetically engineered mice,
Susumu Tonegawa, MIT Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience, Dr. Xu
Liu,59 and colleagues at the Riken-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics, used
the technique of optogenetics to access neurons in the brain of a mouse. Basically
they implanted a fiber optic in the mouse’s brain allowing them to reactivate neu-
ronal circuitry that had previously been recorded.60 According to Dr. Liu, our
memory changes every single time it’s being recorded, which is why we can incor-
porate new information into old memories and this is how a false memory can
form. Interestingly, by implanting a false memory, the MIT team was able to make
the mice wrongly associate a benign environment with a previous unpleasant expe-
rience from different surroundings.
How they did this was to first condition a network of neurons to respond to
light based on optic fibers implanted in the mouse’s brain in a specific region.61
Then the scientists placed the mouse in a red chamber, which was harmless. The
following day, they had the mouse explore a blue-walled chamber, and gave it a

58See generally, Nita Farahany, 2012, Incrimination Thoughts, Stanford Law Review, Vol, 64. 351.
59RIKEN Brain Science Institute, RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics (CNCG), see
the references to Xi Liu, at: http://www.riken.jp/en/research/labs/bsi/rmc/.
60Optogenetics, MIT Technology Review, at: http://www.technologyreview.com/tagged/optogenetics/.
61Id. note 59.
Implanting False Memories 163

mild jolt while simultaneously inducing neuronal recall of the red room. This was
done so that the mouse would artificially associate the memory of the shock-free
red room with the fear of being shocked. On the third day, the researchers wanted
to see whether this false association had successfully been implanted. To deter-
mine this, they placed the mouse in the red room, where it froze even though noth-
ing bad had happened to it there.62 Based on the fear response, the MIT team
concluded that a false memory had been formed and recalled. Attesting to the
importance of the work, cognitive scientist Neil Burgess63 from University
College London, told BBC News the study was an “impressive example” of creat-
ing a fearful response in an environment where nothing fearful had happened.
Although using an implant to plant a memory in a human brain won’t be possible
in the next few years, in principle, it should be possible to isolate a human mem-
ory and activate it given difficult technical problems are overcome.
The phenomenon of false memory has implications for law and policy and has
been well-documented by psychologists. In many court cases, defendants have
been found guilty based on testimony from witnesses and victims who were sure
of their recollections, but DNA evidence later overturned the conviction. In a step
toward understanding how these faulty memories arise, material presented in this
chapter has shown that at the level of neuronal circuitry, false memories can be
modeled and implanted in the brains of mice. But importantly, neuroscientists
have also found that many of the neurological traces of these memories are identi-
cal in nature to those of authentic memories. According to MITs Susumu
Tonegawa, “Whether it’s a false or genuine memory, the brain’s neural mechanism
underlying the recall of the memory is the same.”64
That we should be concerned with the possibility of false memories being
implanted in the brain is not a recent concern motivated only by the arrival of
brain-computer interfaces and a cyborg future. For example, a Wisconsin jury
awarded $1 million to a couple who claimed that malpractice by therapists caused
their daughter to have false memories of childhood abuse. In fact, several patients
have won settlements or jury awards of millions in false memory lawsuits against
therapists. But the case of Dr. Charles Johnson and his wife Karen is the first in
which the parents of a patient brought negligent therapy claims—over the objec-
tions of the patient. The case took years to get to trial, prompted by a key break-
through in 2005 when the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the
therapist-patient privilege did not apply to the daughter’s treatment records.65 The

62Id. note 59.

63Melissa Hogenboom, 2013, Scientists can implant false memories into mice, at: http://www.
bbc.com/news/science-environment-23447600.
64Anne Trafton, 2013, Neuroscientists plant false memories in the brain, quoting Susuma Tonegawa, at:

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/neuroscientists-plant-false-memories-in-the-brain-0725.
65Linda Greenhouse, 1996, The Supreme Court, Confidentiality, Justices Uphold Patient Privacy

With Therapist, New York Times, at: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/14/us/the-supreme-

court-confidentiality-justices-uphold-patient-privacy-with-therapist.html.
164 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

Johnsons used those records to support their claim that the therapists practiced the
controversial “recovered memory” technique on their daughter. What to make of
this? There is a public policy exception to the therapist-patient privilege and to the
confidentiality in patient health care records where negligent therapy causes false
accusations to be made against the parents for sexually or physically abusing their
child, the court concluded.66 Would a similar privilege be necessary for brain-
computer interfaces?
Thinking more broadly, I can’t help but see a connection between the science
and technology of implanting memories, false memories implanted by a therapist,
and a case heard before the Court of Justice in the European Union which decreed
that human beings have a solemn right to make mistakes and then to erase them,
that is, “The Right to be Forgotten.” The concept stems from the desire of an indi-
vidual to ‘determine the development of his life in an autonomous way, without
being perpetually or periodically stigmatized as a consequence of a specific action
performed in the past.’67 If memories can be implanted in a person’s mind, not
only would it be difficult to forget the past, but a person could be stigmatized by
actions that never took place. Among legal scholars, there are concerns that creat-
ing a right to be forgotten would lead to censorship and a possible rewriting of his-
tory—I share this concern.

Hacking the Skin

If we can hack the brain, can we hack the skin, the largest sense organ?
Surprisingly, the answer is yes, but first a digression into popular culture. A recent
Pew study showed that nearly forty percent of Americans under the age of forty
have at least one tattoo, creating a $1.65 billion industry. Like any industry, how-
ever, the tattoo industry must innovate to expand and gain new clients. In an
analog world, one way to innovate is to make the switch to digital technology.
Rather than being passive as are current tattoos, digital tattoos are active, they
do things, and they are getting smart. That is, now days, digital tattoos have the
potential to do more than serve the function of art or self-expression, even though
these are laudable goals, they will become digital devices as useful as smartphones
and will monitor our health. This is not the distant future, the technology to create
digital tattoos already exist. It’s possible, for instance, to use a type of ink in a tat-
too that responds to electromagnetic fields, which raises a host of opportunities. In
fact, Nokia patented just this technology, ferromagnetic ink that can interact with a
device through magnetism.68 The basic idea is to enrich tattoo ink with metallic

66Id.
67Factsheet on the “Right to be Forgotten” Ruling, at: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/
files/factsheets/factsheet_data_protection_en.pdf.
68Adam Clark Estes, 2014, The Freaky Bioelectric Future of Tattoos, at: http://gizmodo.com/

the-freaky-bioelectric-future-of-tattoos-1494169250.
Hacking the Skin 165

Fig. 5.2  Electronic sensor
tattoos can be “printed”
directly onto human skin.
Image courtesy of Professor
John Rogers, University of
Illinois

compounds that are first demagnetized (by exposing the metal to high tempera-
tures) before the ink is embedded in a person’s skin. Once the tattoo has healed,
the ink is re-magnetized with permanent magnets. The procedure is strikingly sim-
ilar to that of getting a ‘normal’ tattoo—only the ink is special. The resulting tattoo
is then sensitive to magnetic pulses, which can be emitted by a device such as a
cellular phone. Interestingly, a digital tattoo would allow a person’s ringing phone
to result in a haptic sensation experienced by the body; that is, the person would
experience the phone ringing literally through the tattoo. And since the phone
should be able to send a variety of pulses, different degrees of tingling could be
used to indicate whether a phone battery was dying, or whether a person had a text
or voice message.69 A sub-dermal phone call makes me wonder if a deliberate
wrong call should be considered an assault and battery?
If the tattoo consists of putting electronics on the surface of the skin, many possi-
bilities for body hacking exist. Materials scientist, and University of Illinois
Professor John Rogers and his company are developing flexible electronics that stick
to the skin to operate as a temporary tattoo.70 These so-called “epidural electronics”
(or Biostamp) is a thin electronic mesh that stretches with the skin and monitors
temperature, hydration and strain, as well as monitoring a person’s body’s vital signs
(Fig. 5.2). The latest prototype of the Biostamp is applied directly to the skin using a
rubber stamp. The stamp lasts up to two weeks before the skin’s natural exfoliation
causes it to come away. Rogers is currently working on ways to get the electronics to
communicate with other devices like smartphones so that they can start building
apps. Google isn’t far behind in developing digital tattoos, as the company’s
Advanced Technology and Projects Group patented the idea of a digital tattoo con-
sisting of various sensors and gages, such as strain gauges for tracking strain in

69Id.
70Liz Ahlberg, 2014, Off the shelf, on the skin: Stick-on electronic patches for health monitoring,

at: http://news.illinois.edu/news/14/0403microfluidics_JohnRogers.html.
166 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

multiple directions (how the user is flexing), EEG and EMG (electrical impulses in
the skeletal structure or nerves), ECG (heart activity), and temperature.
As with other implantable technology, initially, hacking the skin will most
likely be done for health reasons. In fact, by 2016, there could be 100 million
wearable wireless medical devices used by people.71 As an example, Roger’s digi-
tal tattoo described above can track a person’s health and monitor healing near the
skin’s surface. Then there’s a wearable sensor that tells people when it’s time for a
drink. Sandia National Laboratories researcher Ronen Polsky has built a prototype
of a microneedle fluidic chip device able to selectively detect and measure electro-
lytes in the fluids around skin cells.72 The device consists of an array of micro-
needles on the underside of a watch-like device that protrudes into a person’s skin
to measure interstitial fluid levels—broadly speaking, the water that sits between a
person’s cells. Whenever this figure falls below a certain limit, a person is alerted.
Placing sensors on the skin is an interesting idea, with great potential for monitor-
ing a person’s health, but sensors on the skin will also serve other functions—for
example, to detect information in the environment that is of interest to a person
and to wirelessly connect a person to the billions of items that will be networked
together in the future.
But the skin isn’t being hacked only to monitor our health, artists are combin-
ing the surface of the skin with technology in unique ways. Consider body hacker
Moon Ribas who is a Catalan contemporary choreographer and the co-founder of
the Cyborg Foundation, an international organisation which promotes “cyborgism”
as an artistic and social movement. In an interesting use of technology and chore-
ography, she attached a seismic sensor to her elbow that allows her to feel earth-
quakes through vibrations resulting from ground tremors.
In a more extreme example of performance art, Professor Stelarc, through a
series of surgeries, created an artificial ear on the skin of his left arm.73 Stelarc’s
philosophy for body hacking is to use technology in a way that extends the body’s
physical abilities, allowing a person to do what they previously could not due to
physical limitations—this he plans to accomplish by implanting a microchip and
microphone in the artificial ear. To build the artificial ear, excess skin was created
with an implanted skin expander in the forearm. By injecting saline solution into a
subcutaneous port, a kidney shaped silicone implant stretched the skin, forming a
pocket of excess skin that was used in surgically constructing the ear. In a second
surgery a Medpor scaffold was inserted and skin was suctioned over it. The
Medpor implant was shaped into several parts and sutured together to form the ear
shape. During the second procedure a miniature microphone was positioned inside

71Robert N. Charette, 2012, Wearable Computers the Size of Button to Monitor Health, at:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/biomedical/devices/wearable-computers-the-size-of-buttons-
to-monitor-health.
72Prototype electrolyte sensor provides immediate read-outs, 2014, at: https://share.sandia.gov/

news/resources/news_releases/electrolyte_sensor/#.VXjhNO_bJjo.
73Paolo Atzori and Kirk Woolford, Extended-Body: Interview with Stelarc, at: http://web.

stanford.edu/dept/HPS/stelarc/a29-extended_body.html.
Hacking the Skin 167

the ear. But while the inserted microphone was tested successfully, later it had to
be removed due to infection. Once the hacking is complete, wherever Stelarc may
be, using the appropriate technology, a person could remotely listen into what his
artificial ear “hears.” Summarizing Stelarc’ body hacking philosophy, he com-
ments that as technology proliferates and microminiaturizes it becomes biocom-
patible in both scale and substance and thus can be incorporated as a component of
the body; his artificial ear represents this idea.

Hacking the Eyes

For many people, vision is the most important sense, its loss is so deleterious to
functioning in everyday life, that major efforts are underway to develop technol-
ogy to restore sight to those who have lost it. The visual sense is also the subject
of body hackers. Meet Neil Harbisson who was born with a rare condition (achro-
matopsia) that allows him to see only in black and white and shades of grey
(Fig.  5.3). After viewing a talk in 2003 on cybernetics, in the spirit of a hacker,
Neil wondered if he could turn color into sound, based on the idea that a specific
frequency of light could be made equivalent to a sound wave. When Neil first
thought of the idea, he wasn’t aware that in 2014, research would eventually show
that the visual cortex processes auditory information detected by the ears. To
become a cyborg, Neil had a sound conducting chip implanted in his head, along
with a flexible shaft with a digital camera on it, permanently attached to his skull
(the Eyeborg). With his latest software upgrade, Neil says he is able to hear ultra-
violet and infrared frequencies, can have phone calls delivered to his head, and has
a Bluetooth connection which allows him to connect his Eyeborg to the Internet.74
Interestingly, the addition of the Eyeborg to his passport photo has led some
to dub Neil the first cyborg officially recognized by a sovereign state. In a har-
binger of future bioethical debates about cyborg technology, Neil had to convince
a surgical team to perform the procedure; that is, to implant the chip in his head.
Since the purpose of medicine is to restore the body to its normal state, Neil had to
convince the doctors that his device could help restore function to those who had
lost it, not just allow him to have a sixth sense through the perception of objects
in his visual field via bone-conducted sounds. This brought up the second ethical
issue. Whether Neil should receive an implant which allowed him to perceive out-
side the normal range of human vision and human hearing (hearing via the bone
allows a person to hear a wider range of sounds, from infrasounds to ultrasounds),
again, not typically a reason to receive an implant. But in theory, if a person was
equipped with a different type of chip, say one that translated words into sound,
or distances into sound, for instance, then the same electronic eye implant could
be used to read or to detect obstacles, thus restoring function to those who had

74Eyeborg: The Man Who Hears Colours, 2014, at: https://artselectronic.wordpress.com/2014/12/

19/eyeborg-the-man-who-hears-colours/.
168 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

Fig. 5.3  Neil Harbisson
hearing color, image curtesy
of Lars Norgaard

lost it. This argument convinced the surgical team that the implant could have a
restorative effect, and the procedure was done. However, this example raises an
interesting policy question- which kinds of cybernetic implants will society find to
be ethical and legal, and which ones they will not. Let the debate begin.
Amazing technology to assist people with visual impairments is creating a
whole new population of cyborgs, some of whom never thought they would see
again. In fact, different types of prosthesis for the eyes are starting to emerge
from research laboratories. For example, in the U.S. the FDA approved a retinal
implant, for those experiencing the effects of retintis pigmentosa. The implant
doesn’t completely restore vision, but is meant to partially restore useful vision to
people who have lost their sight due to degenerative eye conditions.
In a healthy eye, the photoreceptors (rods and cones) in the retina convert
light into tiny electrochemical impulses that are sent through the optic nerve
and into the brain, where they are decoded into images. If the photoreceptors no
longer function correctly—due to conditions such as retintis pigmentosa—the
first step in this process is disrupted, and the visual system cannot transform light
into images. Enter the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System (Argus II) which was
approved in Europe in 2011, and the U.S. in 2013. This prosthesis is designed to
bypass the damaged photoreceptors altogether. With the prosthesis, a miniature
video camera housed in the patient’s glasses captures a scene, and the video of
the scene is sent to a small patient-worn computer where it is processed and trans-
formed into instructions that are sent back to the glasses via a cable. These instruc-
tions are then transmitted wirelessly to an antenna in the implant which then sends
the instructions to an electrode array in the retina. The small pulses of electric-
ity are intended to bypass the damaged photoreceptors and stimulate the retina’s
remaining cells, which transmit the visual information along the optic nerve to the
brain. This process is intended to create the perception of patterns of light which
patients can learn to interpret as visual patterns.
If we can begin to restore vision, can we enhance it? What about the idea of tel-
ephoto vision (Fig. 5.4)? For the approximately 20–25 million people worldwide
who have the advanced form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a dis-
ease which affects the region of the retina responsible for central, detailed vision,
Hacking the Eyes 169

Fig. 5.4  Implantable
telescopic eye. Image
provided courtesy of
VisionCare Ophthalmic
Technologies

and is the leading cause of irreversible vision loss and legal blindness in people
over the age of 65, a relatively new device, essentially an implantable telescope, is
offering hope. In 2010, the U.S. FDA approved the implantable miniature tele-
scope (IMT), which works like the telephoto lens of a camera.75 The IMT technol-
ogy reduces the impact of the central vision blind spot due to end-stage AMD and
projects the objects the patient is looking at onto the healthy area of the light-sens-
ing retina not degenerated by the disease.
The Implantable Miniature Telescope (IMT) technology reduces the impact of
the central vision blind spot due to End-Stage AMD and projects the objects the
patient is looking at onto the healthy area of the light-sensing retina not degener-
ated by the disease.
The surgical procedure involves removing the eye’s natural lens, as with cata-
ract surgery, and replacing the lens with the IMT. The tiny telescope is implanted
behind the iris, the colored, muscular ring around the pupil. While telephoto eyes
are not coming soon to an ophthalmologist office, this is an intriguing step in that
direction. As always the law is part of the picture, as the procedures to equip a per-
son with telephoto eyes will be subject to tort law if harm occurs, products liability
law if the implant fails, and the implant technology will be regulated by the FDA
as a medical device.

Hacking the Body with Sensors

In an extension of Professor Warwick’s early work involving a sensor implanted

under his skin, body hacker Anthony Antonellis implanted an RFID chip into his
hand which can be wirelessly accessed by a smartphone.76 While the chip holds

75FDA-Approved Implantable Miniature Telescope for End-Stage Age-Related Macular Degeneration,

at: http://www.visionaware.org/info/your-eye-condition/age-related-macular-degeneration-amd/new-fda-
approved-implantable-telescope-for-end-stage-amd/125.
76Anthony Antonellis, Net Art Implant (and video), at: http://www.anthonyantonellis.com/

news-post/item/670-net-art-implant.
170 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

only about 1–2 KB of data, it allows Antonellis to access and display an animated
GIF on his phone that is stored on the implant. Since the RFID chip can transfer
and receive data, Antonellis can swap out 1 KB files as he pleases. Antonellis
views the implant as a “net art tattoo”, something for which quick response codes
(QR, or matrix barcode), are commonly used. Instead of a visible QR code, the
RFID chip will allow the art to be easily changed with an increase in storage
capacity to the chip, further the convenience of a subdermal wireless hard drive
would be an interesting development for the body hacking movement. Similarly,
Karl Marc, a tattoo artist from Paris designed an animated tattoo that makes use of
a QR code and a smartphone.77 The code basically activates software on the phone
that makes the tattoo move when seen through the phone’s camera.
In addition, others have also implanted RFID chips for various reasons. For
example, Dr. John Halamaka, of Harvard Medical School, chose to be implanted
with an RFID chip in 2004 which is used to access medical information.78 His
implant stores information which can direct anyone with the appropriate reader to
a website containing his medical information. He believes that chips such as these
can be valuable in situations where patients arrive at the hospital unconscious or
unresponsive. Another person with an RFID implant, Meghan Trainor has a much
less practical but highly creative application than many of the others who have
gotten them. Trainor had the implant put in as part of her master’s thesis for
NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.79 Her implant serves as part of
an interactive art exhibit. RFID tags are embedded in sculptures which can be
manipulated to play sounds stored in an audio database. Trainor can use the
implant in her arm to further manipulate these sounds. Considering a digital tattoo
designed for a medical monitoring purpose, University of Pennsylvania’s Brian
Litt, a neurologist and bioengineer, is implanting LED displays under the skin for
medical monitoring purposes.80 These tattoos consist of silicon electronics less
than 250 nm thick, built onto water soluble, biocompatible silk substrates. When
injected with saline, the silk substrates conform to fit the surrounding tissue and
eventually dissolves completely, leaving only the silicon circuitry. The electronics
can be used to power LEDs that act as photonic tattoos. Litt is perfecting a form of
this technology that could be used to build wearable medical devices—say, a tat-
too that gives diabetics information about their blood sugar level.
But in what I consider to be a remarkable effort to hack the body, “grinder” Tim
Cannon, implanted a Circadia 1.0 biometric sensor under his forearm skin to track
changes in his temperature.81 The sensor/computer can connect wirelessly to an

77QR Code Tattoos, at: http://www.qrscanner.us/qr-tatoos.html.

78Life as a Healthcare CIO, 2007, at: http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2007/12/chip-in-my-
shoulder.html.
79RFID Implants: 5 Amazing Stories, at: http://www.rfidgazette.org/2007/04/rfid_implants_5.html.
80Id.
81Biohacking/Grinder Update: Tim Cannon Implants Circadia 1.0, 2013, at: http://hplusmagazine

.com/2013/10/21/grinder-update-tim-cannon-implants-circadia-1-0/.
Hacking the Body with Sensors 171

Android device, produce readouts of the temperature changes, and send Cannon a
text message if he’s experiencing a fever. To insert the device, an incision was
made on Cannon’s forearm above an existing tattoo. His skin was lifted and sepa-
rated away from his tissue and the device was inserted into the pocket that was
created before being sutured shut. The LEDs act as ‘status lights’ that can be used
to light up a tattoo on Cannon’s arm, under which the sensor is fitted. The first ver-
sion of the sensor reads temperature changes but, in theory, later versions could be
used to track other vital signs and body changes. Some critics have argued that
Tim’s implanted technology does not realistically measure body temperature—but
entering that debate is not a purpose of this chapter, other than to use this dispute
as an introduction to how the law, in general, will have to deal with defective
implantable devices a subject covered in this and other chapters throughout this
book.

Sensory Substitution and a Sixth Sense

With regard to hacking the body, can a new sense be created? If by “new sense”
one meant to enhance a current sense in such a way that sensory information
beyond the range of its sensory receptor(s) can be detected, then yes. Actually,
substituting one sense for another is a well-researched topic and represents another
way to hack the body and create a cyborg future. Increasing and/or extending the
range of our senses may be desirable given we see and hear across certain frequen-
cies, and that the eyes and ears can only detect information within a given distance
to the sensory receptors. In the future, by hacking the body, X-ray or telephoto
vision, and greater sensitivity to olfactory, gustatory, or haptic information, may be
possible.
Duke University neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, and his team claim that they
have created a “sixth sense“ through a brain implant in which infrared light is
detected by lab rats.82 Even though the infrared light can’t be seen, lab rats are
able to detect it via electrodes in the part of the brain responsible for the rat’s sense
of touch- so remarkably, the rats feel the light, not sees it. In order to give the rats
their “sixth sense”, Duke researchers placed electrodes in the rat’s brains that were
attached to an infrared detector.83 The electrodes were then attached to the part of
the animals’ brains responsible for processing information about touch. The rats
soon began to detect the source of the ‘contact’ and move towards the signal.
Sixth sense or not, in my view, the study by Nicolelis and his team is another
step toward integrating brain-computer technology into the human body; and thus
contributing to a cyborg future.84 Eric Thomson, who worked on the project, said

82Miguel Nicolelis, Id. note 47.

83Miguel Nicolelis, Id. note 47.
84Miguel Nicolelis, Id. note 47.
172 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

past brain-machine studies have focused on restoring function to damaged areas of

the brain, not creating it. “This is the first study in which a neuroprosthetic device,
was used to augment function—literally enabling a normal animal to acquire a
sixth sense.”85 In addition to these fascinating findings, the Duke scientists found
that creating the infrared-detecting sixth sense did not stop the rats from being
able to process touch signals, despite the electrodes (providing input for the infra-
red detection system) being placed in the tactile cortex.

Hacking the Ear

Grinders have also shown an interest in hacking the ear. For example, Rich Lee, a
self-described Grinder, implanted sound-transmitting magnets in his ears to extend
his auditory sense.86 Part of his system contains a coil that creates an electromag-
netic field that vibrates magnets implanted in his ears which produces sound. Lee
says the quality of the sound is similar to a cheap pair of earbuds. The phenomenon
at work is known as electromagnetic induction, and is also the reason we can both
generate electricity with mechanical motion (i.e. generators) and turn sound into
electrical currents (i.e. microphones). Showing the true hacker spirit, one of Rick’s
interests is to use the implant to connect with other devices to augment his own
senses and abilities. But a main part of his interest in hacking his auditory sense
deals with necessity, Rick is losing his sight. With his headphone implants, and
other technology, Rich could compensate for his loss of vision by learning to echo-
locate and to interpret the shape and dimensions of his surroundings based on how
they react to emitted sound waves transmitted to his implanted magnets. Aside from
just listening to music or podcasts, Lee plans to use the earlobe-implants in con-
junction with his phone’s GPS so he can get directions beamed right into his head.
And Lee plans to hook up the earlobe-phones to a directional microphone in order
to listen in on conversations; clearly there are privacy issues associated with this.
Hackers are not the only one interested in restoring or enhancing audition.
According to the FDA, as of 2012, approximately 324,200 people worldwide have
received a cochlear implant, designed to improve hearing. A cochlear implant
helps to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely
hard-of-hearing. The implant does not restore normal hearing, instead, it can give
a deaf person a useful representation of sounds in the environment and help him
or her to understand speech. The typical implant consists of: an external portion
that sits behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the
skin and has a microphone, which picks up sound from the environment; a speech

85See generally, Miguel Nicolelis, Id. note 47.

86Zoltan Islvan, 2014, Interview with Transhumanist Biohacker Rich Lee, The Transhumanist
Philosopher, at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-transhumanist-philosopher/201407/
interview-transhumanist-biohacker-rich-lee.
Hacking the Ear 173

processor, which selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone; a

transmitter and receiver/stimulator, which receive signals from the speech proces-
sor and converts them into electric impulses; and an electrode array, a group of
electrodes that collects the impulses from the stimulator and sends them to differ-
ent regions of the auditory nerve. A cochlear implant is very different from a hear-
ing aid which amplifies sounds so they may be detected by damaged ears. Instead,
cochlear implants bypass damaged portions of the ear and directly stimulate the
auditory nerve
In the U.S. the FDA enforces regulations that deal specifically with the manu-
facture and sale of hearing aids because these products are recognized as medical
devices. The most notable federal regulation is the FDA’s Hearing Aid Rule which
requires that prior to the sale of a hearing aid, the practitioner advice the patient
that it is in their best health interest to see a physician, preferably one specializing
in diseases of the ear, before purchasing a hearing aid. As with other implant tech-
nology, with cochlear implants problems may occur which prompt legal action.
For example, in Kentucky a jury awarded $7.24 million to a Kentucky girl and her
family, after her cochlear implant failed and caused her to suffer excruciating
shocks and convulsions.87 The jury found that Advanced Bionics, a medical device
company, was responsible for knowingly selling defective cochlear implants.

Sensing Electromagnetic Fields

In an extension of the work by Duke’s Miguel Nicolelis (feeling light) and

University of Reading’s Kevin Warrick (implantable chip), Grinders are hacking
their body by inserting magnets under their fingertips in order to detect a source
of energy that is beyond our normal perception, electromagnetic fields. Similarly,
robots are also becoming equipped with the ability to sense objects before it
touches them by using magnetic fields in a way that in their case, mimics the sen-
sory perception of sharks.
Electromagnetic fields are all around us, whether we perceive them or not. In
fact, anything that uses a transformer or direct current (as do household appli-
ances) gives off an electromagnetic field. With implantable magnets, things like
power cord transformers, microwaves, and laptop fans became perceptible to a
cyborg. According to Grinders equipped with the implanted magnets, each object
has its own unique field, with a different strength and “texture.” Body hacker, Tim
Cannon has extensive experience detecting magnetic fields through his neodym-
ium magnetic implant. Interestingly, when Tim first received his implant he reports

87David Kirkwood, 2013, Jury awards $7.2 million in case of a girl harmed by a defective coch-
lear implant, at: http://hearinghealthmatters.org/hearingnewswatch/2013/jury-awards-7-2-million-
in-case-of-a-girl-harmed-by-a-defective-cochlear-implant/.
174 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

that he could literally feel the invisible field of a cash register, with the strength of
the vibrations of his implanted magnet varying depending on where he held his
finger in relation to the machine.88 However, not all of Tim’s perceptions of mag-
netic fields have been positive, as Tim reports an uncomfortable feeling when he
handles other magnets which can flip the magnet inside his finger.
In an extension of his body hacking efforts to create a magnetic sense, Cannon is
working on an implantable device called Bottlenose which is an echo location unit,
giving a person a sonar sense. The device which is about half the size of a pack of
cigarettes slips over a person’s finger. Named after the echolocation used by dol-
phins, it sends out an electromagnetic pulse and measures the time it takes to bounce
back. If a person is equipped with a finger magnet, the implant is able to react to the
sonar information translating it into distance information. A final example of hack-
ing the skin involves implanted magnets in the arm of tattoo artist Dan Hurban, the
purpose of which is to hold an iPod Nano to his arm.89 While a strap would have
done the job, none-the-less, this is an interesting proof-of-concept example.

Cybersecurity and the Cyborg Network

As humans become equipped with wirelessly networked sensors and implants, the
body is becoming a local area network requiring dedicated spectrum. And as with
any wireless network, it can be hacked. In the U.S. the Federal Communication
Commission specifically allocates spectrum for a medical body area network, or
MBAN for short, which consists of devices worn on, or implanted in, the human
body that communicate with a programmer/controller device outside the body using
a wireless communication link. The spectrum allocated to MBANs is solely for the
purpose of measuring and recording physiological parameters and other patient
information, or for performing diagnostic or therapeutic functions, primarily in
health care facilities. There are a number of restriction with MBANs—they can be
used only for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes; they must be provided to a patient
only under the direction of an authorized health care professional; an MBAN body-
worn device may not communicate directly with another MBAN body-worn device;
and are only allowed a maximum emission bandwidth of five megahertz.
With wirelessly implantable devices, there are several weaknesses to the network
which includes those resulting from unintentional signal interference, to threats
characterized as “unauthorized accessing of a device,” or hacking. Medical devices
exhibit a number of potential vulnerabilities—such as untested firmware and soft-
ware, and unsecured wireless connectivity. This could happen in a number of ways:
limited battery life, remote access vulnerabilities, interruptible wireless signals,

88Seegenerally, Dan Berg, 2012, Body Hacking: My Magnetic Implant, at: http://www.iamdann.
com/2012/03/21/my-magnet-implant-body-modification.
89Guy Gives Himself Magnet Implants to Attach iPod To Arm, at: http://geekologie.

com/2012/05/guy-gives-himself-magnet-implants-to-att.php.
Cybersecurity and the Cyborg Network 175

unencrypted data transfers, susceptibility to interference, faulty warning mecha-

nisms, reliance on outdated and obsolete technologies and the inability to download
security patches. These vulnerabilities, in turn, could lead to hackers tampering with
a device’s settings, disabling key functions of the device without a user’s knowledge,
obtaining sensitive data about a patient or causing a complete device malfunction.

Conclusions

In an age where technology allows people to augment their body, without the con-
fines of evolution by natural selection, human development will continue to leap
forward bringing fundamental changes to the very nature of humanity. Body hack-
ing, augmentation, cyborgization, call it what you like, the movement towards
implanting technology in the body, is a ripe ground for legislation as new advances
in sensors, prosthetics, and brain-computer interfaces are being developed. Law
and technology must work hand-in-hand as we move into this new age of human
development. Under current laws, such as the ADA, the baseline “able” person is
the average functioning human, with all original parts intact, and no addition or
modification are relevant in the eyes of the law to determine whether someone is
disabled. But this paradigm doesn’t work in an age of cyborgs where neuroscience
and robotics is leading to an updated division between disabled, able, and “better
abled” as both disabled and healthy humans increasingly chose to augment their
bodies, and even their brains, with technology. In fact, the use of brain-computer
interfaces in the future will go far beyond restoration and enhancement to literally
adding new functions to the mind. The ability to hack the body raises the question
of what kind of autonomy do we have with our bodies?90 Is it the autonomy that
individuals possess over a piece of property? Or is the autonomy under a right of
privacy?
In this chapter I showed that body hackers, Grinders, and self-made cyborgs,
are taking advantage of widely available technologies such as tracking chips,
LEDs, magnets, and motion sensors to imbue themselves capabilities no other
human has. Professor Warwick’s initial RFID implant was a turning point in the
history of transhumanism not because it represented a great technological leap in
implants, but because it required mostly imagination and the courage to try some-
thing new, as the technology he used already existed. What he did, anyone could
have done. What it undeniably did was pave the way for people with far fewer
resources to experiment with enhancements of their own—often without the aid
of medical professionals- and many of those explorers have been discussed in this
chapter.
In the beginning of the chapter, I stated that caution was in order as we
approach the cyborg future. Stanford’s Fukuyama’s warnings are worth noting
again—“What is that human essence that we might be in danger of losing?” “For a

90Radhika Rao, Property, Privacy, and the Human Body, 2000, 80 B.U.L. Rev. 359.
176 5  Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body

religious person, it might have to do with the divine gift or spark that all human
beings are born with. From a secular perspective, it would have to do with human
nature: the species-typical characteristics shared by all human beings qua human
beings. That is ultimately what is at stake in the biotech revolution.”91 Fukuyama
argues that state power, possibly in the form of new regulatory institutions, should
be used to regulate biotechnology and also cyborg technology. I agree and gave
examples in this chapter of how the FDA and other government agencies are start-
ing to show an interest in cyborg technology and that there is a fledgling field of
cyborg law related to body modification and enhancements beginning to emerge.

91Francis Fukuyama, id., note 9.

Chapter 6
Sensors and the Law

Introduction

While previous chapters discussed the role of prosthesis and implants as technolo-
gies moving humanity closer to a merger with artificially intelligent machines, this
chapter introduces the reader to another technology that will be essential for reach-
ing a Posthuman age—sensors and sensor networks. Following the law of accel-
erating returns, the last two decades have seen dramatic improvements in sensor
technology, as a result, billions of smaller, faster, and more powerful sensors are
being embedded within the world. It is now common for people to wear wrist-
bands or clip-on sensors that record their vital signs such as activity levels and
sleep patterns; in addition, some people are wearing identification badges which
employers use to track their location and allow entry into secure buildings. And
recently, advances in digital tattoos means that people can wear temporary epider-
mal circuits which monitor their health. With continuing improvements in technol-
ogy, sensors that are currently worn on the body are beginning to “move under
the skin,” creating an emerging class of cyborgs that has capabilities beyond those
of current nonenhanced humans. For example, with implant technology, appropri-
ately equipped cyborgs can detect magnetic fields, see infrared light, hear color,
engage in telepathy, and augment the world with information. And as sensor tech-
nology continues to experience rapid growth, when combined with advances in
nanotechnology, by midcentury, self-replicating nanobots will enter the body to
repair damaged organs and cells—when this happens, the number of sensors could
grow to the trillions. Clearly, sensors will have a major role to play in our cyborg
future.
Given the speed at which technology is advancing, by midcentury a number
of legal and policy issues relating to cyborg technologies and their role in deter-
mining the future direction of humanity will need to be addressed. For example,
as we create powerful miniaturized sensors with wireless capabilities, will we be

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 177

W. Barfield, Cyber-Humans, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25050-2_6
178 6  Sensors and the Law

creating a world with little or no privacy, and a world in which governments rou-
tinely exert control over citizens by accessing the sensors they wear? Or will we
be creating a more utopian world in which sensors are used to monitor and repair
the human body; enhance communication between people; and help society main-
tain stable democratic institutions? As in most cases, the adaptation of a particular
technology leads to a balancing of both possibilities and it is often the law which
helps determine the balance.
Let’s begin the discussion of sensors and their role in creating the conditions
for a human-machine merger with a fascinating case brought by an “unwilling
cyborg.” Daniel J. Palese claimed that for 10 years, his two sisters entered his resi-
dence on a daily basis, drugged and hypnotized him, and while he was asleep
implanted cameras, sensors, and transmitters in his body to track and control him.
Not surprisingly, when his case was presented to the Tenth Circuit Court of
Appeals, it was dismissed as legally frivolous.1 In 1998 when the case was heard,
no one seriously considered the possibility that Daniel had actually been
implanted with sensors against his will. But less than 20 years after Daniel’s case
was dismissed, the ability to control the behavior of a person using implants is no
longer the product of a paranoid mind but technologically possible and being
done. To illustrate this point, RFID implants are used to track Alzheimer’s
patients, electrodes implanted in the brain of Parkinson’s patients are used to
mediate their symptoms, and some people, described as grinders, are trying to cre-
ate new senses all together, using for example, magnets implanted within their fin-
gertips to detect magnetic forces emanating from everyday objects. And I should
mention that in response to battlefield injuries, the U.S. government has heavily
invested in technology to fix and repair brain damaged soldiers, spending millions
for research aimed at creating neuro-implants that will help veterans improve their
memory. In the coming decades the same technology will not only benefit the mil-
lions worldwide who suffer from traumatic brain injuries, but will also provide
another fundamental “tool” necessary to support a human-machine merger.
When Daniel argued to the court that he had been implanted with sensors and
transmitters, there was no law relating specifically to cyborgs to redress his claim;
although, if his assertion was true both the criminal and civil law would have pro-
vided a strong cause of action. But just 10 years after Daniel’s court appearance, a
statute enacted in California was on point. California’s “anti-chipping” statute pro-
vided that “no person shall require, coerce, or compel any other individual to
undergo the subcutaneous implanting of an identification device”; described as any
item, application, or product that is passively or actively capable of transmitting
personal information, including devices using radio frequency technology.2 The
statue created a civil action under which a person implanted (or chipped) against
their will with an identification device could recover a “civil penalty,” such as
actual damages and compensatory damages, injunctive relief, and punitive

1Daniel J. Palese, v. Dominic Palese and Patricia Palese, 141 F.3d 1185 (10th Cir. 1998).
2California “Anti-Chipping Statute”, Sect. 52.7 of the California Civil Code.
Introduction 179

damages with proof that the person implanting the sensor did so with “malice,
oppression, fraud or duress.”3 The California statute and similar statutes aimed at
protecting a person from being “chipped” against their will are clearly important
legislative responses to RFID technology, more legislative responses to human
enhancement and cyborg technologies are coming.
Although implant technology has shown great promise for restoring lost func-
tions to a body damaged by disease or broken by injury, Daniel’s accusations
reveal a potential use of cyborg technology which should greatly concern human-
ity. Consider Ray Kurzweil’s prediction that brain implants will allow a person to
recreate experiences already lived or even to transfer (transplant) memories from
one brain to another.4 While this is a remarkable vision by an inventor and futurist
with an uncanny record for getting it right- the same technology could be used by
governments and corporations to implant false memories into one’s mind, and to
trespass upon a person’s private thoughts (see the Chapter on Cognitive Liberty).
Clearly, “chipping” people against their will, or using implants to control their
behavior, will lead to extremely negative consequences for an individual and for
society at large. For this reason, many argue that the use of sensors and implant
technologies should proceed with caution and only after a rigorous public debate
on the desirability of allowing humans to be equipped with technology that could
fundamentally alter what it means to be human.
Entering the debate about the direction of our cyborg future, many social scien-
tists have argued against policies which would inhibit innovation in the develop-
ment of information technologies. Summarizing competing positions, economist
Adam Thierer refers to a cautious approach taken to technology innovation as the
“precautionary principle” which he states refers to the “belief that new innovations
should be curtailed or disallowed until their developers can prove that they will not
cause harm to individuals or groups…”5 This is in contrast to the view of “permis-
sionless innovation” which Thierer describes as the policy that new technology
should be permitted by default, “unless a compelling case can be made that a new
technology will bring serious harm to society…”.6 While I strongly support inno-
vation in technology, if the implementation of cyborg technologies, especially in
the form of artificial super intelligence, could potentially lead to the extinction of
the human race, then put me down as a supporter of the precautionary principle.
Technical innovator and entrepreneur Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems
agrees and goes even further. Concerned with the threat that super artificial intelli-
gence could pose to humanity, Joy advocates that researchers actually “relinquish”

3Id.
4Raymond Kurzweil, The Human Machine Merger: Why We Will Spend Most of Our Time
in Virtual Reality in the Twenty-first Century, keynote address delivered at the 2000 ACM
SIGGRAPH conference in New Orleans, at: http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-human-machine-
merger-why-we-will-spend-most-of-our-time-in-virtual-reality-in-the-twenty-first-century.
5Adam Thierer, Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive

Technological Freedom, Mercatus Center, George Mason University, 2014.

6Id.
180 6  Sensors and the Law

or completely abandon key genetic, nanotechnology, and robotics research

because it could lead to a dystopian future. Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking
also warned of the danger that artificial intelligence could pose to humanity.
Noting that humans are limited by slow biological evolution, he commented that
they lack the ability to compete against artificial intelligence and will eventually
be superseded, a view I support. In an interview, Professor Hawking told the BBC:
that “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the
human race.”7 Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001 and its murderous computer HAL
encapsulate many people’s fears of how AI could pose a threat to human life. “It
would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate,” Hawking
said.8 “We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own
intelligence, so we can’t know if we’ll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it
and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it,” he says.9 If Joy’s approach is
deemed to have merit, and if Hawkings concern should be given diligence, due to
the speed of technological advancements, legislators will need to start the process
of regulating cyborg technologies in the very near future, as the Singularity may
be close and once reached, it is likely artificial super intelligence will not be sus-
ceptible to control by regulations enacted by humans.
Stanford’s Francis Fukuyama, writing in Our Posthuman Future, Consequences
of the Biotechnology Revolution, has expressed similar concerns regarding the
threat posed to humanity by artificial intelligence; arguing that biotechnology
needs to be carefully regulated due to its potential to change the nature of human-
ity and structure of society.10 In the context of biotechnology, Fukuyama has com-
mented that genetic modification to the genome could alter liberal democracy; for
example, by creating a superclass of genetically enhanced people.11 Similarly,
how we intersperse sensors throughout the environment and how the government
chooses to use sensors, for example, to monitor people, could affect individual lib-
erty, and the structure of society and of government institutions that develop this
century. As an example of the relationship between sensors and individual liberty,
where sensors go, so goes surveillance; yet there isn’t an informed debate among
the general public as to how much loss of privacy is acceptable in a sensor filled
world. Anyone who has read Orwell’s 1984 will immediately see the ominous
comparison to the ever-watchful telescreen of Big Brother keeping citizens in a
fog of fear. And once we all have the “expectation” of being constantly watched in
an all-pervading panopticon, there can be no “expectation” of privacy. Some argue
that the right of privacy will simply wither away and die once the government inte-
grates sensors into a network used for monitoring and control. Regardless of the

7Rory Cellan-Jones, 2014, Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind,

BBC news, at: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540.

8Id.
9Id.
10Francis Fukuyama, 2003, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology

Revolution, Picador Press.

11Id.
Introduction 181

perceived merits of merging with machines, scientists think that the only way to
stop a dystopic future from happening is to enact statutes which specifically pro-
hibit the spy activities made possible by a global network of sensors and implant
technologies before being surveilled becomes a societal norm. Researchers have
also concluded that given sensor technologies could be misused by governments
and corporations, a host of technical safeguards should be designed to limit the
ability of people to be tracked, surveilled, and monitored. Otherwise, they argue-
will there be any legal justification for privacy and freedom from government con-
trol once society is fully conditioned to being monitored, tracked, chipped, and
recorded?
With regard to law and sensors, there is a growing body of case law which is
beginning to set the boundaries of what sensor information is possible to collect,
where it can be collected, by whom, and under what circumstances. These cases
attempt to answer important questions of law and policy that sensors, especially
those implanted within the body raise. For example, should data collected by sen-
sors be kept private? Is government access to sensors an unconstitutional search
and seizure? And what if someone hacks a person’s body-worn or implanted sen-
sors to steal information which may be protected by copyright or trade secret law?
Generally, courts have ruled that the government is allowed to use metal detectors
to scan the body reasoning that there is less of an invasion of privacy from sensor
scans than frisks or other kinds of searches. However, with cyborg technologies
now being implanted within the body, the threat to people from external sensors
designed to peer within the body, can be fatal. In fact, a woman in Russia fitted
with a pacemaker died after passing through an airport scanner which reportedly
disrupted the functioning of her pacemaker.12 This example highlights that a
cyborg future may be fraught with unexpected danger.
As we discuss the law, technology, and policy issues which arise from the use
of sensors, in the background of this discussion are the most important questions
facing humanity this century- should we merge with artificially intelligent
machines and therefore experience the benefits of exponential growth operating
for information technologies, or should we not merge with our future “mind chil-
dren” (to use a phrase coined by Dr. Hans Moravec in his 1990 classic- Mind
Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence) and risk becoming irrele-
vant and surpassed when the Singularity occurs?13 To complicate matters more,
the critically important question of whether humanity should merge with artifi-
cially intelligent machines needs to be discussed in the context of another impor-
tant issue that humanity must decide by midcentury—should we allow artificially
intelligent machines to reach human or beyond human levels of intelligence or
should we stop this from occurring? This chapter on the law, technology, and

12Harriet Alexander, 2014, Woman in Russia fitted with a pacemaker died after passing through

an airport scanner, The Telegraph, at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/

russia/11247611/Woman-dies-after-airport-scanner-interferes-with-her-pacemaker.html.
13Hans Moravec, 1990, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, Harvard

University Press.
182 6  Sensors and the Law

policy of sensors provides useful information to add to this important debate con-
cerning the future direction of humanity.

A World of Sensors

To restate the main theme woven throughout this book- that humans will merge
with artificially intelligent machines this century- in the material which follows I
discuss how sensor technology will contribute to that outcome; along the way, I
introduce legal and policy issues that will be implicated by the proliferation of
sensors placed in the environment and implanted within the body. As was dis-
cussed in Chap. 3, sensors on the outside of the body, are rapidly moving “under
the skin,” what I describe as “breaching the sensor-skin barrier.” Once the barrier
is breached, sensors implanted within the body will be used to control technology
that is attached to, and external to, the body, allowing a person to teleoperate a
range of technologies. As one example, sensors combined with brain-computer
interfaces, are beginning to allow people to remotely control a robot arm using
EMG signals collected by sensors worn on a person’s head. In this application, the
robot arm’s movements are also controlled and corrected by data from ultrasonic
and infrared sensors. And while the vast amount of information captured by all the
connected digital devices is valuable on its own, sensor data will be even more
powerful when linked to the physical world. On this point, implanted sensors are
beginning to connect the functions of our body to the sensors and machines exter-
nal to it. For example, cyborg artist Anthony Antonellis has an RFID chip embed-
ded in his arm that stores and transfers art to his handheld smartphone.14 For his
particular application, Anthony uses a subcutaneous near-field communication
chip for use as a wireless storage device. The re-writable 1 K chip implanted in
Antonellis contains an animated GIF file that can be accessed by a range of com-
puting technologies. The data on the chip is left public for reading and password
protected for writing.
The above examples are just the beginning, when it comes to sensors, get ready,
more are coming. According to experts, the billions of sensors that exist now will
pale in comparison to the number of sensors that will be strewn throughout the
environment in just a few decades. In fact, Janusz Bryzek, the organizer of a
Stanford University summit on sensors predicts that one trillion sensors will be
manufactured and shipped each year.15 Going further, Peter Diamandis and Steven
Kotler, authors of Abundance: The Future is Better than you Think, envision a

14Ellie Zolfagharfard, 2013, Would you have tattoo IMPLANTED under your skin? Artist has
chip placed inside his hand that reveals artwork when read by a smartphone, Daily Mail, at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2405596/Artist-Anthony-Antonellis-creates-
digital-tattoo-implanting-RFID-chip-hand.html.
15Janusz Bryzek: The trillion-sensor man: Part 1, 2013, at: http://www.electronics-eetimes.com/

en/janusz-bryzek-the-trillion-sensor-man-part-1.html?cmp_id=7&news_id=222918922.
A World of Sensors 183

future need for forty-five trillion sensors.16 And from my perspective gained from
directing the Sensory Engineering Laboratory at the University of Washington, I
also envision a world with trillions of sensors placed throughout the environment
and implanted within the body well before 2100. What could lead to this sensor-
filled future? In a Scientific American article, MITs Gershon Dublon and Joe
Paradiso observed that one reason why sensors are becoming ubiquitous is
because they have, “for the most part, followed Moore’s law,” they keep getting
smaller and more powerful; in contrast, the capabilities of our human senses,
while truly remarkable, are fixed.17
Currently, the human body is orders of magnitude more “sensor rich” than arti-
ficially intelligent machines. From a biological perspective the entire surface of
our body consists of sensors that detect more data that we can consciously attend
to. In fact, it has been estimated that the senses gather some eleven million bits
per second from the environment, however, due to information compression, only
a fraction of that information gets processed and placed in working memory—
about 50–126 bits. With continuing advances in sensors and implant technology,
Google’s Ray Kurzweil predicts that by 2040 it may be possible to store all of a
human being’s sensory experiences on a microchip implanted in the brain. This
may sound like science fiction, but if we consider advances made on prosthetic
neuronal chips by Theodore Berger of the University of Southern California, by
mid-century Kurzweil’s prediction could become reality.
Even with the impressive bandwidth of our senses, artificially intelligent
machines are rapidly catching up to our sensory capabilities, at least in terms of
raw processing power. With an estimated 100 billion neurons, each connecting to
as many as 10,000 other neurons, and with each neuron operating at about 10 bits/
sec, the raw processing power of the human brain is estimated to be in the petaflop
computing range, a number which interestingly, is matched by current supercom-
puters. However, what machines are missing is the “cognitive aspect” of informa-
tion processing, or the ability of the machine to interpret the millions of bits of
data collected by its sensors. Because a world consisting of sensors improving
under the law of accelerating returns will create artificially intelligent machines
with exponentially improving sensory capabilities, this possibility alone creates a
strong motivation for humanity to equip itself with the same sensor technology,
and to merge with our technological progeny in order to gain the benefits of infor-
mation technologies improving at exponential rates. In fact, implantable sensors,
will lead to a paradigm shift in how we think about the body. For example, as tech-
nology marches on some researchers will not be content to “just” restore memory
to normal or design technologies to enhance the senses, instead they will actively
try to create new senses. On this point, scientists at Intel are using the properties of
a magnetic field to develop a robotic hand that gives people the ability to sense

16Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, 2014, Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think,
Free Press.
17Gershon Dublon and Joseph A. Paradiso, 2014, Extrasensory Perception, Scientific America, V.

311, 36−41.
184 6  Sensors and the Law

objects before it touches them. And at Duke University researchers believe they
have developed technology in their laboratory allowing subjects to see infrared
light that’s not on the visible spectrum.18 And in the military domain, the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Association (DARPA) is trying to build “thought hel-
mets” to enable telepathic communication using brain-computer interfaces to give
soldiers extra senses, such as night vision, and the ability to “see” magnetic fields
caused by landmines.19
As machines gain in intelligence and become more autonomous, sensors are
becoming an indispensable technology in mediating machine-to-machine interac-
tions. For example, Google cars navigate by accessing GPS data from satellites,
and the navigation system itself uses information from sensors embedded in the
environment and on the car to maintain its position on the road. But what are the
legal issues associated with autonomous machines that use information from sen-
sors to interact with the world? With autonomous cars equipped with sensors- who
is responsible when something goes wrong? What will happen when a driver-
less car harms someone or Google Maps sends it the wrong way down a one-way
street? Recently, legislators have been debating these and other issues associ-
ated with autonomous cars, as a result, in the U.S. four states and the District of
Columbia have passed laws specific to driverless cars, some allowing manufactur-
ers to test cars but none answering the full range of legal questions that will come
up in a sensor-filled world with increasingly smart machines.
In my view of our cyborg future, the law of accelerating returns means that the
power of sensors and implants will continue to improve exponentially which will
quickly lead to a world of cyborgs ready to merge with machines that likewise will
be equipped with powerful sensors- all wirelessly connected together as part of the
emerging global “Network of Things.” In fact, the pace at which sensors are being
attached to everyday objects is remarkable- just within the confines of a person’s
kitchen, stoves, dishwashers, microwaves, refrigerators, and other appliances use
heat sensors to monitor and control temperature. And as discussed in previous
chapters, medical necessity is a major reason why sensors are being designed and
implanted within the body. One example of sensors designed based on “medical
necessity” is the bionic pancreas being built by Fiorenzo Omenetto, Professor of
biomedical engineering at Tufts University.20 The system comes with a tiny sensor
located on an implantable needle that “talks” directly to a smartphone app which
monitors blood-sugar levels for diabetics.21 The system has two pumps and sen-

18Matthew Humphries, 2013, Duke University augments rat’s brain with sixth sense, at:

http://www.geek.com/news/duke-university-augments-rats-brain-with-sixth-sense-1540058/.
19Arthur House, The Real Cyborgs, The Telegraph, at: http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/

the-future-is-android/.
20For a description of wearable/implantable technology see, Wireless Electronic Implants Stop

Staph, Then Harmlessly Dissolve, at: http://www.innovationtoronto.com/2014/12/wireless-

electronic-implants-stop-staph-then-harmlessly-dissolve/.
21Mike Edelhart, 2014, Nine real technologies that will soon be inside you, at: https://au.news.

yahoo.com/technology/a/25293925/nine-real-technologies-that-will-soon-be-inside-you/.
A World of Sensors 185

sors which control the pumps; if the app on the phone detects that blood sugar is
beginning to rise, the app signals one pump to release insulin; if the blood sugar
falls too low, the app signals the other pump to release glucagon. Another illustra-
tion of medical necessity guiding sensor research is again work done at Tufts
University, but in this case the School of Engineering which is designing a system
which consists of a dissolving electronic implant, made of silk and magnesium
that is used to eliminate bacterial infection in subjects.22 The system delivers heat
to infected tissue when triggered by a remote wireless signal. This is an important
step forward for the development of implantable medical devices that can be
turned on remotely to perform a therapeutic function, such as managing post-sur-
gical infection.

Our Reliance on Sensors

To illustrate our current reliance on sensors, consider the mobile technology that
billions of people use daily, a cell phone. Simply put, a cell phone is a wireless
hand-held sensor with a camera that converts conventional analog data into digital
information; it also includes an accelerometer to measure changes in velocity, and
a gyroscope to measure orientation. With these “senses” a cell phone can be used
to track a person’s location, and integrate that information with comprehensive sat-
ellite, aerial, and ground maps to generate multi-layered real-time location-based
databases. In fact, much of the sensor data collected by people as they move about
the environment is through their cell phone; which can include highly personal
information such as their location and calling patterns. An important point to make
is this- just as we humans are becoming increasingly dependent on software to
control the complex systems that we need for everyday life, we are becoming
equally dependent on sensors, most people just don’t know it yet. According to
Bill Joy co-founder of Sun Microsystems, in his seminal article published in Wired
magazine, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” we are drifting into dependence on
machines to such an extent that it is becoming impractical not to accept the deci-
sions made by them.23
What are the types of issues that will come up in an age of exponential growth
for sensors? Clearly, privacy, safety, and the possibility of government control over
our bodies and mind are major concerns, especially as sensors become implanted
within the body. Just considering the topic of privacy law, could the government
access sensor information collected and stored on implants without a search war-
rant? The right to privacy is not specifically stated in the U.S. Constitution, but is
directly referred to in several state constitutions and statutes. For example, through
its constitution and legislative action, California has been at the forefront of

22See Id, note 20.

23Bill Joy, 2000, Why the Future Doesn't Need Us, Wired 8.04.
186 6  Sensors and the Law

protecting privacy, and thus has made a major contribution to the emerging field of
cyborg law. In California, if a person’s privacy has been invaded through the use of
sensor technology, there are several “legal theories” a person may use for bringing
an invasion of privacy claim: The California Constitution; California’s Privacy
Act; the common law tort of intrusion upon seclusion; and an antipaparazzi stat-
ute. The protection of privacy in the California State Constitution, affords an indi-
vidual an inalienable right to pursue and obtain privacy; whereas, the California
Privacy Act is even more specific to an emerging law of cyborgs and provides civil
and criminal penalties for anyone who engages in unauthorized wiretapping or
eavesdropping with an electronic amplifying or recording device.24
A search using sensor technology can result in valuable information, for exam-
ple, the location of an Alzheimer’s patient, but a search using sensors may also
invade a person’s privacy. If the federal government is involved, the U.S.
Constitution directly addresses how the government must conduct a search and
seizure. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives the conditions
under which the government can perform a search and seizure, stating- “The right
of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall
issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly
describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”25
While to date no “search and seizure” case has directly dealt with cyborgs, there
have been related cases that involve sensors which I believe serve as precedence
for an emerging cyborg law.
One such case that was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court was Katz v. United
States.26 The Katz Court laid out a basic rule to apply when the government uses
sensors to collect information about a person. In Katz, the Supreme Court ruled that
a warrantless search using a government wiretap was improper because the defend-
ant had a reasonable expectation that his conversation would be private. A “search”
under the Fourth Amendment, the Court held, is an intrusion that violates an expec-
tation of privacy which society is prepared to consider reasonable.27 Of course, we
can ask, what is a reasonable expectation of privacy in a world filled with billions
(and soon-to-be trillions) of sensors? I should mention that the expectation of pri-
vacy is for a human subjected to a government search, not for artificially intelligent
machine. Clearly the Katz framework that was formulated in 1967 (and thus based
on decades old technology) is difficult to apply when it is becoming rare for people’s
actions not to be tracked or recorded in some way whenever they are in public or on
the Internet- this highlights the need for the law to keep pace with advances in tech-
nology. However, the extent to which this can be done in an age of exponential
growth for information technologies is questionable.

24CaliforniaPrivacy Act, (See Penal Code §§ 631 and 632, and (criminal) and § 637 (civil)).
25Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
26Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).
27Id.
Our Reliance on Sensors 187

The idea that technology outpaces the law is not new. In fact, in a seminal arti-
cle on privacy published in 1890 in the Harvard Law Review, “The Right to
Privacy,” Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren defined protection of the private
realm as the foundation of individual freedom in the modern age.28 Given the
increasing capacity of governments, the press, and other agencies and institutions
to invade previously inaccessible aspects of personal activity, Brandeis and Warren
argued that the law must evolve in response to technological change.29 Traditional
prohibitions against trespass, assault, libel, and other invasive acts had afforded
sufficient safeguards in previous eras, but these established principles could not, in
their view, protect individuals from the “too enterprising press, the photographer,
or the possessor of any other modern device for rewording or reproducing scenes
or sounds.”30 Consequently, in order to uphold the “right to one’s personality” in
the face of modern business practices and invasive inventions, they concluded that
legal remedies had to be developed to enforce definite boundaries between public
and private life.31 Given the “advanced” technology of 1890, what has changed
today? Sensors and neuroprosthesis implanted within the body, remote sensing
systems, billions of sensors embedded within the environment, algorithms to
detect faces, and a world wide web in which surveillance can occur at a global
level. There is much for the public to discuss as we equip our self and the world
with “cyborg” technology.
Another case of particular importance for sensors and decided decades after
Katz was Riley v. California.32 In Riley, the Supreme Court dealt with the legality
of a police search of private data stored on a cellphone. In a major decision for pri-
vacy rights in an age of sensors and wearable computing technology, the Supreme
Court unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of
people they arrest. In response to the decision, Law Professor Orin S. Kerr from
the George Washington University commented on the need for the court to recog-
nize the changing world of information technology, observing- “It is the first com-
puter-search case, and it says we are in a new digital age. You can’t apply the old
rules anymore.”33 Interestingly, Chief Justice Roberts seemed to foresee a cyborg
future by commenting on the important role that sensors play in contemporary life.
Referring to a cell phone, Roberts said, they are “such a pervasive and insistent
part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an
important feature of human anatomy.” “The fact that technology now allows an
individual to carry such information in his hand,” Chief Justice Robert wrote,

28Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harvard Law Rev. 193, (1890).
29Id.
30Id.
31Id.
32Riley
v. California, 134 S.Ct. 2473, (2014).
33Adam Liptak, 2014, Major Ruling Shields Privacy of Cellphones, Supreme Court Says
Phones Can’t Be Searched Without a Warrant, quoting Orin S. Kerr, at: http://www.nytimes.
com/2014/06/26/us/supreme-court-cellphones-search-privacy.html?_r=0.
188 6  Sensors and the Law

“does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the
founders fought.”34 In dicta, Justice Roberts touched upon a future in which
emerging technologies will bring up a host of constitutional law issues. Can we
conclude that the Riley case stands definitively for the proposition that the govern-
ment will need a warrant to search the sensors worn by people, and in the coming
decades, the sensors worn by cyborgs and artificially intelligent machines?
Probably not, as most Supreme Court decisions are narrowly written; therefore,
future cases involving sensors will be litigated to decide the government’s ability
to search sensor technology worn by or implanted within the body; it’s just a mat-
ter of time.35
It seems to me that technology has steadily chipped away the privacy rights that
individuals are afforded by constitutions and statutes so that the resulting space in
which we can expect privacy has considerably shrunk. Not only can we be con-
stantly tracked, filmed, and recorded as we move around the environment, given
the trend for sensors to migrate under the skin, our future might be one in which
the data representing the very functioning of our body and thoughts of our mind
may be routinely accessed by corporations and governments. To avoid this nega-
tive outcome, I believe it is important for citizens to lobby governments to regulate
the use of cyborg technology that could lead to egregious breaches of privacy and
constant surveillance- especially for an individual’s body and thoughts. If a gov-
ernment actor is involved, the court’s reasoning in Katz that “[s]o long as that
which is viewed or heard is perceptible to the naked eye or unaided ear, the person
seen or heard has no reasonable expectation of privacy in what occurs”36 leads to
little protection for individuals in a world filled with sensors and information tech-
nologies becoming integrated into our anatomy and physiology that may allow the
government to peer directly into our bodies and mind.

The Network of Sensors

At a pace on schedule with Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns, humans, robots,

and everyday objects are increasingly becoming part of the wirelessly networked
world represented by the global “Network of Things.” In this networked world,
information collected by a host of sensors is now accessible to anyone, anywhere,
and anytime. Due to the proliferation of sensors interspersed throughout the envi-
ronment, and the trend for sensors to “migrate” to the surface of the body, and
then become implanted within the body, an important piece of the puzzle leading
to our cyborg future and eventual merger with machines is here.

34Riley v. California, id., note 32.

35Id.
36Katz v. United States, id., note 26.
The Network of Sensors 189

I have often touted battlefield injuries, medical necessity, and industrial uses as
important factors spurring research on sensors, and while true, businesses are also
seeing the potential of low-cost sensors to support many of their retail activities.
For some time, retailers operating in many industries have required that their sup-
pliers tag shipments with RFID so that the data can be automatically recorded
when goods arrive. According to Ben Gaddis, Vice President of growth and inno-
vation with marketing and advertising firm, T3, in a world where services have
become commodities and price is king, sensors can help small businesses create a
competitive advantage.37 Gaddis comments that sensors give service companies
the opportunity to shift their business from a largely reactive model to one that is
more proactive and valuable to the end consumer. One example he cites involved a
pizza delivery service and its use of a sensor embedded in a refrigerator magnet.
The sensor/magnet device is pre-programmed to the customer’s pizza preference,
and using a built-in Bluetooth capability seamlessly places an order which gener-
ates a return text message confirming the order. In addition, retailers are trying to
get into customers’ brains and they now have the technology to do it. It’s called
consumer neuroscience and Thomas Ramsey indicates that companies are getting
valuable shopper intel that can shape the shopping experience.38 In the seconds
before we knowingly decide to buy our brains react. If retailers can tap into those
few seconds of subconscious they can use the information to make crucial deci-
sions on how to sell products. “If we present that stuff in an engaging and fun way
then people have a better experience and sometimes they buy more,” says profes-
sor of neuromarketing, Paul Zak.39 “There is no buy button in the brain and we are
not talking about manipulation. We are talking about using tools to help create a
better retail experience,” says Dr. Marci.40
Even investment bankers are recognizing the growth and value of sensor tech-
nology. In fact, bankers from Goldman Sachs have predicted that by 2020 there
will be twenty-eight billion connected devices. And remarkably, according to Wim
Elfrink, Cisco’s Chief Globalization Officer, the “Internet of Things” is being
adopted faster than any technology in history.41 Essentially what he and many
people are saying is that later this century, anything that can be connected to the
Internet will be. In fact, to perform the monitoring tasks that industry,

37Ben Gaddis, How Sensors will Revolutionize Service Businesses, Wired, at: http://www.

wired.com/2013/05/how-sensors-will-revolutionize-service-businesses/.
38Thomas Zoega Ramsey, 2015, Introduction to Neuromarketing & Consumer Neuroscience,

Neurons, Inc.
39Kathryn Hauser, 2014, Retailers Using Science To Shape Shopping Experience, q ­ uoting Paul Zak,
at: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/12/09/retailers-using-science-to-shape-shopping-experience/.
40Id. Quoting Dr. Marci.
41Wim Elfrink, 2014, The Internet of Things: Moving Beyond the Hype, at: http://blogs.

cisco.com/news/the-internet-of-things-moving-beyond-the-hype; Neil Kane, 2014, Caring for

Relatives by Robots, Forbes, at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilkane/2014/10/20/caring-for-
relatives-by-robot/.
190 6  Sensors and the Law

corporations, medical science, and governments require, tiny sensor devices are
being strewn virtually everywhere, and communicating to each other through
wireless links. By midcentury, the sensors implanted within our bodies and possi-
bly our brains will be a major part of the globally connected “Network of Things”
which will include cyborgs that are now emerging along with artificially intelli-
gent machines. As we move closer to mid-century, the developing global Network
of Things also has the potential to create a “Network of Minds,” in which crowd-
sourcing and other techniques will be used to solve problems on a global scale.
With the use of networks, knowing where a photo was taken, or when a car
passed by an automated sensor, will add rich “metadata” that can be employed in
countless ways. For example, roadway sensors can include a pneumatic road tube,
an inductive loop detector, magnetic sensors, a piezoelectric cable, and weigh-in-
motion sensors (piezoelectric, bending plate, load cell, and capacitance mat)—all
of which can be used to calculate roadway congestion and to suggest alternate
routes. In effect, location information will wirelessly link the physical world to the
virtual meta-world of sensor data. In the coming decades, using sensor technology,
everything from the clothing we wear to the roads we drive on will be embedded
with sensors that collect information on our every move, including our goals, and
our desires.
With cyborgs emerging this century and the world of “everyday things”
increasingly being networked together, legislators will need to determine what
limitations are appropriate to place on the collection and dissemination of personal
information collected by sensors that form part of the globally connected network.
To guide legislators, a public policy debate will need to focus on the extent to
which data derived from sensors for one purpose can be reused without permission
for another or without giving notice to the person whose data is being recoded,
transmitted, accessed, and analyzed. And with sensors being used to collect per-
sonal information about people, legislators will need to determine the extent to
which sensor data should be kept accurate, and secure; clearly, the security of data
stored on implantable devices in the brain, will be especially important to main-
tain. While we might expect privacy for data derived from our body and for the
thoughts in our mind, especially when we are in private places, according to
Berkeley Law School’s Pamela Samuelson, in practice there are porous barriers
between public and private spaces.42 For example, many applications for deploy-
ing sensor networks involve collecting personally identifiable information, which
when combined with facial recognition technology can be tagged to the person as
they move throughout the environment. The role of facial recognition technology
equipped with camera sensors and pattern matching algorithms and its relation to
privacy is currently being debated within the U.S. and the European Union;

42See generally, Pamela Samuelson, The Copyright Grab, wired, at: http://archive.wired.com/

wired/archive/4.01/white.paper_pr.html.
The Network of Sensors 191

Fig. 6.1  The tracking system developed by University of Washington researchers first systemati-

cally picks out people in a camera frame, then follows each person based on his or her clothing
texture, color and body movement. Image courtesy of Professor Jeng-Neng Hwang, University of
Washington

nonetheless, the use of facial recognition technology is expanding rapidly in gov-

ernment and private industries.43
Sensor technology can also be used to track people using cameras without relying
on facial recognition technology. For example, University of Washington researchers
have developed a way to automatically track people across moving and still cameras
by using an algorithm that trains the networked cameras to learn one another’s dif-
ferences.44 The system works by identifying a person in a video frame, then “follow-
ing” that same person across multiple camera views. However, the problem with
tracking a human across cameras of non-overlapping fields of view is that a person’s
appearance can vary dramatically in each video because of different perspectives,
angles and color hues produced by different cameras.45 The University of
Washington researchers led by Jeng-Neng Hwang overcame this problem by build-
ing a link between the cameras and by using artificial intelligence to help train the
camera recognition system (Fig. 6.1). To train the system, the cameras recorded for a
few minutes, then systematically calculated the differences in color, texture, and
angle between a pair of cameras for a number of people who walked into the frames
in a fully unsupervised manner without human intervention.46 After the calibration
period, an algorithm automatically applied those differences between cameras and
was able to pick out the same people across multiple frames, effectively tracking
them without needing to see their faces or to hear their voice.
The system developed by University of Washington researchers, can be imple-
mented with several technologies. For example, the researchers installed the track-
ing system on cameras placed inside a robot and a flying drone, allowing the robot
and drone to follow a person, even when the instruments came across obstacles that
blocked the person from view. The linking technology can be used anywhere, as
long as the cameras can talk over a wireless network and upload data to the cloud.

43Woodrow Barfield, Information Privacy as a Function of Facial Recognition Technology and

Wearable Computers, (September 11, 2006). Bepress Legal Series. Working Paper 1739, http://
law.bepress.com/expresso/eps/1739.
44Michelle Ma, Moving cameras talk to each other to identify, track pedestrians, 2014, at:

http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/11/12/moving-cameras-talk-to-each-other-to-identify-track-
pedestrians/.
45Id.
46Id.
192 6  Sensors and the Law

Telepresence and Sensors

In an interesting observation about our coming cyborg future, some scientists

argue that the sensors embedded in the environment are beginning to function as
an extension of the human nervous system, creating a new kind of sensory pros-
thesis, and raising the question—where do our human senses start and where do
they end? In fact, the extension of our senses to sites remote to our body, may
extend our legal liability far beyond the location of our physical presence.
Consider the robotic sentry created by Samsung and designed for the border
between North and South Korea. The robotic sentry is equipped with vision, heat,
and motion sensors, and comes with a range finder. Sounds good, right? Except it
creates visions of a dystopic future given it can identify and shoot a target over a
distance of two miles away. No need to worry, it’s currently under the control of a
human operator from a remote location. Clearly, legal, ethical, and moral issues
will be implicated given the trend to develop autonomous “killer robot” weapons
guided by sensor controlled systems. In fact, in Norway, an autonomously con-
trolled missile, or so-called “killer robot”, has been developed for airborne strikes
for its fighter jets which have the ability to identify targets and make decisions to
kill without human “interference”.47 In response to the development of autono-
mous weapons, international organizations such as the Campaign to Stop Killer
Robots, are trying to convince legislators to ban weapons that can decide on their
own to kill. Likewise, I think there should be an “international level” response to
implant and other cyborg technologies that could be used for iniquitous purposes,
such as to control people, invade their privacy, and even to kill them.
Based on my research with my graduate students, access to sensory information
that is remote to a person, can create a sense of telepresence or cognitively “being
there.”48 Consider the legal consequences of telepresence for sensor technology—
under criminal law a crime must consist of an actus reus, or guilty act, accompa-
nied by a mens rea, or guilty mind. So, if a person supervising a remote robot,
purposively manipulated (mens rea) a robotic arm (actus reus) such that it resulted
in harm to an individual, both elements of a crime would be present. This brings
up an interesting design issue for robotics, if we recall Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws
of Robotics, made famous in his 1942 short story “Runaround,” the first two laws
relate to the example just given- A robot may not injure a human being or, through
inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; and a robot must obey the orders
given to it by human beings, except where such orders conflict with the First Law.
In the future, assigning criminal liability to robots with sensors that provide
beyond human levels of performance will be a challenge for courts, for the simple

47Norway’s ‘killer robot’ technology under fire, 2014, at: http://www.thelocal.no/20141023/

norways-killer-robot-technology-under-fire.
48See generally, Woodrow Barfield and Thomas Furness, (eds) 1995, Virtual Environments and

Advanced Interface Design, Oxford University Press.

Telepresence and Sensors 193

reason that robots cannot be charged with a crime. Again, we come back to the
issue of mens rea, can a machine be attributed with the intent to harm a human (or
another machine)? Will accessing and analyzing sensor information with the
appropriate algorithms be evidence of intent by the machine? Implementing
Asimov’s laws, along with other safeguards to protect humans from machines
gaining in artificial intelligence and with increased sensory capabilities to explore
the world, seems prudent.

Characteristics of Sensors

Contemporary robots can be thought of as self-navigating, semi-autonomous sys-

tems that are equipped with sensors that give them the ability to see, touch, hear
and move using hardware, software, sensors, and algorithms that require envi-
ronmental feedback. In addition, most robots have the capability to manipulate
objects, and therefore are equipped with positioning and force sensors. A point to
make is this, as robots gain in intelligence, mobility, and manual dexterity they are
becoming more like us and doing so at a surprising speed.
What are some basic features of sensors and the legal issues which apply to
them? Before addressing that question, let me introduce an important idea about
law and technology that was proposed by Harvard Law Professor, Larry Lessig,
author of Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Lessig’s point was that the archi-
tecture of cyberspace itself regulates conduct in much the same way that legal
code does.49 The same concept holds for algorithms, sensors, prosthesis, brain
implants, and other cyborg technologies. For example, the capabilities and features
offered by sensor technology defines the type and range of sensory information
that people and robots can detect from the environment and therefore what actions
they can perform; in this way the features of sensors serve as a regulation of con-
duct by the very nature of the architecture and design of the sensor and sensor net-
work. Similarly, the parameters of an algorithm also regulate machine behavior.
Consider the following example which shows how an algorithm sets parameters
for the behavior of a robot. In the field of mobile robotics, MIT researcher
Sangbae Kim developed a bounding algorithm to control the speed at which a
four-legged robot can run.50 The algorithm works by calculating the amount of
force exerted by a robot’s legs in the split second during which it hits the ground,
and through sensor data and feedback loops, allows the robot to maintain balance
and a given speed. In general, the faster the desired speed, the more force must be
applied to propel the robot forward. In related work using amputees as subjects,
Robert Gregg at the University of Texas Dallas branch, is using robot control

49LarryLessig, 2006, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0, Basic Books.
50JenniferChu, 2015, MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump, describing the work of
Sangbae Kim, at: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/cheetah-robot-lands-running-jump-0529.
194 6  Sensors and the Law

combined with sensors (measuring the center of pressure on a powered prosthesis)

to enable powered prosthetics to dynamically respond to the wearer’s environment
allowing the amputee to walk on a treadmill almost as fast as an able-bodied per-
son.51 Also by tweaking the parameters of sensors, sensors can be used to support
policy goals. For example, if public policy dictates that people shouldn’t text while
driving, sensors can be used to support the policy. Consider the patent issued in
2014 to Apple which describes a procedure to use the iPhone’s accelerometer and
other sensors to determine when a person is driving.52 If the sensors detect a mov-
ing car, motion sensors are then activated which block the texting capabilities of
the mobile phone.
The basic function of a sensor is to measure and convert a physical quantity
into a signal which is read by an observer or by an instrument. That is, a sensor
is used to detect one form of energy and report it in another, often as an electrical
signal. As an example, a pressure gauge might detect pressure, a mechanical form
of energy, and convert it to an electrical signal for display at a remote gauge. One
important part of a sensor is a transducer which is used to convert a signal in one
form of energy to another. Energy types that are detected by sensors include (but
are not limited to) electrical, mechanical, electromagnetic (including light), chemi-
cal, acoustic and thermal energy. Of particular relevance to our cyborg future are
in vivo biosensors that function inside the body monitoring different aspects of our
physiology- implanted chips that monitor glucose level and heart monitoring sen-
sors within the body are examples. Since controlling the parameters of sensors can
determine the range of behavior a robot may perform, perhaps one way to exert
control over artificial intelligence is to carefully consider what sensory informa-
tion it may detect; this is an additional safeguard beyond programming friendli-
ness into the software.
The above discussion of sensors should be considered in light of current robot
design. Most robots are equipped with a wide range of sensors, which allow them
to perform many tasks that humans currently perform- in fact, the remarkable
capability of sensors, is one reason why robots are displacing humans from the
workplace. One of the standard sensors for a robot is a proximity sensor which
allows it to detect a person’s presence in order to decrease the likelihood of acci-
dents. Proximity sensors are typically combined with tactile sensors which detect
contact between objects and with force sensors that detect and regulate the amount
of force exerted on an object by the robot’s end effector. A standard type of prox-
imity sensor is an infrared transceiver which uses an LED to transmit a beam of IR
light. The IR light is bounced off the surface of an object, and is used to detect an
object’s presence and distance to the sensor. Similarly, an ultrasonic sensor gener-
ates high frequency sound waves which can also be used to detect the presence of
an object and its distance to the sensor.

51Bionews Texas, at: http://bionews-tx.com/news/2013/11/25/ut-dallas-dr-robert-gregg-receives-

2-3-million-grant-from-nih-to-research-robotic-limbs/.
52U.S. Patent No. 8,706,143.
Characteristics of Sensors 195

As sensors proliferate throughout the environment, the type and range of sen-
sory information detected will increase. For example, it is possible to equip a cell-
phone case with a heat sensor which allows a person to “see” infrared light and to
detect temperature differences as small as 0.1 °C. Robots equipped with infrared
cameras to detect body heat were used at the World Trade Center site in New York
after 9–11 to crawl into holes that were too small or too dangerous for human
searchers. Also in 2001, an important case for cyborg law Kyllo v. United States,
was decided in which the Supreme Court reviewed a case involving a thermal
imaging device that was used by a government official from a public vantage point
to monitor the emission of heat radiation from an individual’s home.53 The ques-
tion presented to the Court was whether this act constituted an unwarranted search
under the Fourth Amendment. An evidentiary hearing stated that the imaging
device could not penetrate the home’s walls or windows to reveal any human inter-
actions or record any conversation. However, the sensor showed that there was an
unusual amount of heat radiating from the side walls and roof of the Kyllo’s
garage.54 This information was used to obtain a search warrant where federal
agents later discovered over 100 marijuana plants growing in Kyllo’s home. In a
close decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the thermal imaging device used to
monitor Kyllo’s home constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and thus
required a warrant before the device was used.55
For a law of cyborgs and artificially intelligent machines we are particularly
interested in rules applying to sensor technology that could serve as precedence
for future cases. In Kyllo, the Supreme Court announced that when the
Government uses a device that is not in general public use to explore details of a
home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the
surveillance is a “search” and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.”56
Because infrared temperature sensing was not in “general public use” at the time it
was used, the thermal imaging was a “search” that required a warrant. Under this
ruling, if a technology is widely used by the public, it is no longer reasonable to
expect that it won’t be used for surveillance purposes. In a cyborg age, the devel-
opment of sensors and their integration into the body will surely outpace the law,
therefore debates about privacy in our cyborg future may center not only on the
idea that a “man’s home is his castle,” but that even more so his body is also his
castle and deserving of the most stringent protection afforded by the law. Of
course this is generally the case now, but the integration of technology in the body
and the ability to scan a person’s mind, as we approach mid-century will bring up
a host of new issues of law and policy.
In the context of legal rights and sensor technology, GPS and other motion sen-
sors are standard technology found in mobile robots and other semi-autonomous

53Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001).

54Id.
55Id.
56Kyllo v. United States, id., note 53.
196 6  Sensors and the Law

machines, just as humans are equipped with a vestibular system to maintain body
balance. The use of GPS raises interesting legal questions in a cyborg age. For
example, in United States v. Jones,57 the Supreme Court held that installing a GPS
tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle’s move-
ments constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and thus required a
search warrant. Interestingly, the majority of the Court held that by physically
installing the GPS device on the defendant’s car, the police had committed a tres-
pass against Jones’ “personal effects”—since this trespass was an attempt to obtain
information it constituted a search per se.58 This brings up an interesting question
for cyborgs, whether equipping a cyborg with sensor technology, such as micro-
chips that track their location or monitors some aspect of their behavior, is a tres-
pass? I think it would depend on the specific facts. If done by the government, it
could be, if done based on a patient’s consent it would not be.
In common law jurisdictions, trespass to the person historically involved six
separate trespasses: threats, assault, battery, wounding, mayhem, and maiming.
Through the evolution of the common law in various jurisdictions, and the codifi-
cation of common law torts, most jurisdictions now broadly recognize three tres-
passes to the person, two of which are relevant to people equipped with sensors
and other cyborg technology: assault, which is “any act of such a nature as to
excite an apprehension of battery”; and battery, “any intentional and unpermitted
contact with the plaintiff’s person or anything attached to it and practically identi-
fied with it.”59 Thus, an assault and battery may occur not only to the body but to
the cyborg technology attached to it. The issue of assault with regard to cyborgs
raises an interesting question of law in light of the integration of sensors and pros-
thesis with the body- is cyborg technology to be considered part of the body or
separate from the body (that is, a form of property)? Already, some commentators
refer to a person’s iPhone or computer as an “exobrain,” which goes beyond the
concept of wearable computing technology as property to the idea that the technol-
ogy is actually integrated with the body. On this point, consider the thoughts of a
current cyborg, Professor Steve Mann of the University of Toronto who claims,
that his “glass” has become so much a part of his everyday life that it has become
part of him, that is, part of his mind and body. The wearable computing technol-
ogy Steve wears evolved from a cumbersome apparatus with some parts perma-
nently attached (portions of its sensory network implanted beneath the skin) to
something sleek and slender that slides on and off like ordinary eyeglass frames.
The question of whether or not cyborg technology is part of the body, is impor-
tant for different areas of the law, criminal law being a prime example. Under the
criminal law, a cyborg/prosthetic device could not only be the subject of an assault
against the wearer of the devices(s), but a weapon used in an assault by the cyborg.
The latter point could be especially relevant in criminal law cases involving

57United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, 565 U.S. (2012).

58Id.
59See generally, Trespass to the Person, at: http://www.lawteacher.net/lecture-notes/tort-law/

trespass-to-person-lecture.php.
Characteristics of Sensors 197

cyborgs with beyond human levels of strength, sensor capabilities, and functional-
ity. In a case heard by the Arizona Court of Appeals, State v. Schaffer,60 the state
was concerned with an aggravated assault charge against the defendant because
the court concluded that a prosthetic arm could be a “dangerous instrument”
within the meaning of the aggravated assault statute of Arizona.61 In discussion,
the court contended that a prosthetic arm is not a “body part” because the arm “is
not an amalgamation of flesh, blood, bone and muscle,” but is, instead, a mechani-
cal device that, although attached to the body, may qualify as a “dangerous instru-
ment” under the state’s aggravated assault statute.62 In his defense, the defendant
contended that the prosthetic arm is his arm, that it remained attached to his body
throughout the alleged assault (as opposed to being removed and swung like a
club, for example), and that it is therefore a “body part” even though it is made of
plastic and metal components rather than flesh and bone. In short, the Arizona
court disagreed with the “prosthetic as body argument,” and instead concluded that
a prosthetic device is not a “body part,” but is a device designed to be used as a
substitute for a missing body part.63 A study by Jessica Barfield at Dartmouth
College supported the court’s conclusion. She addressed the issue of whether
cyborg body enhancements were viewed as part of the body and whether a per-
son’s self-identity would change as a result of being equipped with cyborg tech-
nology encompassing most of the body. Her survey results showed that most
respondents felt that both their body-image and self-image would change if
equipped with cyborg technology. If I consider the Arizona court’s reasoning in
light of the advances being made to integrate prosthesis seamlessly into the body, I
think the issue of whether cyborg technology is considered part of the body or not,
will need to be revisited within the coming decades.
In most cases, given that humans are in close proximity to robots in work-
places, and that humans are beginning to share their living space with “general
purpose” domestic robots (South Korea has a goal that 100 % of households will
have domestic robots by 2020), the absence of a proximity sensor as part of the
robot’s design, would constitute a design flaw, and should harm result to a person,
a products liability action. In fact, humans and robots that are in close proximity to
each other will inevitably lead to accidents. For example, in 1981 a 37 year old
Japanese worker was killed by a robot which was unable to sense his presence.64
And consider what happened to a worker in Sweden a few years later. The factory
worker was performing maintenance on a defective machine, and thinking he had
cut off the power supply, the worker entered the robot’s workspace. But the robot
suddenly “came to life” and grabbed a tight hold of the worker breaking four of

60State v. Schaffer, 48 P.3d 1202 (2002), 202, Ariz. 592.

61Id.
62Id.
63Id.
64Ryan Calo, Robotics and the Law, at: http://blogs.law.stanford.edu/robotics/2010/05/02/two-

new-artificial-intelligence-papers-by-lawyers/.
198 6  Sensors and the Law

his ribs. If the robot was originally designed without a proximity sensor, or was
equipped with a sensor that failed, under the products liability law followed by
Sweden a cause of action based on the robot’s design (or due to a defective sensor)
could have been pursued.65 On the issue of sensor reliability, it is not uncommon
for product recalls to occur, for example, car manufacturer Kia issued a recall for a
faulty sensor mat found in the passenger seat of a certain brand of sedan. The
faulty sensor, part of the occupant classification system, was shown to fail due to
general wear, and as a result was not able to recognize a child in the passenger
seat, making the vehicle unsafe as it was unable to adjust the airbag deployment
settings in the case of an accident.
Additionally, because sensors are products in the stream of commerce, their use
and reliability will implicate laws regulating commercial transactions. A case on
point is Ionics, Inc. v. Elmwood Sensors, Inc.,66 where it was alleged that defective
thermostats led to fires in water dispensers. The main issue under dispute was
whether the contract between the parties consisted of only the terms agreed upon
in both the contract offer and acceptance or additional terms added by the seller
which shifted liability. This case brings up an important issue- who is liable for
accidents resulting from defective sensors, especially in an age where robots may
self-program and in the future use 3D printers to design their own sensors and
components thus taking a human completely out-of-the-loop? Generally, actions
for harm resulting from defective products is pursued using a theory of products
liability. Products liability refers to the potential liability of any or all parties along
the chain of manufacture of any product for damage caused by that product. This
includes the manufacturer of component parts (at the top of the chain), an assem-
bling manufacturer, the wholesaler, and the retail store owner (at the bottom of the
chain). Products containing inherent defects that cause harm to a consumer of the
product, or someone to whom the product was loaned, given, etc., are the subjects
of products liability suits. According to Cornell University’s Legal Information
Institute, “While products are generally thought of as tangible personal property,
products liability has stretched that definition to include intangibles (gas), naturals
(pets), real estate (house), and writings (navigational charts).”67
Unfortunately, injuries to people resulting from the absence of a sensor occur
with many consumer products; and sometimes with fatal consequences. The case
of Messerly v. Nissan North America, Inc.,68 is on point. The case arose out of a
fatal back-up accident in which a parent decided to move her 2002 Nissan sport
utility vehicle from a concrete pad behind her home to make more room for her
children to play. Initially, her nineteen-month-old son was out of harm’s way but
unfortunately the child had moved to a location behind the vehicle. As the mother

65Based on the EC-directive 85/374/EEC.

66Ionics, Inc. v. Elmwood Sensors, Inc., 110 F.3d 184 (1997).
67Products Liability, Legal Information Institute, at: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/products_

liability.
68Messerly v. Nissan North America, Inc., No. 2010-CA-000717-M (KY Ct. App.  Dec. 2, 2011).
Characteristics of Sensors 199

was backing up, she hit the child and he sustained fatal injuries. The parents sued
Nissan alleging that the sport utility was defective and negligently designed
because it was not equipped with a rearview camera or back-up sensors. In
response, Nissan argued that the risk of striking children while backing a vehicle
was an obvious, well-understood risk of operating any passenger vehicle and was
inseparable from the product’s inherent characteristics; furthermore, that its 2002
vehicle complied with applicable safety regulations at the time of its manufac-
ture.69 When technology moves beyond the boundaries of current law, it is often a
regulatory agency that responds. For example, in the U.S., the National Highway
Safety Transportation Agency announced a rule requiring vehicles built from mid-
May 2018 on to have a back-up camera. The rule requires a back-up camera to
show a field of vision at least 10 ft wide directly behind the vehicle, going back a
minimum of 20 ft. With more cyborgs emerging this century, the reliability of sen-
sors and their placement throughout the environment will enter the public debate
as an important issue concerning the future direction of humanity.
As we move closer to a human-machine merger, intelligent machines are being
equipped with sensors that are similar in functionality to those that natural selec-
tion has provided humans over a period of millions of years- thus “they” are
becoming more like us. In this context, an important sensor that robots are often
equipped with is one that allows the robot to detect sound. The world is immersed
with rich sources of auditory information, which not only provides useful infor-
mation about the world, but orients an organism in responding to stimuli within
the world. Robots that have sensors to detect sound can use speech recognition
software to understand humans and to respond appropriately to them, clearly a
necessary technology for a human-machine merger. A robot can also be designed
to navigate based on sound, and as discussed in Chap. 3, body hackers are begin-
ning to use sound to echolocate. Sensors that detect sound, and then form part of
a voice recognition system will allow governments and corporations to develop
biometric databases designed to store millions of people’s “voice-prints;” such a
capability is a major development in the ability to identify a person and monitor
their location as they move throughout the environment. If “voice prints” are com-
bined with facial recognition technology, and with the ability to track people from
one camera to another, then a robust tracking system could be used by govern-
ments and corporations for Orwellian surveillance purposes- this is clearly a seri-
ous potential outcome for humanity to consider and debate.
Thus far, most legal disputes with speech recognition software have revolved
around patent infringement. For example, Apple’s use of speech recognition soft-
ware has been the subject of several patent infringement cases. An example is a
legal action brought by patent holding company Cedatech that claimed Apple had
infringed their patent by selling products that offered the capability to integrate an
audio or video program with a separate application program.70 While this broad

69Id.
70Another Patent Lawsuit Against Apple Inc., at: http://patent-lawyers.usattorneys.com/patent-

lawsuit-apple/.
200 6  Sensors and the Law

claim would likely involve most of Apple’s products, the lawsuit cited the iPhone
5 and its audio speech recognition feature that works across multiple applications.
Going international, in China, Apple was unsuccessful in getting a Chinese com-
pany’s patent on its speech recognition software invalidated; in fact, the Chinese
company countersued claiming Siri as an infringing program. From these results I
envision a future in which patent wars will be common based on technology
designed for cyborgs; but once the artificial intelligence becomes the inventor,
then how will the courts respond?

Regulating Sensors and Being Forgotten

A regulatory agency, such as the National Transportation Safety Board (which

among other duties regulates sensors placed on cars), is a governmental body
that is created by the U.S. legislature to implement and enforce specific laws. An
agency has quasi-legislative functions, executive functions, and judicial functions.
With regard to cyborg technology, in the U.S., sensors and the wireless networks
that connect them are regulated by different government agencies and professional
standards. For example, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) regulates
devices that utilize electromagnetic spectrum as a communication device, but not
as a medical device; whereas, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) regulates
the sensors implanted within the body as a medical device. With potential over-
lapping jurisdictions, the FCC and FDA have entered into a “Memorandum of
Understanding”, where they collaborate with each other within the areas of their
respective agencies. A regulatory decision of importance for our cyborg future
occurred in 2012 when the FCC approved a mobile body area network, which
allocates electromagnetic spectrum for personal body-worn sensors. The allocated
spectrum can be used to form a personal wireless network, within which data from
numerous body-worn medical devices and sensors is aggregated and transmitted in
real time.
While body-worn sensors are becoming common and collecting important
information about a person’s health, they are also recording data that many people
would like kept private from the public; one example being a person’s predisposi-
tion for an illness; in employment decisions such knowledge may lead to various
forms of discrimination. In a time of exponential growth for sensors, should there
be a federal law preventing sensor information about the body from being
accessed, for example, in employment decisions, athletic competition, or by the
government? Precedence for this position already exists. Under the Genetic
Information Non-discrimination Act, employers are prohibited from asking
employees or job candidates to take genetic tests or to provide their family medi-
cal histories.71 Given the ability of sensors to collect information about people,

71The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, Pub. L. 110−233, 122 Stat 881,

enacted May 21, 2008.

Regulating Sensors and Being Forgotten 201

especially without their consent and knowledge, and the ease in which sensor data
can be uploaded to the internet, some people propose that there should be a “right
to be forgotten,” essentially, the ability to have information deleted from the inter-
net which stigmatizes a person by what they did in the past. The basic idea is that
personal information should be within an individual’s capacity to control—that is,
information that concerns a person, and which has lost its timeliness, its relevance
or its accuracy, and has no public interest, should be deleted if found to offend the
subject of the data.72 However, in contrast to the right to be forgotten is the
“Barbara Streisand effect.” The Streisand effect is a phenomena (discussed in
more detail below) in which an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information
on the web can backfire, and actually bring more attention to the information, not
less.
In a case dealing with the “right to be forgotten” the European Court of Justice
ruled that Google must amend some search results at the request of people who
want information posted about them on the internet removed. An early case was
brought (and won) by a Spanish man who complained that an auction notice of his
repossessed home on Google’s search results infringed his privacy. A European
Union Commissioner referred to the court’s decision as “a clear victory for the
protection of personal data of Europeans”. But in a cyborg age the judgment could
have major consequences for anyone using sensors, such as a camera, to film peo-
ple and then upload the film to the internet. Generally, the ruling says the rights of
the individual are paramount when it comes to their control over their personal
data, although there is a public interest defense when it comes to people in public
life. In response to requests to delete information, Google argued that it does not
control data it only offers links to information freely available on the internet and
that forcing it to remove links amounts to censorship, a view many who support an
open Internet support. Far from the legal jurisdiction of Europe, a Japanese court
ordered Google to remove search results that hinted at a man’s relationship with a
criminal organization after he complained his privacy rights were violated. So far,
thousands of web links have been scrubbed by Google based on requests received
by about 200,000 individuals from thirty-two countries73; however, with a future
world consisting of trillions of sensors, what facts can we reasonably expect
should be deleted without censorship affecting the marketplace of ideas?
I believe the “right to be forgotten” is a clear form of censorship as it requires
online search engines to edit the result of searches when requested to do so, in
order to make them compliant with the European directive on the protection of
personal data, and to conform to privacy law in countries far from the European
Union, such as Japan. And while I support strong privacy rights for individuals
especially when it comes to sensor data about their body and mind, I also agree

72Mantelero, Alessandro, 2013, The EU Proposal for a General Data Protection Regulation and

the roots of the ‘right to be forgotten’, Computer Law & Security Review, Vol. 29 (3): 229–235.
doi:10.1016/j.clsr.2013.03.010.
73Thousands of People Asking to Disappear from Google, 2014, at: http://www.cbsnews.com/

news/thousands-of-people-asking-to-disappear-from-google/.
202 6  Sensors and the Law

with Google’s assertion that censorship should be avoided, or at least only used
as a last resort such as in the case of national security or for the privacy and pro-
tection of an individuals’ personal medical data or thoughts. When considering
disputes involving cyborg technologies, legislators must carefully balance pri-
vacy rights versus the damage to society from censorship of information. Given
that democracy thrives when there is a free marketplace of ideas, policy should
strongly tilt toward less censorship. Thus, when it comes to deleting informa-
tion about an individual, I have to wonder, should we provide someone the right
to decide what information should be erased, even if that information is personal
and concerns them? If so, then individuals would be able to delete facts from
the history of the collective human experience. To allow this would be to grant
an individual sole monopoly rights on the data which represents their life; a dif-
ficult concept when one person’s actions affect many others. While facts normally
do not receive protection under the law, data, given sufficient creativity in how
it is organized, may receive monopoly rights in the form of intellectual property
protection, a topic presented in preceding chapters of this book as part of the dis-
cussion on cognitive liberty, and the law of artificial brains. For now, the reader
should be aware that while the legal protection for data varies widely across coun-
tries, most jurisdictions do grant some rights for the protection of data.

Remotely Sensed Data

Since the beginning of the space program, the proliferation of sensors have
reached beyond the earth’s surface. In fact, satellite imagery has become increas-
ingly available to the general public, a trend accelerated by services such as
Google Earth. Remotely sensed data collected by aerial, ground, and space based
systems is becoming an important part of spatial data bases accessed by people
equipped with sensors. A point to make is this: while remotely sensed data may
offer positive benefits to society, such as in chronicling the health of the planet
and finding undiscovered natural resources; remote sensors could also be used by
totalitarian states to track and monitor people as they move about the environment.
There are already active concerns about how the First Amendment protects
reporters who use drones. In multiple incidents police have arrested or intimidated
a reporter who used a drone to review an accident scene.74 The reporters argue that
because they are using the drones to observe police activity from a public space as
part of a news story, the drone activities are protected under the free speech prong
of the First Amendment. Police, meanwhile, have claimed that they have stopped

74Lilly Chapa, Drone journalism begins slow take off, at http://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-

resources/news-media-law/news-media-and-law-spring-2013/drone-journalism-begins-slo; See
Daniel Terdiman, 2015, Feds concede drone filmmakers have First Amendment rights, at: http://
venturebeat.com/2015/04/14/feds-concede-drone-filmmakers-have-first-amendment-rights/.
Remotely Sensed Data 203

drones or arrested reporters because of legitimate safety concerns—for instance, in

one case, they said that a journalist’s drone interfered with a helicopter approach-
ing an accident scene.
Thus far, regulations enacted on remotely sensed data are focused more on
commercializing the remote sensing systems, than safeguarding privacy.
Therefore, I believe the law relating to remote sensing systems is in need of major
overhaul given the recent advancements made in sensor technologies and the abil-
ity to combine different surveillance platforms into a global network of surveil-
lance. The United Kingdom, a self-proclaimed champion of Earth observations,
issued national remote sensing policy as early as 1984 but passed its first space-
related legislation in 1986 without any mention of remote sensing. In the U.S.,
Congress passed the Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992 which declared the com-
mercialization of the remote sensing of land to be a long-term policy goal of the
U.S., and established procedures for licensing private remote sensing operators.75
According to the Act, a license must be granted before an entity can begin operat-
ing a remote sensing satellite. The law requires private system operators to make
unenhanced data available only to the governments of sensed states, thus freeing
them to make data available to all other customers according to market forces.
These results imply that under current law cyborgs and artificially intelligent
machines will have no direct access to sensor data from satellite systems, unless
they receive a license to access the data, or, hack into the remote sensing systems.
In the future, what happens if artificially intelligent systems violate “remote sens-
ing” laws?
To date, there have only been a few legal disputes involving sensor data col-
lected remotely such as the data provided by Google Maps. One case revolved
around the central issue of whether Google map information could be accessed
while driving. A few years ago, in California, a driver was given a ticket for using
a Google Map app on an iPhone 4 while driving, the person disputed the ticket,
and on appeal the conviction was overturned by a State appellate court which
agreed that drivers should be able to use map apps on a smartphone while on the
road.76 The court unanimously concluded that the state vehicle code applied to lis-
tening, talking and texting on a cellphone while driving—not looking at a map
application. The impact of the decision is still being considered in other
jurisdictions.
One of the most important policy issues concerning remote sensor data is how
their use may impact privacy rights. One interesting case involved Barbara
Streisand, whose beach home was photographed by Kenneth Adelman, retired
environmental activist, and amateur helicopter pilot. Kenneth operates the
California Coastal Records Project, which is a private effort to photograph the

75Remote Sensing Policy, 15 U.S. Code Chapter 82.

76California court ruling frees drivers to use map apps on cellphones, at: http://appleinsider.com/
articles/14/02/28/california-court-ruling-frees-drivers-to-use-cellphone-maps-while-driving.
204 6  Sensors and the Law

entire California coastline.77 He has posted more than 12,000 high-resolution digi-
tal aerial images of the coastline on a website, where they are freely available for
download. Observers noticed that one of the photos happened to show the Malibu
mansion of singer Barbara Streisand. Streisand, concerned that her privacy had
been violated, sued Adelman, seeking damages for invasion of privacy and viola-
tion of California’s anti-paparazzi law.78
Another case that involved the collection of sensor information presented on
Google Maps also revolved around the important issue of privacy. A couple in
Pittsburgh claimed that Street View on Google Maps was a reckless invasion of
their privacy.79 The couple sued Google, alleging that Google “significantly disre-
garded their privacy interests” when Street View cameras captured images of their
house beyond signs marked “private road.”80 The couple claimed that finding their
home clearly visible on Google’s Street View caused them “mental suffering” and
diluted their home value. However, a U.S. District Court stated the plaintiff “failed
to state a claim under any count,” a procedure courts use to dismiss suits.81
Interestingly, Google claimed to be legally allowed to photograph on private roads,
arguing that privacy no longer exists in this age of satellite and aerial imagery.
This sentiment was expressed years earlier by Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun
Microsystems who famously said, “You have zero privacy. Get over it.”
Returning to California, under an anti-paparazzi statute, a person may sue for
“physical invasion of privacy” when three elements are met: first, a person has
knowingly entered the land of another without permission; second, the entry was
made with the “intent to capture any type of visual image, sound recording, or
other physical impression” of another person engaging in a “personal or familial
activity”; and third, the invasion was made “in a manner that is offensive to a rea-
sonable person.”82 This aspect of the anti-paparazzi statute dealt with the physical
intrusion onto another person’s private property (also covered by trespass law),
and not data collected by a remote sensing system. However, the anti-paparazzi
statute also covered a “constructive invasion of privacy,” which provided for liabil-
ity even if there was no actual entry onto the property of another.83 A cyborg
equipped with a telephoto lens could be liable under this prong of the statute.
Telephoto lens as part of a person’s body is not far-fetched, but being done now
with a small population of people suffering debilitating vision loss. Specifically,

77Barbra Streisand Sues to Suppress Free Speech Protection for Widely Acclaimed Website, at:

http://www.californiacoastline.org/streisand/lawsuit.html.
78See id.
79Boring v. Google, Inc., 598 F. Supp. 2d, 695 (W. D. Pa 2009).
80Id.
81Id.
82Randall Boese, American Bar Association, Forum on Communications Law, Redefining

Privacy? Anti-Paparazzi Legislation and Freedom of the Press, at: http://apps.americanbar.org/

forums/communication/comlawyer/summer99/sum99boese.html.
83Id.
Remotely Sensed Data 205

some people suffering from severe age-related macular degeneration (AMD) dis-
ease which affects two million Americans would benefit from an implantable tele-
scope, which would work like the telephoto lens of a camera (such technology is
being developed now). But back to the Streisand case, the judge rejected
Streisand’s claim, finding that “Aerial views are a common part of daily living,”
and that “There is nothing offensive about the manner in which they occur, nor in
the manner in which this particular view was obtained.”84
One concern for the coming cyborg age is that sensors can be used for purposes
other than their original design and intent. On this point, some images obtained
surreptitiously from cameras may be a violation of video voyeurism laws. In the
U.S. there is a federal statute prohibiting video voyeurism which states that who-
ever has the intent to capture an image of a private area of an individual without
their consent, and knowingly does so under circumstances in which the individual
has a reasonable expectation of privacy, shall be fined or imprisoned not more than
1 year, or both.85 The term “capture”, with respect to an image, means to video-
tape, photograph, film, record by any means, or broadcast; the term “broadcast”
means to electronically transmit a visual image with the intent that it be viewed by
a person or persons; the term “a private area of the individual” means the naked or
undergarment clad genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or female breast of that individ-
ual.86 The problem with antipaparazzi and video voyeurism or voyeur laws is that
they presume conscious acts of surveillance. The model is a celebrity photogra-
pher stalking his or her prey. When the surveillance is automatic or inadvertent as
with cyborgs like Steve Mann equipped with his EyeTap technology that is con-
stantly filming, such laws are a poor fit. And as technology “progresses”, video
voyeurism laws are going to become more-and-more problematic. I predict that
remote sensing using satellite technology may be the next prime offender.

Sensors and Intellectual Property Law

As exponentially accelerating technologies create a world filled with sensors, an

important question to ask is whether the software, technology, and algorithms
which control the functioning of cyborgs and artificially intelligent machines is
eligible for protection under the law of intellectual property. To introduce the dis-
cussion on this topic, it is clear that while the parts of the human body are not
patentable subject matter, technology designed to perform the same functions
are. Considering one of the most important organs, the kidney, William J. Kolff
was granted a patent for the first artificial kidney in 1967; however, no person
can receive a patent for a biological kidney. But what happens in the future when

84Id.,
note 77.
8518U.S. Code § 1801—Video voyeurism.
86Federal Statute on Video Voyeurism, 18 U.S. Code § 1801.
206 6  Sensors and the Law

much of the human body and an artificially intelligent machine that claims to
be sentient consist of patentable hardware? What rights will people and cyborgs
have over their own body then? Under current law, cyborgs are not considered a
“protected class,” and thus not covered under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But
does the Constitution offer rights for the technology comprising cyborgs? The
answer is yes- in the U.S., monopoly rights for intellectual property is specifi-
cally mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8: The Congress shall
have Power… To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing
for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries. Given exponentially accelerating information technolo-
gies; for cyborgs, and later, artificially intelligent machines (with general artificial
intelligence), an important public policy issue to discuss is what aspects of sensor
technology should be protected under intellectual property law?
Patent law is a particularly strong form of protection for inventors of cyborg tech-
nology as it gives the holder of the patent sole monopoly rights over the invention.
Such rights include an exclusive right to make, use, and sell the patented invention
for a limited period of time. If eligible for patent protection, the patent owner may
bring a lawsuit against anyone accused of infringing the patent. Under U.S. patent
law, the categories of patentable subject matter are broadly defined as any process,
machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or improvement thereof. In a land-
mark case, Diamond v. Chakrabarty, the Supreme Court found that Congress
intended patentable subject matter to “include anything under the sun that is made
by man.”87 However, the Court also stated that this broad definition has limits and
does not embrace every discovery. For example, according to the Court, the laws of
nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable.
While the hardware of cyborgs is patentable subject matter, are the algorithms
and software which controls the hardware components and operating systems of
cyborgs patentable? In the U.S. there is evolving law on the patentability of soft-
ware and algorithms. While this topic was discussed in the chapter on “The Law of
Artificial Brains,” to briefly review, abstract ideas and laws of nature are not patent-
able subject matter under U.S. patent law—however it’s not quite that simple. For
example, the fundamental issue for the patentability of algorithms as part of the
control dynamics of cyborgs and artificially intelligent robots, is whether they are
viewed as an abstract idea or a mathematical representation of a law of nature (e.g.,
the equation describing gravity is a law of nature and thus not patentable)—if so,
they are not the proper subject of patent protection, but if not, they may be.
The question of the patentability of algorithms was addressed in a 2014
Supreme Court case, Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International which involved a pat-
ent claim on an algorithm that monitored financial transactions.88 The patent was
held to be invalid because, according to the Court, the claims on the algorithms

87Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980).

88GeneQuinn, 2014, The Ramifications of Alice: A Conversation with Mark Lemley, at: http://
www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/09/04/the-ramifications-of-alice-a-conversation-with-mark-lemley/
id=51023/; Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. __, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014).
Sensors and Intellectual Property Law 207

represented an abstract idea, and implementing the claims on a computer was not
enough to transform the idea to a patentable invention.
However, in Alice, the Court effectively opened the door for the patentability of
algorithms claiming that algorithms are a species of an abstract idea, a decision
which according to legal scholar Mark Lemley at Berkeley “invited all manner of
mischief.”89 Consider as an example a celebrated claim on a search algorithm
issued to Larry Page, co-founder of Google. Actually, the “PageRank” algorithm is
patented by Stanford University, who licensed the patent to Google. The Page pat-
ent claims what is known as the page rank algorithm: a way of weighting web
pages by the density of links to them. The idea is that when a web search turns up
various web pages that include the search term, the more important pages will be
those that show a density of links to and from them. This idea was the key to the
early success of Google gaining a reputation for superior search results. However,
the Page patent would likely be characterized as too abstract under Alice so clearly
the patentability of software and algorithms is in flux. To sum up: in the U.S. the
answer to the question of whether software/algorithms can be patented is in the
two-part Alice framework. Does the claim merely cover an “abstract idea”? And is
there an (additional) “inventive concept” that turns this idea into a patentable
application of the abstraction? I expect the patentability of algorithms, to be a
future area of litigation and public debate especially as more cyborgs equipped
with sensor technology emerge and enter the public, and artificially intelligent
machines write their own code and use 3D printers to build their own sensors.
With increasingly complex technology being used to equip people with
implants and prosthesis, patent infringement suits are common. In fact, given the
expanding use of sensors and the lucrative marketplace they are creating, there are
ongoing patent wars between manufacturers of sensor technology. For example,
Roche Diagnostics Operations Inc. and Abbott Diabetes Care Inc. were involved
in a patent infringement dispute (which eventually settled) in which Roche
accused Abbott of infringing two of its patents covering its blood glucose test
strips for monitoring diabetes.90 In another patent dispute involving sensors,
Nautilus Inc. v. Biosig Instruments Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court was petitioned to
review the revival of an infringement suit involving a heart rate monitor, saying the
Federal Circuit’s acceptance of a vague claim in Biosig Instruments Inc.’s patent
contradicted precedent and invited abuses from patent holders.91 As background,
the Government Accountability Office and legal experts have said that the Patent
and Trademark Office has granted too many overly broad patents in recent years,
contributing to the increase in infringement cases.

89Id.
90Roche Diagnostics Operations Inc. and Abbott Diabetes Care Inc, at: http://law.justia.com/
cases/federal/district-courts/delaware/dedce/1:2007cv00753/39319/563/.
91Nautilus Inc. v. Biosig Instruments Inc., U.S. Supreme Court, 2015, at: http://www.scotusblog.

com/case-files/cases/nautilus-inc-v-biosig-instruments-inc/.
208 6  Sensors and the Law

Surveillance, Sensors, and Body Scans

Perhaps the most visible manifestation of surveillance resulting from sensors and
sensor networks is the spread of government-operated closed circuit television
(CCTV) cameras in urban areas. For example, in the United Kingdom, it is esti-
mated that authorities have installed over four million CCTV cameras, and that the
average London resident is photographed an estimated three hundred times per
day.92 Surveillance cameras in the United Kingdom are also being used for func-
tions other than their initial crime-control mission, a kind of “mission creep” for
sensors. For example, in London, authorities are photographing every car entering
and leaving the central financial district, to ensure compliance with a congestion
tax on all cars driving through the area. London’s Heathrow airport has also begun
to test the use of eye-scanners to identify travelers. There are also significant
CCTV surveillance initiatives underway or in place in Washington D.C., Chicago,
and New York, as well as many other major cities worldwide. Nonetheless, as
striking as the spread of sensors in the form of surveillance cameras are for digital
information gathering by government officials, it pales in comparison to the sur-
veillance power and sensor monitoring capability of technology now in the hands
of individuals equipped with head-worn displays, cell phones (there are about 6.8
billion cell phone subscribers in the world), and other body-worn sensors.
One of the most interesting perspectives on invasion of privacy in a world filled
with sensors is provided by University of Toronto’s Steve Mann, a person many
attribute as being the first to purposively equip himself as a cyborg. Steve’s basic
idea is that people using technology which allows them to film, can “shoot back,”
that is, film the government and corporations which use cameras and other sensors
to monitor and film people as they move about the environment. Clearly, Google’s
Project Glass, and Steve’s earlier head-worn display technology is an example of
technology allowing people to shoot back. Specifically, Steve refers to the practice
of filming those filming us, as sousveillance. As described by Steve, the term sous-
veillance stems from the contrasting French words sur, meaning “above”, and
sous, meaning “below”.93 So “surveillance” denotes the “eye-in-the-sky” watching
from above, whereas “sousveillance” denotes bringing the camera or other means
of observation down to human level, either physically (mounting cameras on peo-
ple rather than on buildings), or hierarchically (ordinary people doing the watch-
ing, rather than higher authorities, or large entities such as corporations doing the
watching).94

92One surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain, says CCTV survey, at: http://www.tele-
graph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-people-in-Britain-says-
CCTV-survey.html; Big Brother next door? Most of UK’s 6 million CCTV cameras are privately
owned, 2013, at: http://rt.com/news/cctv-uk-private-surveillance-918/.
93Sousveillance and Surveillance: What kind of future do we want? 2014, at: http://hplusmagazin

e.com/2014/10/07/sousveillance-surveillance-kind-future-want/.
94Id.
Surveillance, Sensors, and Body Scans 209

Surveillance, as described by Professor Mann is clearly practiced in many dif-

ferent ways by governments. For example, after the terrorist act of 9-11, we are all
experienced with passing our bodies and possessions through an airport, court
house, or other government security scanner. Metal detectors are even used in
some schools to prevent a person carrying weapons onto school property. While
courts have found that “there is a generally recognized privacy interest in a per-
son’s body”, does this also apply to body scans?95 Further, what legal theories
might apply when a person scans the sensors worn by another person in order to
access data collected by the sensors? One response could be an action in tort for
jurisdictions that follow the common law. Specifically, the common law tort of
“intrusion upon seclusion” occurs when a person intentionally intrudes, physically
or otherwise, upon the solitude or seclusion of another or his private affairs or con-
cerns, and if so, is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy if the
intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.96 This tort includes
unwarranted intrusions like eavesdropping, wiretapping, and visual or photo-
graphic spying into one’s personal life?97
To prevail under an intrusion upon seclusion tort action, a person would allege
that there was an unauthorized intrusion or prying into his seclusion; the intrusion
was offensive to or objectionable to a reasonable person; the matter upon which
the intrusion occurred was private; and the intrusion caused anguish and suffer-
ing.98 The second element concerning the offensive nature of the intrusion focuses
on the manner in which the information was obtained. Anyone equipped with
cyborg technology implanted within their body that was scanned by a sensor
might argue that since the scanning occurred through a portion of his body, it is
highly offensive.99 An interesting case of relevance for an emerging law of
cyborgs involved a body scan of a shopper at a retail store. Responding to the
intrusion upon seclusion tort action, the court found that the intrusion of the scan
“would not be so highly offensive to the reasonable person as to constitute an inva-
sion of privacy action.”100 I think that this decision will eventually have to be over-
turned to take into account a future world of powerful sensors that can scan the
internal body, and even our minds- such capabilities should clearly seem offensive
to a reasonable person- if not, what would be?

95Doe v. High-Tech Institute, Inc., 972 P.2d 1060, 1068 (Colo. App. 1998).
96Intrusion Upon Seclusion Tort, Restatement of the Law, Second, Torts, 652.
97Broughton v. McClatchy Newspapers, Inc., 588 S.E.2d 20, 27 (N.C. App. 2003).
98Melvin v. Burling, 490 N.E.2d 1011, 1012 (Ill. App. 3d Dist. 1986); People v. Stone,

621 N.W.2d 702, 706 (Mich. 2001).

99Shulman v. Group W Productions, Inc., 955 P.2d 469, 490 (Cal. 1998).
100Smith v. Jack Eckerd Corp., 400 S.E.2d 99, 100 (N.C. App. 1991).
210 6  Sensors and the Law

Using Sensor Data in Trials

Given a cyborg future in which a person’s brain waves may be recorded and moni-
tored using sensors, what law and policies apply if someone uses that information
in a trial? Consider the claims made by neuroscientist Champadi Raman
Mukundan based on a device he created to determine a person’s innocence or guilt
from the reading of brain waves.101 The basic idea behind Mukundan’s Brain
Electrical Oscillations Signature test is to use electroencephalography (EEG) to
show, like an fMRI, activated areas of the cortex which are localized during recall.
Champadi claimed that the device is so accurate, it can tell whether a person com-
mitted or only witnessed an act.102
In a murder trial in India, an Indian judge used the results of the Brain
Electrical Oscillations Signature test to find a woman guilty of killing her former
fiancé.103 Scientific experts called the decision ‘ridiculous’ and ‘unconscionable,’
protesting that Mukundan’s work had not even been peer reviewed. I agree that the
court’s decision is an affront to justice but it does raise the question- how reliable
should a “scientific” test based on sensor information have to be, when eyewitness
testimony is notoriously fallible? Does a person have a right to privacy over their
own memories, or should society’s interest in holding criminals accountable take
precedence?” Given rapid advances in sensors and the speed at which sensor tech-
nology in entering the commercial marketplace, an important question for courts
to decide is whether data derived from sensors, such as EEG data to determine
guilt or innocence, can be used as reliable scientific evidence in a trial.
In fact, neuroscientific evidence has persuaded jurors to sentence defendants to
life imprisonment rather than to death. Courts have also admitted brain-imaging
evidence during criminal trials to support claims that defendants like John W.
Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate President Reagan, are insane. Carter Snead,
a law professor at Notre Dame, drafted a working paper on the impact of neurosci-
entific evidence in criminal law for President Bush’s Council on Bioethics.104 The
report concludes that neuroimaging evidence is of mixed reliability but “the large
number of cases in which such evidence is presented is striking.” That number will
no doubt increase substantially in the coming cyborg age. Proponents of neurolaw
say that neuroscientific evidence will have a large impact not only on questions of
guilt and punishment but also on the detection of lies and hidden bias, and on the

101Anand Giridharadas, 2008, India’s Novel Use of Brain Scans in Courts Is Debated, New York
Times, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/world/asia/15brainscan.html?pagewanted=print&_
r=0.
102Id.
103Angela Saini, 2009, The brain police: judging murder with an MRI, at: http://www.wired.

co.uk/magazine/archive/2009/06/features/guilty.
104Jeffrey Rosen, 2007, The Brain on the Stand, New York Times, at: http://www.nytimes.

com/2007/03/11/magazine/11Neurolaw.t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
Using Sensor Data in Trials 211

prediction of future criminal behavior. At the same time, according to Jeffrey

Rosen, skeptics fear that the use of brain-scanning technology as a kind of super
mind-reading device will threaten our privacy and mental freedom, leading some
to call for the legal system to respond with a new concept of “cognitive liberty”105
(see Chap. 3).
On the admissibility of sensor data in trials, consider the issues litigated in
People v. Dorcent, where the defendant was charged with driving with a suspended
license. Several months earlier, in a different court action, Dorcent had pleaded
guilty to driving while under the influence of alcohol.106 In the most recent case
the defendant agreed to refrain from consuming alcohol for a period of 30 days
and that his abstinence would be monitored by a continuous remote alcohol moni-
toring (SCRAM) bracelet, and its sensors, which was to be worn on his ankle. The
SCRAM system has three components, a bracelet, a modem, and SCRAMnet.107
The SCRAM bracelet has a collection chamber and fuel cell, which tests the
vapors in a person’s perspiration at reoccurring times throughout the day and
night. It also has a tamper strap and securing clip that prevents the wearer from
removing the device and a temperature sensor and an infrared (IR) sensor to detect
obstructions.108 The IR sensor sends an IR beam between the bracelet and the leg.
Alcohol readings, tamper alerts, body temperature and diagnostic data are trans-
mitted to a modem inside the subject’s home at least once every 24 h and then to
SCRAMnet via an Internet connection for analysis, monitoring and storage.
Three weeks after being equipped with the monitoring technology, the SCRAM
bracelet reported that the device was unable to monitor the defendant’s alcohol con-
sumption for a 10-hour period due to an alleged obstruction preventing the device
from gathering data. A hearing was held on the issue of whether the defendant vio-
lated the terms of his plea agreement and at issue was whether the SCRAM technol-
ogy was sufficiently reliable scientific evidence to satisfy the test for admissibility of
scientific evidence in New York State. Previously, in Frye v. United States,109 the
Court held that scientific evidence should be excluded unless the new or novel scien-
tific theory or methodology is generally accepted in the relevant scientific commu-
nity. In some jurisdictions, experts are normally called upon to determine the
reliability of evidence from new technology in a “Frye hearing.” However, the disad-
vantage of the Frye rule is that it may result in the exclusion of results obtained with
theories and methodologies that are capable of producing accurate and reliable
results, but are too new to have passed the test of peer review and become generally
accepted in the relevant scientific community. This hole in the Frye rule eventually

105Id.
106People v. Dorcent, 2010 NY Slip Op 20430 [29 Misc 3d 1165] October 22, 2010 Calabrese,

J. Criminal Court Of The City Of New York, Kings County Published by New York State Law
Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431, at: http://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/
other-courts/2010/2010-20430.html.
107Id.
108Id.
109Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923).
212 6  Sensors and the Law

led to the Supreme Court adopting a new rule in Daubert v. Merrell Dow
Pharmaceuticals, Inc.110 In Daubert the Court held that Rule 702 of the Federal
Rules of Evidence replaced the Frye Rule. Rule 702 states: “If scientific, technical,
or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence
or to determine a fact in issue a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill,
experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or
otherwise, if (1) the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony
is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the
principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case.”111 This decision (to replace
Frye with Rule 702) may allow emerging sensor technology to be used as evidence
in court if these three conditions are met.112

Conclusion

Advances in information technologies are leading to a world in which there will

be trillions of sensors embedded within the environment, implanted within the
body, and also within our brain. In my assessment of the future, sensors will play
a key role in creating a class of cyborgs with capabilities far beyond those of
non-enhanced humans; such cyborgs will represent an intermediary step towards
humanity’s ultimate destiny, to merge with our artificially intelligent creations. A
merger between humans and artificial intelligence is a process that will occur in
several stages, with the time frame for the stages measured in decades or less, not
centuries.
As concluding material on this chapter on sensors, I thought it would be appro-
priate to briefly discuss a few of the main stages which I believe await human-
ity as we move towards a cyborg future and eventual merger with machines. The
stages are not independent but meant as a guide to the future, there is overlap,
and in the background while humans are evolving under the law of accelerating
returns, so too is artificial intelligence. In our first step towards moving beyond
the confines of our body and mind, we will equip ourselves with prosthesis that
match or exceed current human motor skills, strength and endurance. More power-
ful humans will bring up a host of legal and policy issues such as in employment
decisions, the human rights allocated to enhanced and nonenhanced humans, and
athletic competition to name only a few. The body “prosthesis” stage of human
evolution will be followed by the development of neuroprosthesis for the mind
which will significantly enhance people’s cognitive capabilities, even allowing
memories to be transferred from one brain to another. By enhancing our bodies

110Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).

111Rule 702. Federal Rules of Evidence.
112Id.
Conclusion 213

and mind, we will become cyborgs, a human-machine combination that will move
beyond biology and evolve under the law of accelerating returns operating for
information technology. After the Singularity, which may occur around midcen-
tury to late century, there will be an intelligence explosion for artificially intel-
ligent machines, which will result in forms of artificial intelligence which could
be beyond human understanding and control. By the time of the Singularity or
fairly soon thereafter, we will have either merged with our intelligent inventions,
such that “we” become “them”, or we will be left behind. Even those humans
(or cyborgs) that don’t merge, and that will be significantly enhanced by neuro-
prosthesis will be of lessor intelligence that super artificial intelligence- this is
because maintaining any biological forms of intelligence will be a bottleneck in
terms of processing speed, storage capacity, and the ability to learn by accessing
the trillions of bits of information available on the internet. As we move toward
the Singularity, and the critical decision as to whether we merge with artificially
intelligent machines, our cyborg technologies will continue to develop. Sensors
implanted within the body, will connect cyborgs to the global network of things,
and will monitor their health, enhance their cognitive abilities and in the future,
extend the senses of our “mind children.”
Of course, the scenario I present, doesn’t have to be our future, humanity still
has time to decide whether a Posthuman future is desirable, but given the speed
of technological advances in cyborg technologies, it is the current generation of
humans that need to determine our future, not the next generation, therefore time
is running out. There are several noteworthy ethical concerns raised by different
future possibilities associated with the use of sensors and other cyborg technolo-
gies: the prospect of using sensor (and other cyborg) technologies to improve
and augment human capabilities; for example, the prospect of achieving a type
of immortality with a chip that contains the uploaded memories, emotions, and
knowledge of the source; and the chance that humankind, as we know it, may
eventually be phased out or become just a step in guided evolution. On the last
point, endowing humans with eyes that see in different spectra of light, or the abil-
ity to smell as well as an animal rich in olfactory sensors, or to operate robots
from a distance using brain signals- appreciably changes human abilities. Of even
more significance is the radical enhancements that could be made possible when
internal brain-machine interfaces improve, augment, or replace those most valued
of human capacities-the ability to reason and remember.
What responses are possible with the proliferation of sensor and other cyborg
technologies in the world and within our bodies? The first response to unwanted
cyborg technologies (in the sense they lead to a Posthuman Age deemed unde-
sirable by the human population) could be an attempt to outright ban them; Bill
Joy cofounder of Sun Microsystems would agree with this perspective. However,
though such edicts might be practicable in a heavily regulated, closed society, it is
questionable whether any country can stop research on technology that may lead
to a Posthuman age, simply because on the way to the Singularity, the same tech-
nology is capable of improving the conditions of humans. So, as tool builders, as
we try to improve the human condition, we may also, ironically, be creating the
214 6  Sensors and the Law

conditions for either our extinction, or role as the less intelligent and dominant
species on the planet. And just as only the most repressive regimes have had any
success controlling what they deemed the corrosive effects of fax machines and
the Internet it is hard to see wholesale restrictions on beneficial cyborg technolo-
gies standing up for long. In any event, the vast majority of countries have made
no such attempts to ban emerging cyborg technologies; instead, just the opposite,
billions are being spent to develop cyborg technologies and artificial intelligence.
Whether we realize it or not, we are building the technology which could replace
humans as the dominant species on the planet. With apologies to Shakespeare, to
merge or not to merge, that is the question.
Another strategy proposed by those concerned about the potential loss of
humanity as technology becomes integrated into our bodies and mind is to restrict
only certain uses of sensor and other cyborg devices. For example, the Video
Voyeurism Prevention Act, adopted in 2004, prohibits unauthorized photography
of private areas.113 The Video Voyeurism Prevention Act was originally written to
prohibit such activity with ordinary cameras. However, the legislation was
amended to specifically include camera phones. And as noted in the introduction
to this chapter, legislation has also been passed to prohibit the implanting of an
RFID chip into an unwilling recipient. I see problems ahead, technology advances
like the tide, we see it coming, but we can’t stop it and in most cases have no
desire to stop it. So, we may have no choice, either merge with our technological
offspring or be left behind. If we decide to merge, then the question will be- what
aspects of humanity are worth preserving in our future mind children?

113Video Voyeurism Prevention Act, adopted in 2004, U.S. Code Statute 1801.
Chapter 7
The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

Making, Modifying, and Replacing Bodies

Repeating a central theme of this book—at the same time we humans are becoming
enhanced with “cyborg” technology—artificially intelligent machines are gaining in
intelligence and becoming more like us in shape, appearance, and abilities. In fact,
the use of twenty-first century technologies to create artificially intelligent machines
are leading to interchangeable, replaceable, and upgradeable bodies that will deter-
mine whether our technological inventions are accepted within society or experi-
ence discrimination, hostility, and unequal treatment under the law. As our robotic
inventions begin to interact with us, I believe they will be subjected to the same prej-
udices and discrimination that we humans experience in everyday life. With continu-
ing advances in cyborg technologies will our legal systems be sufficient to account
for the increased autonomy, intelligence, and humanoid appearance of our robotic
inventions? This is an important question because many of the artificially intelligent
machines that enter society will bear a strong resemblance to natural humans and
will argue that they are sentient and deserving of equal rights such as fundamental
human rights and legal personhood status. When humanoid robots evolve to the point
where they argue that they are conscious, will we treat them as equals, or will we dis-
criminate against them and deny them equal protection under the law?
In the next decades, as cyborgs become equipped with technologies that
enhance their abilities and robots move from assembly lines to our homes, deter-
mining what constitutes the ethical treatment of technologically enhanced beings
and whether they should receive equal protection under the law will become
important. For example, should robots that convince us that they are self-aware
receive the same protections afforded humans under various laws, statutes, and
constitutions? And if a robot was designed to physically resemble a human and
if that form was combined with artificial intelligence, would we feel compelled
to treat it as human? The answer to questions which focus on the rights that our

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 215

W. Barfield, Cyber-Humans, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25050-2_7
216 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

technological progeny should receive will surely depend, among other factors, on
the appearance of the artificial intelligence, its personality, and its behavior. But as
a preliminary observation, it seems reasonable to expect that cyborgs and androids
will be subjected to different forms of discrimination based on their “machine-
like” appearance; if so, society should be prepared for conflicts between artificially
intelligent machines and humans. I base this conclusion on social science studies
on discrimination, on the hostile treatment already experienced by cyborgs in dif-
ferent circumstances, and on the observations of roboticists indicating that when
robots closely resemble humans in appearance, people may feel uncomfortable in
their presence. This phenomenon, identified by Professor Masahiro Mori as the
“uncanny valley” is so important for an emerging law of cyborgs and artificially
intelligent machines (especially those that appear as androids) that a section of this
chapter focuses specifically on the “uncanny valley” phenomena.
To some futurists, the possibility that humanity could use technology to create
qualitatively new kinds of beings is not only desirable, but likely to happen this
century. According to physicist Sydney Perkowitz, writing in The Rise of Digital
People: From Bionic Humans to Androids, these might take the form of fully artifi-
cial, intelligent, and conscious machines; they might take the form of a race of
“cyborgs” that are enormously augmented and extended physically, mentally, and
emotionally; or they might take the form of virtual beings who may or may not
inhabit physical bodies at all.1 In addition, new forms of humans could arise from
techniques in biological science such as cloning, genetic engineering, and stem-
cell research. However, as noted by Stanford’s Francis Fukuyama, in Our
Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, a program for
changing humans at the genetic level has moral, ethical, and religious implica-
tions; and the consequences of human-induced changes propagating in our gene
pool is troubling.2 But whatever form our technological inventions take, as they
become smart, enter society, and compete against us, they may evoke fear, nega-
tive reactions, and be subjected to discrimination from humans (and by other artifi-
cially intelligent machines?). For this reason, in the coming decades, legislators
will need to determine the appropriate law and policies to enact to protect the
basic rights of all intelligent beings amongst us.
In my vision of future technological trends those who worry about changes in
the genome may be missing the bigger picture as the law of accelerating returns
suggests that the future may not be one dominated by biologically enhanced
humans, but by technologically enhanced people, leading to a race of cyborgs and
later this century to a merger between “human-cyborg” combinations and artifi-
cially intelligent machines. On the latter point, University of Michigan’s Jennifer
Robertson, has commented that the idea that humans and machines may meld into
a new superior species, is not only being considered but actively being pursued by

1Sydney Perkowitz, 2004, Digital People from Bionic Humans to Androids, Joseph Henry Press.
2Francis Fukuyama, 2003, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology
Revolution, Picador.
Making, Modifying, and Replacing Bodies 217

leading Japanese roboticists.3 And as we head toward the Singularity, the creation
of cyborgs and intelligent machines has its own set of ethical and legal issues. In
fact, some commentators think that cyborg technologies combined with artificial
intelligence might ultimately prove more challenging and dangerous to humanity
than those arising from genetic manipulation. However, before we get to the point
in time where artificial super intelligence is posing an existential threat to human-
ity, cyborgs and androids will have already entered society and be subjected to
prejudice and discrimination from humans, it is that particular scenario and time-
frame that is addressed in this chapter on “The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies.”
The idea that the physical appearance of our technological progeny could lead
to discrimination against them, can be gleaned from numerous sources including
cases heard by the highest court in the U.S. For example, in McCleskey v. Kemp,
the Supreme Court in deciding a sentencing issue for a convicted defendant, made
the point in dicta that appearance discrimination may in fact be an extenuating fac-
tor in criminal law cases.4 If discrimination exists for humans in our court system
and job market, surely it will exist for cyborgs and androids interacting with us in
social contexts and competing against us for jobs. In fact, that people may feel
uncomfortable in the presence of those equipped with cyborg technology and then
discriminate against them is often the subject of employment lawsuits brought in
the U.S. under the Americans with Disabilities Act and other anti-discrimination
laws.5 But more generally, the appearance of cyborgs and any intelligent machine
that enters society could become a contentious issue if their appearance deviates
from societal standards of shape, form, and beauty. On this point, studies have
shown that there is a high level of agreement among people in their ratings of
other people’s physical attractiveness,6 and I would expect this finding to also hold
true for androids designed to appear as human as possible.
Given exponentially accelerating technologies leading the way to a world of
intelligent machines interacting with humans in a variety of social settings, what
public policy should guide their design, and how should courts respond to the
possibility of unequal treatment for our technological inventions based on their
appearance? As we discuss these questions and develop solutions, we should pro-
ceed with caution, as in the future, it may be unenhanced humans that are dis-
criminated against by our smart robotic inventions, therefore, it is critical that
we consider the policies and laws which will lead to an egalitarian society con-
sisting of those with flesh and those without. This chapter discusses such issues
in the context of the look and appearance of artificially intelligent machines
most often appearing in a human form as an android. Least the reader think that
a Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies is a topic that has yet to receive attention

3Jennifer Robinson, 2010, Gendering Humanoid Robots, Robo-Sexism in Japan, Body and

Society, V. 16, 1–36.

4McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987).
5See generally, Fink v. Kitzman, 881 F.Supp. 1347, 1369–70 (N.D. Iowa 1995).
6Gordon L. Patzer, 1985, The Physical Attractiveness Phenomena, Springer.
218 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

from different legal jurisdictions, there is an emerging “Law of Looks” based

on cases and statutes dealing with employment and other situations. Important
issues include inter alia, the regulation of “freak shows,” cases brought under the
Americans with Disability Act (ADA), cases dealing with malfunctioning prosthe-
sis, and the rights one has to their appearance under intellectual property law. I
discuss these laws in light of the coming cyborg age and our eventual merger with
artificially intelligent machines.
At the beginning of this chapter, I should make the point that in our cyborg
future not all people will discriminate against artificially intelligent machines, nor
will all artificially intelligent machines be subjected to discrimination. Much will
depend on the culture in which the machine is immersed, the features and behavior
of the intelligent machine, the tasks for which it is designed, and the policies we
humans adopt. Interestingly, Kate Darling of MIT has shown that humans tend to
anthropomorphize our robotic inventions; reading her papers I get the impression
that we are predisposed to like them.7 If their behavior is autonomous and if we
are interacting with robots in a social setting, Darling observes that they may
inspire “fondness and loyalty” from us.8 We may even treat them as if they were
alive. Thinking about rights, Darling proposes enacting “protective laws” for our
robotic inventions, just as has been done for pets. I am willing to go much farther
in my view of laws needed to protect the rights of androids and other forms of arti-
ficial intelligence because I think they will be much smarter than pets and fairly
soon.
So to summarize, why a chapter on “lookism” discrimination for our future
technological inventions? Because tension between humans and artificially intelli-
gent machines will surely develop as they get smarter and more autonomous, and
many studies from social science indicate that appearance has much to say about
the treatment and rights a person receives. But most importantly, if we can learn
how to integrate cyborgs, androids, and artificially intelligent machines into soci-
ety now, we may be establishing precedence on how “they” will treat us once our
technological inventions exceed us in intelligence and performance (and become
more attractive than us?). So the stakes for humanity are high. This chapter on The
Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies discusses the law and policies which relate to
the appearance of technologically enhanced beings and whether equal protection
under the law should apply to our future robotic inventions while also considering
whether other legal theories exist to protect our artificially intelligent progeny
from discrimination.9

7Kate Darling, Extending Legal Rights to Social Robots, 2012, We Robot Conference, University
of Miami, April 2012 MIT; Gregory McNeal, 2015, MIT Researchers Discover Whether We Feel
Empathy For Robots, at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregorymcneal/2015/04/10/want-people-to-
like-your-robot-name-it-frank-give-it-a-story/.
8Kate Darling, id.
9R. George Wright, Person 2.0: Enhanced and Unenhanced and the Equal Protection of the Laws,

QLR, Vol. 23, 2005.

The Shape of Things to Come 219

The Shape of Things to Come

Though numerous examples are provided in this chapter, the reader should already
have a sense of what forms androids and artificially intelligent machines may take
in the future. This is because cyborgs, androids, and artificially intelligent machines
have been the subject of sci-fi novels and movies for some time. In fact, as sci-
ence fiction novels have been adopted for movies and TV shows, the public has
been exposed to a range of fascinating images of artificially intelligent entities.
Interestingly, in science fiction novels, the tension between non-enhanced peo-
ple and androids is one way that authors have explored the meaning of humanity
and discussed the idea of legal rights for nonhuman beings. Some of the artificially
intelligent machines displayed by the media are human-like in form and ready to
serve us, while others appear as ominous and threatening creatures participating in
uprisings against the human race. On the last point consider the androids of 1973s
futuristic theme park Westworld, authored by Michael Crichton, who after the com-
puter controlling them malfunctioned, purposively hunted down and killed the
human visitors. A more realistic scenario for our cyborg future, at least in the next
two decades, is that exponentially improving technologies will lead to the emer-
gence of cyborgs and androids whose abilities and appearance will begin to match
those of unenhanced humans. The question then will be whether our technologi-
cal inventions will experience discrimination as they enter society, begin to interact
with us, and compete against us for jobs. Because a person’s appearance has much
to say about the treatment they receive in society and whether they are discrimi-
nated against in the workplace, in social settings, and by our institutions, it is impor-
tant to explore how technological enhancements to the bodies of cyborgs, androids,
and artificially intelligent machines will likewise affect the treatment they receive.
An android is a robot, but a robot designed to look and act like a human, espe-
cially one with a body having a flesh-like resemblance. Professor Jennifer
Robertson of the University of Michigan has stated that to be called a humanoid a
robot “must meet two criteria: it has to have a body that resembles a human and it
has to act like a human in environments designed for the capabilities of a human
body.”10 In robotics laboratories around the world, several projects aiming to cre-
ate androids that look, and, to a certain degree, speak or act like a human being
have made remarkable progress. Smart androids are coming, and their human-like
appearance and intelligence will fundamentally change society and place stress on
our legal systems, social institutions, and labor market. In fact, a 2013 study from
Oxford University examined 702 occupations and concluded that forty-seven per-
cent of the total U.S. employment faces the risk of being eliminated in favor of
computerization.11 One example of our competition in the service industry is the

10JenniferRobertson, id., note 3.

11Carol Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, 2013, The Future of Employment: How
Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation? at: 2013 study from Oxford University examined 702
occupations and concluded that forty-seven percent of the total U.S. employment faces the risk of
being eliminated in favor of computerization.
220 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

Botlr robot developed by startup Savioke which is being deployed in some proper-
ties of the Starwood hotel chain. The robot’s task is to deliver extra towels and for-
gotten toiletries to hotel guests, I have to wonder, in hotels around the world how
many humans do this job now and how will they feel about the robots which dis-
place them?
Many types of technological enhancements will be available in the future, cre-
ating a range of shapes, forms, and looks for our technological inventions. On
this point, Professor Perkowitz, asks what human attributes in shape and form
should continue as we develop the capability to enhance ourselves with cyborg
technology.12 Should we continue to appear in the shape of biological humans, or
would some other shape be more functional? Many roboticists foresee a world
with increasing interaction between humans and robots, and therefore are work-
ing to create human-like androids so that our intelligent inventions more easily fit
into human society. However, in contrast to this humancentric view of what a
robot should look like, the idea that intelligent robots may take nonhuman forms,
is not only possible, but for a particular task, desirable. How will people react to
highly intelligent machines that take-on shapes and forms which deviate from the
human form, or, on the other hand, look strikingly similar to humans—in the lat-
ter case will we expect more from our human analogs and also discriminate more
against them? As our bodies become equipped with cyborg technologies how
should the law, in particular, the principle of equal protection under the law
respond to the possibility of unequal and dramatic human, android, and robotic
enhancement?
In fact, roboticists often take their design cues from nature—and for androids,
humans in particular. For example, robots working on assembly lines or being
designed as human helpers feature arms and end effectors to manipulate objects,
whether it’s a welding gun or laser scalpel. According to Larry Greenemeier, other
robots, “designed as telepresence surrogates for remote office workers or aids for
the elderly and disabled, come equipped with head-mounted cameras for eyes and
wheels for upright motion to mimic human locomotion.”13 He also thinks it’s
tempting to think today’s robots as only crude imitations of their human masters
because most current robots do not look human; however, within a decade, intelli-
gent human-like robots (i.e., androids) will have entered society spurred by signifi-
cant progress in the design of flesh-like surfaces, the accurate control of facial
features, and motor capabilities which are improving significantly.
Thinking about the future, as I noted in an previous chapter, Sidney Perkowitz
of Emery University discusses two main ways to categorize artificial enhance-
ments of humans: the first is as functional prosthetic devices and implants, such as
artificial limbs, replacement knees and hips, and vascular stents; and the second as

12Sydney Perkowitz, id, note 1.

13Larry Greenemeier, 2013, What Should a Robot Look Like? at: http://www.scientificamerican.
com/article/what-should-a-robot-look-like/.
The Shape of Things to Come 221

cosmetic enhancements. For religious and cultural reasons, and as a form of self-
expression, humans have always shown an interest to modify their body and to
change their appearance. According to David DeGrazia, Professor of Philosophy
at George Washington University, we diet, exercise, color our hair, get tattoos and
body piercings; and as I noted in a previous chapter we modify our body with a
range of technologies that are either worn on, or implanted under the skin.14 Given
that cyborg devices are exponentially improving technologies, by midcentury we
can expect major alterations and augmentations to the human body to result from
advances in exoskeletons, prosthesis (such as limb, cochlear, or retinal), heart
pacemakers, sensors, and neuroprosthesis. In addition, as I discussed in the chap-
ter on Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body, there is a movement among
do-it-yourself hackers (or grinders) to self-modify their body with technology; and
such changes often alter the appearance of the person modifying their body. But to
(re)state the “big picture” of our cyborg future, technologies to repair, enhance,
and modify the body are not only exponentially improving technologies,15 but the
very technologies leading humanity to a cyborg future and eventual merger with
artificially intelligent machines.
The extent to which cyborgs and androids are accepted by humans as they join
society will depend on a number of factors including the tasks they are designed
to perform, their personality, and their appearance. Given human biases about
“looks,” and given that any shape can be fabricated, would the law and societal
standards dictate that only humanoid shapes copying the image of an “attrac-
tive” (and young?) human be allowed for androids? Just consider, according to
Professor Jennifer Robertson, in 2010 there were more than sixty household robots
commercially available in a range of sizes and shapes, serving as cleaners, com-
panions, and caregivers. But improving under the law of accelerating returns, as
androids get smarter will they be content to serve as our domestic servants, and
will they be content to look as we want them to look and do only what we ask
of them? Of course, as of the time of this writing humans write the software and
design the robots; but eventually that will change. Already software bots with
increasingly sophisticated algorithms are making lucrative stock trades, and other
AIs are diagnosing medical illness, composing music, proving mathematical theo-
rems, and driving a car (would an AI driving a car, assume the identity of the car,
would a “fender-bender” be the equivalent of an assault and battery?). As a policy
issue, humanity should be well aware that any form of discrimination against our
technological progeny once they become smart, could backfire and prove disas-
trous to the human race.

14David DeGrazia, 2005, Enhancement Technologies and Human Identity, Journal of Medicine
and Philosophy, Vol. 30, 261–283.
15Peter H. Diamandis, 2015, Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World, Simon

& Schuster.
222 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

The Androids Are Coming

As humans become enhanced with cyborg technology, and as artificially intelli-

gent machines become more human-like in appearance, the issue of bodily integ-
rity will become an important topic for “The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies.”
In fact, one of the most fundamental human rights is the right to bodily integrity
which is the right to exert security or control over one’s body.16 A right of bodily
integrity for intelligent machines could be used by an android to protect its body
from unwanted modifications, or even to stop someone from scavenging its parts
for another machine. I should point out here that there are laws regulating organ
donation for humans, should similar laws exist for androids?17 The reader may be
wondering, why would an artificially intelligent machine resist a modification to
its body, or for that matter its “mind”? Just as humans may decide to adopt tech-
nology, so too may an artificially intelligent machine. But just as humans may
resist changes to their body, for example, forced medication to make a person
mentally competent to stand trial, so too may intelligent and self-aware machines
resist upgrades deemed undesirable by them (e.g., an upgrade which could affect
their memories). Of course, as long as artificially intelligent machines lack rights,
they are subject to human decisions; but they are quickly getting smarter, so I
believe it’s just a matter of time before they will want to make decisions regarding
their bodily and mental integrity.
In the U.S. the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that there is a right to be free
from unjustified intrusions on personal bodily integrity; suggesting that such a right
is protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.18 Perhaps
androids will be particularly interested in protecting the integrity of their body out
of self-preservation or even vanity. Once artificially intelligent machines experience
emotions and connection to their body, they may be concerned with how others
perceive them; in fact, having emotions may be a necessary condition before an
android would make the decision to pursue a discrimination claim. As noted above,
androids may even argue for the right to receive technological enhancements
(upgrades could avoid a digital divide between androids), including cosmetic
enhancements, which may serve no functional purpose whatsoever. As we will see

16See generally Barbro Björkman and Sven Ove Hansson, “Bodily rights and property rights”,
Journal of Medical Ethics 32: 209–214, 2006; Radhika Rao, Property, Privacy, and the Human
Body, 2000, 80 B.U.L. Rev. 359. Legislation and Policy (on organ donations), U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, at: http://www.organdonor.gov/legislation/.
17Legislation and Policy (on organ donations), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,

at: http://www.organdonor.gov/legislation/.
18Fourth Amendment Victory: Citing Bodily Integrity, U.S. Supreme Court Prohibits Police from

Forcibly Taking Warrantless Blood Samples from DUI Suspects, The Rutherford Institute, 2013, at:
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/on_the_front_lines/fourth_amendment_victory_
citing_bodily_integrity_us_supreme_court_prohibits; Missouri v. McNeely, 2012, U.S. Supreme
Court, Slip Opinion at: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-1425_cb8e.pdf.
The Androids Are Coming 223

in a later section of this chapter, any nonfunctional additions to an android has

implications for the rights it may receive under intellectual property law.
Some may think that robots with emotions sounds strange, or unnecessary. But
many designers of robots realize that they will increasingly interact with people as
they enter society, so there is a movement to design life-like social robots (i.e.,
androids) that can detect human emotion, and can mimic human expression and
emotion.19 In my view, robots and androids with emotions and personalities will
strongly influence how we react to them, and their level of acceptance in society.
One example of this idea is Pepper, a robot built in Japan that can detect and
express a range of emotions. Pepper stands 4 feet tall and weighs about 62 pounds,
has facial-recognition technology, and is equipped with a number of cameras,
audio recorders, and sensors. According to Softbank, a Japanese internet company,
Pepper can read and respond to users’ moods. In another example of developments
in robotics, researchers at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology built the
android EveR-3 (one of a series of female androids), which uses an interpersonal
communications model to emulate human emotional expression via facial “muscu-
lature.” EveR-3 can engage in rudimentary conversation and matches the average
figure of a Korean woman in her twenties (notice the selected appearance of EveR-
3). A microchip inside her artificial brain allows EveR-3 to engage in gesture
expression and body coordination. Her whole body is made of highly advanced
synthetic jelly silicon and with artificial joints in her face, neck, and lower body;
she is able to demonstrate realistic facial expressions and sing while simultane-
ously dancing; skills I barely possess.
While Pepper is clearly a mechanical being with no biological parts, an impor-
tant question for the coming cyborg age is at what point in the process of integrat-
ing technology into a person’s body will the person be considered more machine
and less human? And if this distinction is deemed important for law and policy,
at what point will the appearance of enhanced humans and artificially intelligent
machines be so different that they will need to be protected from discrimination
based on their appearance? In the future, the lines between human and machine
will be irrevocably blurred, and with that transition will come a whole new set
of issues in need of attention by our courts. For example, will the distinction
between human and machine make a difference in terms of how the law views
such enhanced people?
Specific advances in robotic and android design are not only creating the tech-
nology to compete against humans in the job market, but I believe are also leading
the way to our future to merge with artificially intelligent machines. For exam-
ple, consider the robot that was designed by Willow Garage, PR2 (Fig. 7.1), which
uses a conventional gripper to manipulate objects—advanced as it is, this robot
will be a distant relative of androids on the future human-machine family tree. In
fact, since PR2 rapid progress has already been made in the design of artificial

19See articles published in the International Journal of Social Robotics; and the Journal of

Human-Robotic Interaction.
224 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

Fig. 7.1  Meet PR2, designed by Willow Garage. Images courtesy of Bob Bauer

hands that far more resemble human hands in look and manual dexterity. My
sense is that if we are destined to merge with machines, a form mimicking that of
humans would be desirable (at least initially for first adopters); therefore, advances
in robotics producing limbs and arms that look and function like their biological
equivalent are a step forward in the direction of a human-machine merger.
To emphasize how robotic design combined with artificial intelligence is espe-
cially powerful in creating our future technological progeny, consider that rapid
progress in machine learning is helping robots perform far more sophisticated
object manipulation than just a few years ago. A key breakthrough in this area
came in 2006, when a group of researchers led by Andrew Ng, then at Stanford
and now at Chinese Internet company Baidu, devised a way for robots to work out
how to manipulate unfamiliar objects.20 Instead of writing rules for how to grasp a
specific object or shape, the researchers enabled their robot to study thousands of
3D images and learn to recognize which types of grip would work for different
shapes. This allowed the robot to figure out suitable grips for new objects.
Progress marches on, and in recent years robotics researchers have increasingly
used a powerful machine-learning approach known as deep learning to improve
these capabilities. However, the smarter the machine and the more dexterous it is,
the more it will becomes like us, and in the short-term the more it will compete
against us, that is, before we become the technology.
But before we become “them,” that is, become our “mind children” using a
term coined by robotics expert Hans Moravec, what is the likely response by

20Ian Lenz, Honglak Lee, and Ashutosh Saxena, 2013, Deep Learning for Detecting Robotic

Grasps, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS); Honglak Lee, Yirong Shen, Chih-Han Yu, Gurjeet
Singh, and Andrew Y. Ng, 2006, Quadruped Robot Obstacle Negotiation via Reinforcement
Leaning, In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
The Androids Are Coming 225

humans to machines supplanting them from the workplace? That humans may dis-
criminate against machines that compete against them is made clear by history. An
example is the Luddite movement of the early Eighteenth century when English
textile workers were threatened with unemployment by new technology, which the
Luddites defined as “machinery hurtful to commonality.”21 Mills were burned,
machinery was smashed, and the army was mobilized. At one time, according to
historian Eric Hobsbawm, there were more soldiers fighting the Luddites than
were fighting Napoleon in Spain.22 In response to the Luddite movement, the
British Parliament passed a bill making machine-smashing a capital offense. You
have to wonder—if you “smash” a robot in the coming cyborg age, under criminal
law statutes will such an act constitute a capital offense? If not, how about if you
“smashed” an android that looked and acted like a human? If so, would we be
more compelled to grant the android the right to be free from human hostility, dis-
crimination, and physical assault?
As technology marches on, cyborgs and artificially intelligent machines are
joining society and taking on an appearance that may distinguish them from unen-
hanced people, often with added capabilities (for example, cameras to film oth-
ers) that may impact other people’s rights (such as their right to privacy). At the
same time androids are just leaving robotics laboratories equipped with increasing
levels of intelligence and closeness to humans in form and appearance (whether
they are designed to look like us or not, interesting legal and social issues still
arise just by nature of their increased intelligence). On this last point, consider the
work of Professor Hiroshi Kobayashi who directs the Intelligent Mechatronics Lab
at the Tokyo University of Science. Hiroshi’s team has created an android called
Saya which works at the University as a guide. Saya is able to express human-like
facial expressions and can communicate some basic emotions with her head and
eye movements. As remarkable a technological feat that Saya and for that matter
androids created at the Korean Institute of Industrial Technology’s (e.g., EveR-3)
are, they will be replaced by smarter and even more realistic androids within a
few years. And just a few decades later, Saya’s and EveR-3’s relatives will claim
that they are conscious and deserving of the rights humans receive. They may even
demand additional rights and why not, they will be much smarter than us and have
bodies that exceed our capabilities. Once androids reach a certain level of intel-
ligence, such that they argue for rights, it seems likely they will argue for equal
rights (and other liberties). Further down the road, we humans will be the ones
arguing for human rights from our technologically superior progeny, that is, if we
haven’t already become them.

21The Luddites at 200, 21st Century Technology Debates & Politics, 2015, at: http://www.

luddites200.org.uk/TechnologyPoliticsNow.html.
22Bryan Appleyard, 2014, New Republic, The New Luddites: Why Former Digital Prophets

Are Turning Against Tech, at: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119347/neo-luddisms-tech-

skepticism.
226 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

Culture Is Important

As an example of the acceptance of androids into society, consider Toshiba’s use

of a robo-assistant which works at the information desk of a department store in
Tokyo. The female android named Aiko Chihira, speaks Japanese and is also capa-
ble of sign language. Remarkably, Chihira blinks, bows (and the Japanese politely
bow back) and moves her mouth and lips smoothly while speaking and is pro-
grammed with multiple human-like expressions.23 The android’s appearance
wasn’t modeled after any specific person but was designed to give a friendly
impression. The “good nature” of the androids personality and her traditional
Japanese clothing, are both factors which increase Aiko’s acceptance and
decreases the likelihood of negative reactions toward her. Android acceptance is an
especially important consideration for Japanese roboticists who are designing
robots to serve as a companion for people with dementia, to offer telecounselling
in natural speech, to communication with the hearing impaired through sign lan-
guage, and to allow healthcare officials to monitor the elderly.
A comparison of Japan’s and South Korea’s assimilation of robots into their
societies with the U.S. and Europe, teaches us much about how people in the
future may live in a world of technologically enhanced beings. I believe that cul-
tural factors will strongly influence people’s acceptance of robots and androids as
they enter society. A case in point is the culture of Japan, where robotic technol-
ogy is not only progressing exponentially, but robots are becoming integrated into
many levels of Japanese society. As an example in pop culture, a cross-dressing
Japanese television star’s robotic clone has become the first android to host its own
TV show.24 Japanese roboticists, who are trying to replace celebrities with human-
like androids, have pushed the clone of transvestite entertainer Matsuko Deluxe
into the public’s awareness (Fig. 7.2). According to Michael Fitzpatrick, “working
with Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, Japan’s top advertising agency, Dentsu decided to
clone an exact android copy of the popular entertainer.”25 A spokesman for the
agency said: “Artists and entertainers themselves aren’t yet seen as content that
can be combined with technology, but the Dentsu group believes the need to
develop android entertainers will grow.”26 Performing with natural movements,
and a remarkable likeness to the “real” entertainer, while voiced and controlled
remotely by a voice impersonator, the android put on quite a show in front of an

23Android Robot “Aiko Chihira” takes over as Receptionist of Tokyo Store, Youtube video at: htt

ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH9IlZpwOPA.
24Michael Fitzpatrick, 2015, Daily Mail, ‘Unnervingly real’ android of popular presenter trans-

vestite becomes the first in world to host its own TV show, at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
news/article-3028762/Unnervingly-real-android-popular-presenter-transvestite-world-host-TV-
show.html.
25Id.
26Kazuaki Nagata, 2014, Dentsu says it’s creating robot entertainers, The Japan Times, at:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/12/03/national/dentsu-says-creating-robot-entertainers/#.
VXzhze_bJjo.
Culture Is Important 227

Fig. 7.2  Performer
Matsuko Deluxe’s android
doppelganger Matsukoriod.
Image courtesy of Dunstsu

Fig. 7.3  Robotics Professor
Hiroshi Ishiguro and
his android look-a-like,
Geminoid HI-4 image
courtesy of Osaka University,
Japan

incredulous audience on Nippon TV.27 Interestingly, in the U.S. there is a “public

performance” right associated with copyright law. While, the right has yet to be
evaluated with respect to android look-a-likes, I anticipate that this could be an
interesting area of law for future courts to explore. Also, keep this android in mind
when reading about the “right of publicity” discussed later in this chapter.
To achieve the lifelike look of Matsuko’s doppelganger, Professor Hiroshi
Ishiguro’s robotics lab used the latest silicon skin and state-of-the-art electronic
actuators28 (Fig. 7.3). In addition, Japan’s top make-up artist was brought into finish

27Id.
28Ryuji Yamazaki, Shuichi Nishio, Hiroshi Ishiguro, Marco Nørskov, Nobu Ishiguro, Giuseppe
Balistreri, Acceptability of a Teleoperated Android by Senior Citizens in Danish Society: A Case
Study on the Application of an Embodied Communication Medium to Home Care, International
Journal of Social Robotics, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 429–442, 2014; Guizzo, 2010, Hiroshi Ishiguro:
The Man Who Made a Copy of Himself, IEEE Spectrum, at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/
humanoids/hiroshi-ishiguro-the-man-who-made-a-copy-of-himself.
228 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

the job of making the android look life-like.29 In Japan, a society quite in tune with
the idea of a robotic future, the prevalent thinking is that as robots start to look more
human, people will become more sympathetic towards them. But with many
Japanese already predisposed to being sympathetic to robots, because of the
friendly way they are portrayed in Japanese popular culture, discrimination against
robots in Japan, may be far less prevalent than in western nations that have different
cultural traditions and societal expectations for robots (e.g., the Terminator movie
series and the military’s attempt to weaponize robots). Interestingly, Japanese robot-
icists claim that the time period to build an android indistinguishable from a human
in appearance, is about 10 years.30 Combine that prediction with Google’s Ray
Kurzweil’s view that by midcentury artificial intelligence will have reached human
levels of intelligence (that is, artificial general intelligence), the combination of
intelligence with realistic android bodies, all within 25 years or less, provides strong
motivation for humanity to consider human-robot ethics and pressing issues of
robot and android law sooner-than-later.
As the above examples show, in our cyborg future our intelligent machines will
have many different appearances and also personalities. With this possibility the
question then becomes—would you want your robots or androids subservient, or
upbeat, or even with a New Yorker personality—the possibilities are limitless, but
it seems to me our reaction to artificially intelligent machines will surely depend
in part on their look and their personality. In fact, a patent that has been issued to
Google on robotic personalities adopting to humans suggests that a wide range of
personalities could be possible and that we could even download different person-
ality types from the cloud.31 Thus, if you can’t choose what kind of personality
you want for your future android, it’s highly possible that it might be able to
choose for you.32 It would do this by accessing your devices and learning about
you, before configuring a tailored personality based on that information.33 In addi-
tion it could use speech and facial recognition to personalize its interactions with
you; this is an example of how our technology is becoming more like us. Of
course to some the scenario that the machine adopts to our likes or dislikes evokes
the “machine as tool” design philosophy, and goes against my conjecture that as
we build better cyborg technology, we are not just building tools to serve humanity
but building our competition and future replacements. An interesting question for
the law would occur if the robot was programmed to take on the personality of a
natural person, would this be a form of “misappropriation of likeness”—the
Google patent suggests a deceased loved one or a celebrity—so that effectively
you could get someone to live on after their death in machine or virtual avatar

29Michael Fitzpatrick, id., note 24.

30Michael Fitzpatrick, id., note 24.
31Google Patent 8,996,429; Gene Quinn and Steve Brachmann, Discussing the Google patent, at:

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/author/gene-steve/.
32Google Patent, id.; Goolge Patents Customizable Robot Personalities, 2015, at: http://www.

wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-04/01/google-robot-personalities.
33Google Patent id.
Culture Is Important 229

form.34 More about this in the following sections because in some cases, legal
rights attach to appearance.

Our Reaction to Cyborgs and Androids

Thus far, the cyborgs living amongst us have received mixed reactions from the
public, from interest in the sleek “cybernetic” technology integrated into their
body, to outright aggression based on their cyborg appearance. On the latter point,
two of the first cyborgs amongst us, Steve Mann and Neil Harbisson both of whom
are equipped with head-mounted display technology, have reported being
assaulted in public based on their cyborg appearance. In one incident, Professor
Mann was physically “roughed up” by airport security, and in another by employ-
ees at a McDonalds in Paris.35 And Neil, who is equipped with a head worn sensor
which he uses to convert color into sound, was assaulted by policeman concerned
that he was filming them (he was actually hearing them in color).36 Google’s Ray
Kurzweil has interpreted the attack against Steve as the first recorded hate crime
against cyborgs, you can bet more are coming.
In fact, given human nature, I think cyborgs and androids will be the target of
discrimination, hostility, and hate crimes for numerous reasons, not the least of
which will be their appearance. Generally, hate crimes are on the rise around the
world, and the cyborgs that have entered society have already been subjected to
“lookism discrimination” and outright aggression.37 In addition, humans equipped
with cyborg technologies for reasons of medical necessity have also been sub-
jected to discrimination. For example, in the U.K. according to
DisbilityHateCrime.org.UK, hate crimes that are directed against people with disa-
bilities forms its own category (even though, I might add, their disability is often
“repaired” with a prosthetic device).38 Back in the U.S., the state of Missouri
defines a hate crime as one which is “knowingly motivated” because of race, color,
religion, natural origin, sex, sexual orientation, or disability of the victim.39 If
Steve and Neil are considered to be equipped with cyborg technology to treat a
disability (clearly Neil is due to his extreme color deficiency, and Steve travels

34Google Patent, id; Martine Rothblatt, 2014, Virtually Human: The Promise---and the Peril---of
Digital Immortality, St. Martins Press.
35Stephanie Mlot, 2012, Wearable Tech Pioneer Assaulted at Paris McDonald’s, at:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407258,00.asp.
36David Pescovitz, 2012, Colorblind painter’s wearable “synesthesia camera” reportedly broken

by police, at: http://boingboing.net/2012/02/16/colorblind-painters-wearable.html.

37James J. McDonald, Jr, “Lookism,” The Next Form of Illegal Discrimination, at: http://www.ip

watchdog.com/author/gene-steve/.
38DisbilityHateCrime.org.UK, at: http://disabilityhatecrime.org.uk/.
39Missouri Revised Statutes, Chapter 557.035, a statute on hate crimes, beginning 2017, at:

http://www.moga.mo.gov/mostatutes/stathtml/55700000351.HTML.
230 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

with a statement from his doctor describing his dependence on cyborg technology)
and are assaulted, both assaults should be considered a hate crime. Would androids
and other technologically enhanced beings experience similar hostility as a result
of their cybernetic appearance? These are questions which will weave their way
through our court systems in the next decades and the rulings made by judges in
such cases will contribute to an emerging law of cyborgs. Unfortunately, given the
hostility that Steve and Neil have experienced, in the future, cyber-hate crimes and
other forms of discrimination against cyborgs and androids may occur frequently.
In fact, in response to cyborg technologies there are advocacy groups with names
like “Stop the Cyborgs” springing up to try and push through cyborg legislation.40
So the message seems to be, become a cyborg at your own peril, humans may not
approve.
If hate crimes result in a physical attack against a person, there may already be
an analog in the machine world—consider the case of machine sabotage (and from
a historical perspective recall the Luddite movement of the Eighteenth Century).
In a recent example, an executive of a Korean appliance company was accused of
willfully damaging several Samsung washing machines at an event in Berlin. Also
consider that there are cyber-industrial sabotage activities, such as hacking. On the
point of purposeful physical harm to machines, the state of Washington considers
damage to machines in one of its state statutes defining criminal sabotage as:
“Whoever, with intent that his or her act shall, or with reason to believe that it
may, injure, interfere with, interrupt, supplant, nullify, impair, or obstruct the own-
er’s or operator’s … property, instrumentality, machine, mechanism, or appli-
ance… shall be guilty of criminal sabotage.”41 As for cyborgs, there are already
cases where they have been assaulted and their prosthetic limbs stolen. So, just
think, humans experience discrimination, cyborgs are assaulted, it’s a crime to
sabotage a machine, and with this as background more androids and artificially
intelligent machines are coming.
The general theme of discrimination against androids predates current androids
that are entering society now. For example, in a sci-fi novel, the theme of discrimi-
nation against androids was explored in John Brunner’s novel Into the Slave
Nebula,42 where the blue-skinned androids were subjugated to slavery by humans.
I think the idea of forced servitude for artificially intelligent beings should be
strongly prohibited due to human rights concerns, as should slavery for any artifi-
cially intelligent being that convincingly makes the claim that it is conscious.
Personally, I don’t think it wise to subjugate any intelligent being that within a few
decades could surpass us in intelligence. As Martine Rothblatt, CEO of
Therapeutics Inc. comments, future sentient beings will want to be free, they will
learn that lesson from humans, and oppression of artificial intelligence will only
result in forms of opposition ranging from nonviolent (think Gandhi) to outright

40Stop The Cyborgs, Only the unmeasured is free, at: http://stopthecyborgs.org/.

41RCW 9.05.060, Washington State statute on machine sabotage.
42John Brunner, 2011, Into the Slave Nebula, Gateway.
Our Reaction to Cyborgs and Androids 231

hostility (think terminator).43 Considering Rothblatt’s comments, how likely is

discrimination against our future technological progeny and how likely is an
unwanted response in return by them? Just consider the example of current
cyborgs Neil and Steve indicating that people wearing head-mounted display tech-
nology may experience hostility and discrimination based on their “cyborg appear-
ance,” and that litigation resulting from people equipped with prosthesis is not
uncommon. As one example of the last point, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in
a case dealing with cyborg technology held that an excavator operator with a pros-
thetic leg, was entitled to be reinstated to his job under the terms of the Americans
with Disabilities Act as long as he could perform the essential functions of his
position safely; that is, his cyborg technology could not disqualify the worker from
employment.44
While exponentially improving technologies often outpace the law’s ability to
keep up, for a number of pragmatic reasons, a few nations are beginning to seri-
ously consider the consequences of a cyborg/robotic future. Inevitably, the labor
market of the near future will consist of humans, cyborgs, and artificially intelli-
gent robots. In South Korea, the Ministry of Information and Communication has
an ambitious plan to put a robot in every household by 2020 and several robot cit-
ies have been planned for the country: the first scheduled to be built in 2016. The
new robot city will feature research and development centers for manufacturers
and part suppliers, as well as exhibition halls and a stadium for robot competi-
tions.45 South Korea is also working on a Robotics Ethics Charter that will estab-
lish ground rules and laws for human interaction with robots, setting standards for
robotics users and manufacturers, as well as guidelines on ethical standards to be
programmed into robots to prevent human abuse of robots and vice versa. In fact,
researchers in artificial intelligence propose programming “friendly artificial intel-
ligence,” into the “brains” of future artificially intelligent machines to decrease
their potential threat to humanity. Interestingly, in a Brooking report written by
lawyers Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong, Our Cyborg Future—Law and Policy
Implications, issues of access to digital technology are closely linked to concerns
about discrimination against those unable to afford or unwilling to undergo certain
modifications.46 In addition, they argue that antidiscrimination laws may be neces-
sary to prevent cyborgs from being denied employment as a result of their cyber-
netic modifications and to stop unenhanced humans from being discriminated
against for opposite reasons.47

43Martine Rothblatt, id., note 34.

44Henschel v. Clare Cnty. Rd. Comm’n, No. 13–1528 (6th Cir. December 13, 2013).
45EveR-2-Meet the Singing Android, at: http://www.k2updates.com/ever-2-meet-the-singing-

android/.
46Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong, 2014, We Are All Cyborgs Now, at: http://www.

brookings.edu/blogs/techtank/posts/2014/10/8-we-are-all-cyborgs.
47Id.
232 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

The Uncanny Valley

In the coming cyborg age, cyborgs, androids, and robots may have reason to be
concerned about human reaction to them, just consider the phenomena of the
“uncanny valley.”48 This concept, developed by roboticist Masahiro Mori origi-
nally intended to provide an insight into human reactions to robotic design, but has
been extended to human interactions with nearly any nonhuman entity.49 Stated
simply, the idea is that humans react favorably to a “human-like” machine, but
only to a particular point. For example, humans generally like the appearance of
“cute” robotic toys, but once an android is designed to look like a human, and
doesn’t quite meet the standard, people report a strong negative response to its
“creepy” appearance. However, once the appearance improves and is indistin-
guishable from a human, the response becomes positive. So the response goes…
positive, negative, then positive again. This chasm, the uncanny valley, represents
the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees some-
thing that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquiet-
ing.50 Examples can be found in the fields of robotics, 3D computer animation,
and in medical fields such as burn reconstruction, infectious diseases, neurological
conditions, and plastic surgery.51 As an example of the uncanny valley from popu-
lar culture, according to roboticist Dario Floreano, the animated baby in Pixar’s
groundbreaking 1988 short film Tin Toy provoked negative audience reactions,
which first led the film industry to take the concept of the uncanny valley seri-
ously. In addition, several reviewers of the 2004 animated film The Polar Express
called its animation eerie. In fact, CNN.com reviewer Paul Clinton wrote, “Those
human characters in the film come across as downright… well, creepy.”52
A number of design principles have been proposed for avoiding the uncanny
valley—I think of them as design rules for cyborgs, androids, virtual avatars, and
any other artificially intelligent being that will enter society. Perhaps future courts
will take note of these rules. It has been shown that when human and nonhuman
elements are mixed in the design of a robot, the robot may look uncanny and
likely experience lookism discrimination. For example, a robot with a synthetic
voice or a human being with a human voice have been found to be less eerie than a

48Angel Tinwell, 2014, The Uncanny Valley in Games and Animation, A.K. Peters/CRC Press.
49Masahiro Mori, 2012, The Uncanny Valley, IEEE Spectrum, at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/
automaton/robotics/humanoids/the-uncanny-valley.
50Id; David Bryant, The Uncanny alley, at: http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/nonfiction/uncanny-

valley.html. The uncanny valley of a functional organization, 2013, at: https://stratechery.

com/2013/the-uncanny-valley-of-a-functional-organization/.
51The uncanny valley of a functional organization, 2013, at: https://stratechery.com/2013/

the-uncanny-valley-of-a-functional-organization/.
52Paul Clinton, 2004, Review: ‘Polar Express’ a creepy ride, at: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/

SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/10/review.polar.express/.
The Uncanny Valley 233

robot with a human voice or a human being with a synthetic voice.53 In addition,
for a robot to give a more positive impression, its degree of human realism in
appearance should also match its degree of human realism in behavior. So if an
android looks more human than its movement abilities, this gives a negative
impression. In addition, in terms of performance, if a robot looks too appliance-
like, people will expect little from it, if it looks too human-like, people will expect
too much from it; however, with continuing improvements, future artificially intel-
ligent machines will meet and then exceed our expectations. Still, a highly human-
like appearance leads to an expectation that certain behaviors will be present, such
as realistic motion dynamics. Finally, abnormal facial proportions, including those
typically used by artists to enhance attractiveness (e.g., larger eyes), can look eerie
when combined with human skin texture.54
A similar “uncanny valley” effect could, according to futurist writer Jamais
Casico, show up when humans begin modifying themselves with cybernetic
enhancements which aim to improve the abilities of the human body and mind
beyond what would normally be possible, be it eyesight, muscle strength, or cog-
nition.55 Casico postulates that so long as these enhancements remain within a
perceived norm of human behavior, a negative reaction is unlikely, but once indi-
viduals supplant normal human shape and form, revulsion can be expected.56
However, according to the uncanny valley theory, in our cyborg future, once such
technologies gain further distance from human norms, “transhuman” individuals
would cease to be judged on human levels and instead be regarded as separate
entities altogether (this point is what has been dubbed “Posthuman”), and it is here
that acceptance would rise once again out of the uncanny valley.57 In fact, there
has already been some work on how people view cybernetically enhanced bodies.
For example, Jessica Barfield, in work done at Dartmouth College, found that peo-
ple equipped with cyborg technology would have to change their body-image and
self-identity, and that they would have to relearn how to use their body to accom-
modate the new technology. Should designers of robots, androids, or prosthetic
devices strive overly hard to duplicate human appearance? If so, some seemingly
minor flaw could drop the android or cyborg into the uncanny valley.
But let me step back from robots to people, and ask—does the uncanny valley
phenomena apply to humans? Yes, it does, and here is an example. Ulzzang, or
“best face,” is a Korean subculture in which girls alter their looks digitally, with
makeup, and by any other means available to them to achieve an anime look.58 In

53Uncanny Valley, Wikipedia, at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley.

54Id.
55Jamais Casico, Open the Future, at: http://www.openthefuture.com/2007/10/the_second_uncanny_
valley.html.
56Id.
57Id.
58Paul Pickett, 2010, 5 Creepy Ways Humans Are Plunging Into the Uncanny Valley, at:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18867_5-creepy-ways-humans-are-plunging-into-uncan-
ny-valley.html.
234 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

Fig. 7.4  The Uncanny
Valley. The concept was
proposed by Mashario Mori.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
Commons

other words, an ulzzang girl strives to have behemoth, circular eyes, a tiny nose
and mouth, flawless pale skin and a tiny body dressed up in coordinated outfits.59
Once they get that anime look, they upload pictures of themselves for online com-
petitions for prestige and Internet fame. While purposively altering a face digitally
to the point where it looks like an anime character is interesting from an uncanny
valley sense, actually altering their real-world faces with eyelid glue and contact
lenses, that is, purposefully entering the uncanny valley is comparable to the
grinder movement (see Chap. 5: Modifying, Enhancing, and Hacking the Body)
where people implant technology under their skin to gain an extra sense.60 I can
only say, the range of human expression when it comes to altering appearance is
wide, and will be even more dramatic in the coming cyborg age as body and facial
features for humans and androids are replaced with “cyborg” technology
(Fig. 7.4).

Observations About Discrimination and the “Ugly Laws”

In my view, the answer to whether artificial intelligence as embodied in different

bodily forms will be discriminated against based on their appearance, is decidedly
“yes” as the human drive to conform to cultural (or subcultural) beauty standards
is strong; and those who come short are often the victim of “lookism” discrimina-
tion. For example, physically unattractive people often face unequal treatment in
situations in which their appearance is clearly unrelated to their qualification or
abilities. In contrast, other social science research has shown that people attribute
a wide range of positive characteristics to those whom they find physically

59Id.
60Id.
Observations About Discrimination and the “Ugly Laws” 235

attractive.61 In addition, studies have also shown that less attractive people are
accorded worse treatment simply because of their appearance. In our cyborg future
will “unsightly androids” be subjected to the same lookism discrimination? On
this topic, in a study on the perception of cyborg bodies by Jessica Barfield she
reported survey results that indicated people equipped with cyborg technology
would experience a significant amount of bias by the public, and none responding
that cybernetically enhanced people would experience no bias.62 From social sci-
ence studies, the finding that a person’s appearance affects the treatment they
receive is so strong that parents have lower expectations for unattractive children,
as do teachers; which makes me wonder—will “unsightly” androids also receive
deflated expectations by humans? Already it has been suggested that we expect
more from robots that look human. Additionally, as adults, unattractive people in
simulation studies of court proceedings receive higher sentences in criminal cases
and lower damages awards in civil lawsuits.63 Summarizing social science studies,
“lookism” discrimination is widespread in society and is influenced by a number
of factors, thus it is reasonable to expect that our technological inventions will
likely receive the same discriminatory treatment based on their appearance as do
humans.
Discrimination directed against those with disabilities is often the result of a
missing or damaged body part which in some cases can be replaced with a pros-
thetic arm or leg; which then may become the basis for discrimination.
Interestingly, robots and androids are often equipped with similar “cyborg” tech-
nology. With disabled humans, cyborg technology may lead to discriminatory
reactions that are based on their appearance, but paradoxically, in the case of
machines, cyborg technology also gives the machine the functionality to compete
against humans. In this case androids may experience discrimination based on the
way they look (especially if they fall into the uncanny valley) and also based on
their enhanced ability to displace humans from the workplace. In fact, to compete
against humans, robots and androids often use the latest prosthetic devices, com-
puter-vision, and machine-learning algorithms to perform the work we humans
typically do. And compete they do, according to a joint report by accountancy firm
Deloitte and the University of Oxford, in Britain the lower paid workers are five
times more likely to have their jobs taken over by robots than those earning higher
incomes.64 Academicians from MIT, Oxford University, and Sussex University,
have argued that robots will “steal” around half of all jobs around the world in the
not too distant future because, according to them, the globe has entered a second

61Michael Kalick, Aesthetic Surgery: How it Affects the way Patients are Perceived by Others,

Annals of Plastic Surgery, 128, 131, 1979.

62Jessica Barfield, 2014, Cybernetic Embodiment Study, for Sociology 79.6, Dartmouth College.
63Gray and Ashmore, 1976, Biasing Influence of Defendant’s Characteristics on Simulated

Sentencing, 38 Psychological Rep. 727.

64Mark Smith, 2014, One-third of jobs in the UK at risk from automation, at: http://www2.de

loitte.com/uk/en/pages/press-releases/articles/deloitte-one-third-of-jobs-in-the-uk-at-risk-from-
automation.html.
236 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

age of machinery that will have a more profound effect on society than the onset
of the industrial revolution.65 Two interesting books in this area were written by
Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work,
Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, and Rise of the
Robots, by Martin Ford. However, my perspective of the future is different from
the above authors, I view the second machine age as synonymous with an age of
cyborgs and a future merger with artificially intelligent machines; that is, I argue
that we are becoming the “intelligent machinery,” and the “intelligent machinery”
is in the process of becoming us. Thus, like Hans Moravec, I predict that our
future is to merge with our artificially intelligent inventions, and in contrast to the
views of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, other than for a brief time period
our future is not to experience a second machine age in which “they” serve “us”
but to merge with them.
Both Japan and South Korea have actively promoted the virtues of a robot-
dependent society and lifestyle. Professor Jennifer Robison, a leading scholar of
Japanese robotic culture, reports that nationwide surveys in Japan indicate that
Japanese citizens are more comfortable sharing living and working environments
with robots than with foreign caretakers and migrant workers.66 Discussing the
demographics of Japan, Robertson comments that “as their population continues
to shrink and age faster than in other postindustrial nations, Japanese politicians
are banking on the robotics industry to reinvigorate the economy and to preserve
the country’s alleged ethnic homogeneity.”67 These initiatives Robinson reports are
paralleled by a growing support among some Japanese roboticists and politicians
to confer citizenship on robots. Already the idea of robots having evolved beyond
consideration as “property” to acquiring legal status as sentient beings with
“rights” is shaping developments in artificial intelligence and robotics outside of
Japan, including South Korea, Europe, and the U.S. In addition, supporting the
idea that granting legal rights for robots is gaining momentum, the We Robot con-
ference, a meeting of leading experts in the field of law and robotics is held annu-
ally.68 And Ryan Calo one of the organizers of the We Robot conference is
proposing the idea that a new federal agency on robots be developed in order to
deal with the novel experiences and harms that robotics may enable.
That cyborgs and androids may be subject to “lookism” discrimination seems a
reasonable conclusion given that in current society, the most physically unattrac-
tive members face widespread discrimination.69 And not only do people discrimi-

65Linda Brinded, 2014, Robots Will Steal 50 % of Human Jobs in Near Future, says MIT and

Professors, at: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/robots-will-steal-50-human-jobs-near-future-says-mit-

professors-1455088; Linda Brinded, 2014, Robots to Steal 10 Million Low Paid UK Jobs by
2034, at: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/robots-steal-10-million-low-paid-uk-jobs-by-2034-1474032.
66Jennifer Robertson, 2014, Human Rights versus Robot Rights: Forecasts from Japan, Critical

Asian studies, 46:4, 571–598.

67Id.
68We Robot, 2014 program, at: http://robots.law.miami.edu/2014/program/.
69Note, 1987, Facial Discrimination: Extending Handicap Law to Employment Discrimination

on the Basis of Physical Appearance, Harvard Law Reviw, Vol, 100, No, 8, 2035–2052.
Observations About Discrimination and the “Ugly Laws” 237

nate against those whose appearance deviates from societal standards, but local
governments may also discriminate. In the past, some jurisdictions in the U.S.
went so far as to prohibit “ugly” or “unsightly” individuals from appearing in the
public; this implies to me that cyborgs and androids deemed unattractive could
similarly offend the sensibilities of humans and be subjected to “lookism” and
other forms of discrimination.70 Remarkably, in the early-to-mid 1900s it was ille-
gal to be found “ugly” on the streets of some mainstream American cities like
Chicago, Illinois, Omaha, Nebraska, and Columbus, Ohio.71 Such a person’s pun-
ishment for venturing in public ranged from incarceration to fines for each “ugly
offense.” Here’s how the Chicago Municipal Code described and enforced an
“Ugly Law” (which has since been repealed):
No person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an
unsightly or disgusting object or improper person is to be allowed in or on the public ways
or other public places in this city, or shall therein or thereon expose himself to public
view, under a penalty of not less than one dollar nor more than fifty dollars for each
offense.72

At the time period of the “lookism” discrimination laws the thinking was that
even though the disabled, the indigent, and the poor were a part of society, nobody
wanted to deal with them and fewer still wanted to actually view them in public.
So laws were passed to keep the deformed—especially those with Cerebral Palsy
and other disfiguring diseases—inside and out-of-sight.73 Thankfully, Omaha
repealed their Ugly Law in 1967; Columbus withdrew theirs in 1972; and Chicago
was the last to stop punishing the “ugly” in 1974. However, human biases fade
slowly, and “lookism” discrimination is still a part of society and will surely con-
tinue in our cyborg future and be directed against our cybernetic inventions.
In contrast to the jurisdictions which enacted statutes to prohibit “unsightly”
people from appearing in public, jurisdictions that legislate in this area now are
more likely to respond by enacting local ordinances to protect people from look-
ism discrimination. In fact, in the U.S. some states and municipalities have passed
laws that directly prohibit discrimination based on appearance. The District of
Columbia, for example, prohibits discrimination based upon “actual or perceived”
differences in background and attributes, including “physical appearance,” such as
weight (no overweight androids please). And employers in the District of
Columbia should be particularly cautious about terminating employees for any
appearance based issues, as personal appearance and the expression of an employ-
ee’s gender identification are protected. The state of Michigan has also enacted a
statute to expressly protect employees from discrimination based upon their

70Paris.Ill. Mun. Code § 36034, repealed 1974.

71Chicago Municipal Code, sec. 36034; Unsightly Beggar Ordinance Nebraska Municipal Code
of 1941, sec. 25; Columbus, Ohio, General Offense Code, sec. 2387.04.
72Chicago Municipal Code, id.
73David Boles, 2007, Enforcing the Ugly Laws, at: http://bolesblogs.com/2007/05/01/enforcing-

the-ugly-laws/.
238 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

weight or height. And several other local governments, including New York City
and San Francisco bar discrimination based upon an employee’s general appear-
ance. But, the question for our cyborg future is whether “appearance” discrimina-
tion will also apply to cyborg technologies?74
In an example that makes me wonder whether the size and form of an android
will evoke discriminatory reactions from people, a waitress at a Hooters restaurant
was in the news claiming that Hooters warned her that she was required to loose
approximately ten pounds in the near future or face possible discharge.75 The wait-
ress responded by filing a weight discrimination lawsuit against the restaurant
chain under a Michigan statute known as the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act.76
Among other things, this statute bars employers from discriminating on the basis of
age, sex, height or weight.77 I can envision “chubby” androids receiving negative
reactions from the public, once they enter society, and I envision laws to protect
androids from appearance discrimination or even laws to “force” androids to look a
certain way. In fact, Tokyo University’s Tomotaka Takahashi predicts that over half
of all future androids will be female so there will be lots of opportunity for gender
discrimination (this already happens in virtual video games) in our cyborg future.
In South Korea and Japan, the gender and “look” of the android designed to enter
society is especially important, with female androids appearing much more slender
than their male counterparts. As a precursor for the cyborg future, it is known that
stereotypes related to gender and appearance that burden women in the real world
follows them into virtual ones, according to researchers at Penn State University.
On this point, in a study of how people interacted with avatars in an online game,
researcher T. Franklin Waddell reported that women received less help from fellow
players than men when they operated an unattractive avatar.78
Discussing the law and physical appearance, Yale Law Professor Robert Post
comments on a 1992 municipal code enacted in Santa Cruz, California with pro-
hibits arbitrary discrimination in employment, housing, and accommodations,
based on height, weight, and physical characteristics (all items that could apply to
androids!).79 The statute as passed, focused on only aspects of bodily appearance

74Brian F. Chandler, 2013, “Too Sexy?” “Too Heavy?” Will Employee Appearance Standards

be Protected? at: http://www.protoraelaw.com/publications/too-sexy-too-heavy-will-employee-

appearance-standards-be-protected/.
75Hooters waitress files lawsuit—says she lost weight, http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/

20100525/hooters-waitress-files-lawsuit-says-she-lost-weight.
76Elliot-Larson Civil Rights Act, Michigan Act 453 of 1976, 37.2202, Employer; prohibited prac-

tices; exceptions.
77See MICH. COMP. LAWS, id.
78T. Franklin Waddell and James D. Ivory, 2015, It’s Not Easy Trying to be One of the Guys:

The Effect of Avatar Attractiveness, Avatar Sex, and User Sex on the Success of Help-Seeking
Requests in an Online Game. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Vol. 59 (1): 112. doi:1
0.1080/08838151.2014.998221.
79Robert Post, 2000, Prejudicial Appearances, The Logic of American Antidiscrimination Law,

Faculty Scholarship Series, Yale Law School, paper 192.

Observations About Discrimination and the “Ugly Laws” 239

that are beyond a person’s control (i.e., immutable). However, discrimination also
exists for traits that are within a person’s control such as religion or marital status,
tattoos, piercings and for grinders whether they equip themselves with technology.
Even with its good intentions the Santa Cruz statute evoked an intense controversy
about the merits of what was then called “anti-lookism.” I am certain that any leg-
islation to protect cyborgs, androids, and artificially intelligent machines from
experiencing lookism discrimination will evoke a similar controversy. But eventu-
ally the law does respond to inequities in society, for example, the recantation of
Ugly Laws directly led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990,
where certain rights were granted to the disabled. Of relevance to lookism discrim-
ination is that under some circumstances appearance can be regarded as a disabil-
ity. For example, if a person who is considered obese or a person with a cosmetic
disfigurement that is considered a facial deformity, impacts the person’s ability to
be employed, they are considered disabled under the ADA:
“Individuals with disabilities are a discrete and insular minority who have been faced with
restrictions and limitations, subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment, and
relegated to a position of political powerlessness in the society, based on characteristics
that are beyond the control of such individuals and resulting from stereotypic assumptions
not truly indicative of the individual ability of such individuals to participate in, and con-
tribute to, society.”80

When discussing the emergence of cyborgs and androids into society, some
ask—what do we humans have to fear (some respond saying an uprising destroying
the human race, but I leave this topic to a later chapter and to books such as Our
Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, by James
Barat). In response to public reactions, current cyborgs are beginning to address the
question of civil liberties for technologically enhanced beings. Those who are
equipping themselves with cyborg technology argue that their constitutional right
for equal protection under the law should include protection from unfavourable and
discriminatory reactions to their appearance. In fact, cyborg Neil Harbisson, who
wears a head-mounted antenna which allows him to “hear color,” argues that his
appearance is not unnatural, just the opposite commenting: “Some might think that
we might become less human if we modify ourselves but I believe there is nothing
more human than doing that.”81 In addition he states, “In my case, becoming tech-
nology doesn’t make me feel closer to machines, or to robots, but quite the oppo-
site. Having an antenna makes me feel closer to insects and other creatures that
have antennae, hearing through bone conduction makes me feel closer to dolphins
and other marine species that perceive sound through their bones, having ultraviolet
and infrared perception makes me feel closer to insects and mammals that perceive
these colours. I feel a stronger connection with nature now than I ever did before.”82

80Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101–336, 104 Stat. 328 (1990).
81Neil Harbisson, 2015, I Don’t Have Artificial Body Parts, I Have Artistic Body Parts,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-harbisson/i-dont-have-artificial-bo_b_6804306.html.
82Id.
240 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

Whether a connection to nature will constitute an acceptable affirmative

defence against discrimination for cyborgs and androids is not likely; instead, I
expect strong legislation efforts will be needed, possibly in response to civil upris-
ings against the governments and institutions perpetuating “lookism” discrimina-
tion against our future technological progeny.
Interestingly, another form of “ugly laws” has been around for some time and is
still on the books. These laws are directed at freak shows (sometimes termed
“sideshow”) that accompany traveling carnivals. An interesting book in this area
was written by Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for
Amusement and Profit. In the U.S. “freak laws” were enacted to deal with estab-
lishments that sought to profit from displaying people with an unusual body or
deformity—for example, the bearded lady, wolf boy, or fish girl.83 But technology
may play a role in people’s perception of who looks different. Consider Professor
Steve Mann of the University of Toronto who has been wearing “eye catching”
cyborg technology for decades. Richard Crouse, author of the book 100 Best
Movies You’ve Never Seen (Steve was the subject of a 2001 documentary film,
Cyberman) claims that P.T. Barnum would have loved Steve Mann, and would
have pitched like this—step right up ladies and gentleman. Have we got a freak for
you? Half man, half machine, this unbiological creature is one of the wonders of
the world. While there are no laws specifically passed relating to the appearance of
cyborgs, in the U.S. the regulations enacted by states on freak shows may provide
some guidance on how the law might respond to cyborgs and androids (that look
different from humans) as they enter society. To some commentators it is thought
that freak shows include expressive elements and as such should be subject to First
Amendment protection. In the coming cyborg age, as cyborgs and androids enter
society, a future court may be asked to determine if elements of cyborg technology
are forms of expression and therefore deserving of First Amendment protection (as
a form of speech), versus functional, which could meet the requirements of patent
law. However, currently, the First Amendment is not the usual legal theory which
prevails in appearance discrimination cases but more typically federal anti-dis-
crimination, local, and state ordinances are.
In the U.S. there is no federal law relating to freak shows, any law covering
such shows are typically city ordinances with the exception of a few states legislat-
ing in this area. Of the jurisdictions that have considered the issue, same prohibit,
and some allow “freaks” to be displayed for commercial purposes. For example, in
California and Florida, laws restricting freak shows that charge people to view
“freaks” have been held unconstitutional—not because the laws were thought to
violate the freedom of speech prong of the First Amendment, but rather because
persons with “unusual bodies” have a right to be employed and surprisingly the
courts assumed freak shows were one of the few places where such people could

83Brigham A. Fordham, 2007, Dangerous Bodies: Freak Shows, Expression, and Exploitation, 14

UCLA Ent. L. Rev.

Observations About Discrimination and the “Ugly Laws” 241

Fig. 7.5  Traveling carnival posters, images curtesy of Wikipedia commons

gain employment.84 However, not all states allow “freaks” to be displayed for
commercial purposes, in fact, Massachusetts General Law prohibits all commer-
cial displays of a person who has the appearance of deformity produced by artifi-
cial means, regardless of whether the persons being displayed are being
sufficiently rewarded for participating or not.85 Like the “Ugly laws” of the past,
some laws restricting freak shows are intended to shield the public from the spec-
tacle of the unusual body; but in the coming cyborg age people will not be
shielded from those who look different or deviate from cultural standards of
beauty as millions of artificially intelligent robots, androids, and cyborgs will soon
join society and not all will be the equivalent of an attractive human (but I do sup-
pose—“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”) (Fig. 7.5).

84Brigham A. Fordham, id.; Justin Smith, 2013,The Ethics of Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), at:
http://www.soundonsight.org/the-ethics-of-tod-brownings-freaks-1932/.
85Massachusetts General Laws. Part IV. Title I Chapter 272. Section 33. Whoever exhibits for

hire an albino person, a minor or mentally ill person who is deformed or a person who has an
appearance of deformity produced by artificial means shall be punished by a fine of not more
than five hundred dollars.
242 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

Mind Uploads and Replacement Bodies

Before exploring in more detail the main theme of this chapter, lookism discrimi-
nation and how it may apply to cyborgs and androids, I will briefly introduce the
idea of a mind upload to a virtual avatar, android, or different physical body alto-
gether, an idea which is clearly a more distant possibility for our cyborg future but
worth considering in the context of discrimination and rights for our technological
inventions. While the technology to upload one’s mind into another body is fasci-
nating, an in-depth discussion of the emerging technology for uploading a mind is
beyond the scope of this book (see however, Ray Kurzweils How to Build a Mind,
and the edited book by Russell Blackford and Damien Broderick, Intelligence
Unbound: The Future of Uploaded and Machine Minds), instead the brief discus-
sion here will be on the legal and ethical issues related to discrimination based on
appearance, that is, as a result of uploading a mind to another body.
As background information, Ray Kurzweil in The Age of Spiritual Machines
predicted human-level intelligence in a machine by 2029,86 and that in the 2040s
“we will be able to access the information in our brains that constitute our memo-
ries, skills, and personalities and back them up.”87 If the idea of uploading our
mind to a computer or another body sounds like sci-fi, for humans it currently is,
but the reality is that neural engineering is making significant strides toward mode-
ling the brain and developing technologies to restore or replace some of its biolog-
ical functions. And notice I said “for humans,” actually we upload a mind all the
time, it happens every time we load an operating system on a computing device.
Japan and South Korea’s movement to consider as policy legal protection for
robots brings me back to the central theme of this chapter—whether the appear-
ance of cyborgs and artificially intelligent machines will lead to discrimination
from humans and if so, what laws exist to provide protection for our technological
progeny? In most nations constitutions provide basic and fundamental rights to its
citizens. In the U.S. the principle of equal protection under the law is stated in the
14th Amendment to the Constitution which reads: “No State shall deny to any per-
son within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” A key word in the
equal protection clause is “person,” and clearly while current cyborgs are predomi-
nantly biological and therefore considered a natural person, androids, and artifi-
cially intelligent machines are not. However, a number of legal scholars and
roboticists are debating the question as to whether robots should receive person-
hood status. On first impression, the idea that robots should be extended legal per-
sonhood sounds unwarranted, and to some counterintuitive. But the concept of
legal personhood is less about what is or is not a flesh-and-blood person and more

86Ray Kurzweil, 2000, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Humans in
Intelligence, Penguin Books.
87Ray Kurzweil, 2014, Forward, in Martine Rothblatt, Virtually Human: The Promise- and the

Peril- of Digital Immortality, St. Martin’s Press, New York.

Mind Uploads and Replacement Bodies 243

on who or what can be subject to a lawsuit or initiate a lawsuit; and nonhumans

(such as corporations) have already been extended personhood status.88
If we think about the movement among animal right activists to protect ani-
mals from inhumane treatment, for example, in New York, a judge granted chim-
panzees the writ of habeas corpus, how about the future when the most intelligent
being that will come in contact with animals will not be humans, but forms of arti-
ficial intelligence. If animals have rights, what about the rights of more intelligent
beings? In fact, the movement to grant rights to our artificially intelligent progeny
is starting to gain momentum. But returning to humans, if, or when, a mind upload
is possible, there will be fascinating issues of law and policy which will need to
be addressed. For example, if the ability to upload a mind to a computer or other
humanoid body becomes possible, this means among other things that one mind
could occupy numerous bodies, allowing a person to change their appearance at
will (such as race, age, sex)—how will the laws on discrimination and equal pro-
tection under the law apply to this scenario?
In a fascinating book discussing the possibility of “mindclones” (that is, a digi-
tal copy of a mind), Martine Rothblatt, author of Virtually Human: The Promise—
and the Peril—of Digital Immortality, describes how mindclones could be created
from a “mindfile,” a sort of online repository of our personalities, which she
argues humans already have in the form of social media such as Facebook.89
Rothblatt comments that this mindfile would be run on “mindware,” a kind of soft-
ware for consciousness. But would a mindclone be alive and if so would it receive
rights? Rothblatt thinks so. She cites one definition of life as a self-replicating
code that maintains itself against disorder. However, some critics of Rothblatt
argue that the mind must be embedded in biology, else it cannot exist and be con-
scious. On the contrary, for the development of a mind Rothblatt argues that soft-
ware and hardware are as good as wet ware, or biological materials. In fact, with a
mind upload, replacement bodies would likely be androids or a virtual avatar, and
not biological, as the ethical issues associated with storing a body while it’s not in
use would almost certainly prohibit this practice from happening.90
Discussing the implications of creating mindclones Rothblatt comments that
the continuity of the self will be one issue because your persona would no longer
inhabit just a biological body. And just as I argue that rights for our artificially
intelligent inventions will require an important public debate, Rothblatt argues that
the idea of civil rights for mindclones will develop to become one of the major
legal issues for the twenty-first century. I can understand why—in virtual worlds
it is not uncommon for gamers to choose virtual bodies that are quite unlike their
physical body, this seems to suggest that the idea of inhabiting a different body is
not as outrageous as one may initially think. Interestingly, as Rothblatt notes, the
capability to upload a mind into another body could allow bodies to be rented, a

88AlexisC. Madrigal, The Case for Considering Robots People, The Atlantic, August 18, 2014.
89Martine Rothblatt, id., note 34.
90Martine Rothblatt, id., note 34.
244 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

different lifestyle to be experienced, or a way to start over again. Perhaps people

would want to look athletic, or more professional, or to appear as another gen-
der—if so, what are the implications for law and policy?
Considering rights for mindclones, Rothblatt comments that they will “chafe at
second class status and other forms of oppression.”91 Of course, as she further
comments, equal citizenship for cyberconscious beings will “challenge core
assumptions of civil, criminal and constitutional law.”92 I agree completely; and
thus this book, and this chapter on the Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies.
Rothblatt further notes that “mindware” will be regulated as a medical device—
this means that in the U.S. FDA regulations would apply to mindclone technology,
and since the FDA is considering cybersecurity for networked medical devices,
this may be a positive development (as the protection of the mind from hackers is
critical, see the chapter on Cognitive Liberty). And interestingly, Rothblatt argues
that under constitutional law principles, mindclones will share the legal person-
hood of the biological organism. However, I question whether a disembodied
mind, or a mind transferred to another body, will share the legal personhood status
of the original (especially if the original is alive)—of course, the courts will have
to decide the legal issues associated with the same mind occupying two bodies (or
even more bodies?).
Clearly, the ethical and legal issues associated with mind-uploads to a physical
body or to a virtual avatar living within the cloud will be a challenging subject for
future courts and policy makers to consider. For example, if one could upload their
mind to an android, they could inhabit a new body the form of which could take
on an almost limitless number of looks and physical forms. But what would be the
legal rights associated with each upload, and with each new body inhabited? And
what if a person wanted to upload their mind to an android or virtual avatar that
looked like a movie star or professional athlete? Is this permissible under current
law? Without permission, in the U.S. and a few other jurisdictions, the answer is
no. To use someone’s likeness for commercial purposes, you must have their con-
sent. Consent is, of course, usually obtained by paying for the privilege of using
the person’s likeness.
Speculating about the future, if we consider the progress being made to reverse
engineer and “digitize the mind” and that software is copyright protected, it’s not
too early to think about copyright protection for the content of the mind which I
explore in more detail below. And since copyright protection exists for works of
authorship, by granting copyright for thoughts and memories we would essentially
be pushing back to a device implanted within the brain the location where the
work of authorship is considered “fixed.” The idea that works of authorship can be
fixed in the mind, or on any “cyborg device” implanted within the body, is a novel
concept that the courts will have to consider as people become equipped with
cyborg technology, androids enter society, and mind uploads become possible.

91Martine Rothblatt, id., note 34.

92Martine Rothblatt, id., note 34.
Copyright Law and Appearance 245

Copyright Law and Appearance

Interestingly, several legal theories from intellectual property law might prove use-
ful as a basis for establishing machine rights in our cyborg future. To pose a basic
question, does copyright law offer any protection for the look, appearance, and
bodies of androids and artificially intelligent machines? Under U.S. copyright law,
copyright protection extends to subject matter that represents “an original work of
authorship, fixed in a tangible medium of expression from which the work can be
perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated.”93 As we will see shortly, cop-
yright protection exists for robotic characters in a story, but what about copyright
protection for the actual appearance of the android or robot, is this possible?
Generally, among others, literary works, pictorial and graphic works, and motion
pictures, are protected subject matter under copyright law. But based on this list of
copyrightable subject matter, a natural person’s identity has been found to fall out-
side the umbrella of copyright protection because “indicia of identity” themselves
does not consist of an original work of authorship fixed within the meaning of the
U.S. Copyright Act94 (although I think body features are “fixed” based on our
DNA blueprint, but DNA is not a work attributed to a human author under copy-
right law as it is thought of as a product of nature).
Furthermore, not only may a natural person’s “indicia of identity” fall outside
the subject matter of copyright protection, a prior court decision suggests that the
basic form of an android’s body may too fall outside the protection of copyright.
In Carol Barnhart Inc. v. Economy Cover Corp., the issue was whether human dis-
play torsos, designed to model clothes, were eligible for copyright protection.95
The court held that the shape of a human torso is not copyright protected because
the design of the forms were not conceptually separable from their utilitarian use
(a copyright requirement for “useful articles” such as human display forms).96
Under Section §101 of the U.S. copyright act, a “useful article” is one that has an
intrinsic utilitarian function that is not merely to portray the appearance of the arti-
cle or to convey information, but extends only to that which can be identified sepa-
rately from and capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the
article. Thus, if one is interested in copyright protection for a particular form of an
android (which is clearly a useful article), whether its features are copyright pro-
tected will in part be based on whether the android features can be identified sepa-
rately from the utilitarian aspects of the android’s design. In Barnhart the court
reasoned that the display form torsos were not conceptually separable from their
utilitarian function because the torso’s features, such as width of shoulders, etc.,

9317 U.S.C. § (2006); Downing v. Abercrombie & Fitch, 265 F.3d 994, 1003 (9th Cir. 2001). See

State St Bank & Trust, 149 F.3d at 1370.

94Brown v. Ames, 201 F.3d 654 (5th Cir. 2000).
95Carol Barnhart Inc. v. Economy Cover Corp., 773 F.2d 411 (2d Cir. 1985).
96Id.
246 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

were dictated by the utilitarian need to display clothes.97 Generally, those aspects
of an androids body that are functional may be eligible for patent but not copyright
protection.
With copyright there are a number of rights worth reviewing given the future
possibility of uploading a mind to another body and the possibility of downloading
information to the mind from another source. Let’s start with a basic scenario,
robot or android characters appearing in a movie or TV series. The person who
wrote the script describing the android or robot characters would normally do so
as part of his or her job for a studio, as a result, the studio would own the copy-
right to the characters described in the script. Of course, if the work was not for
hire, and without contracting away ownership rights, the writer would be the
author and would retain the copyright to the character. However, if the studio owns
the character rights, they can license them to a third party to make a derivative
(i.e., spin-off). Interestingly, the person playing a character on film or TV does not
hold the copyright to the character they portray (no matter how much they bring
the “character to life”), but they could claim a “right of publicity” to their actual
appearance. Since in the U.S. the right of publicity is state law, and copyright is
federal law, there are potential conflicts between rights holders under these differ-
ent schemes of protection.98
I should note that the conclusion that “indicia of identity” is not copyrightable
subject matter applies to natural people. However, as I discuss throughout this sec-
tion of the chapter, whether the appearance of an android is copyright protected
subject matter will likely be determined by courts examining several theories
within copyright law. For example, one can analogize the changing features of
an android’s face to the changing visual display of a video game. Addressing the
question of whether the changing visual scene of a video game is “fixed,” courts
have held that since the program running the game is fixed on a computer chip or
disk, and that the visual patterns the player sees are repetitive, the visual display is
copyrightable, so possibly the face of an android could be copyrightable subject
matter. Some additional points should be considered for copyright of an android’s
features, if the facial appearance of an android is created by software directing
the position of shafts behind an android’s face (creating a particular facial appear-
ance), the software creating the facial features of an android is copyrightable
material. Thus, the question for the courts to decide is whether the androids facial
appearance resulting from the software’s instructions is copyright protected. Meet
the following “face android” which could serve as a test case for this question.
In Japan, Atsuo Takanishi of Waseda University working with NTT Docomo’s
manufacturers has succeeded in creating a shape-shifting robot (WD-2), which
(not surprisingly) is capable of changing its face.99 The robot features an elastic

97Id.
98CaliforniaCivil Code, § 3344; See also, Section 301 of the U.S. Copyright law.
99WD-2 Face Morphing Robot Could Be Anyone, at: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-
Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1197.
Copyright Law and Appearance 247

Fig. 7.6  Meet WD-2, a robot

that can change its facial
expressions. Image courtesy
of Takanishi Lab, Waseda
University, Tokyo

mask made from a head dummy and can change its facial features by activating
specific facial points on the mask, with each point possessing three degrees of
freedom. As for the materials used, the WD-2’s mask is fabricated with a highly
elastic material, with bits of steel wool mixed in for added strength. To “copy” a
face, the researchers use a 3D scanner to determine the locations of seventeen
facial points essential to reconstruct the face of a particular individual (or they
may create a completely new face).100 In addition, the robot can display an indi-
vidual’s hair style and skin color if a photo of their face is projected onto the 3D
mask. If a court decided that under copyright law the android’s facial appearance
was protected subject matter, the owner of the android could prevent distribution
of unauthorized copies of the androids likeness; as could the android, that is, if it
had the legal status to defend its rights (Fig. 7.6).
Continuing the above discussion, I propose that the law of copyright may offer
androids, virtual avatars, and robots a set of legal rights that can be used to control
the use of their appearance. Already, the question of what rights attach to cyborgs
and robots has generated interest from the courts. For example, Robert Freitas
from the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing comments that science fiction
writers Ben Bova and Harlan Ellison established a precedent in robot civil rights
when defending the copyright of their short story, Brillo (about a robotic police
officer). According to lawyer Robert Freitas back in 1985 Judge Albert Stevens
held that robots had the same status as human beings as characters in stories and
therefore were protected by copyright law.101 Freitas thought that this was an espe-
cially important ruling by the court because it put robots on an equal footing with
human beings, at least in one area of the law. Since this early case, the question of
what rights artificially intelligent machines should have in comparison to humans

100Id.
101Robert A. Freitas, Jr., 1985, The Legal Rights of Robots, Student Lawyer, V. 13, 54–56, at: http://
www.rfreitas.com/Astro/LegalRightsOfRobots.htm.
248 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

has been the subject of intense debate among roboticists, philosophers, and law-
yers. For example, with advances in artificial intelligence, there is a growing need
under copyright law to determine whether an autonomous artificially intelligent
machine can be an author for creative works. My goal in this section of the chapter
is to make the point that copyright law designed to protect the original “works of
authorship” of humans also provides an interesting and relevant way to discuss
machine rights as we move forward into an age of cyborgs, androids, and artifi-
cially intelligent machines.

Derivative Works, Androids, and Mind Uploads

Under copyright law, a derivative work is based on preexisting material in which

enough creative work has been added such that the new work represents an origi-
nal work of authorship. For sake of discussion, we can consider a human an “orig-
inal,” and an android designed to appear as a particular human a “copy.” If the
person making the derivative is not the original author, the making of a deriva-
tive without permission is copyright infringement. The author of a derivative
work does not receive the rights associated with the original copyrighted work,
and in fact, must get the permission from the owner of the copyright to copy,
sell, or distribute the derivative work. With these comments in mind, and for sake
of exploring future law in the coming cyborg age, let’s assume the content of a
mind is copyrightable (in fact, software is copyright protected). Given Professor
Berger’s work on building an artificial hippocampus at his University of Southern
California lab, it’s quite possible that in the future a person’s thoughts and mem-
ories could be stored on a neuroprosthetic device, thus satisfying the copyright
requirement that the work is fixed on a tangible medium of expression. If, as
neuroscientists argue, thoughts and memories are the product of the strengths of
neuronal connections, and change as a function of new information and memo-
ries being acquired, it seems at this granular level of analysis that all thoughts
and memories are original; but at a higher level of analysis, they may not be. For
example, a person or android recalling the first few lines of the U.S. constitution
(i.e., recalling information stored in their mind), is not creating an original work of
authorship, in fact, this is similar to reading out loud a page of copyrighted mate-
rial. Thus, material stored internally on a neuroprosthetic device that is not origi-
nal, would not be copyright protected subject matter.
Under copyright law, if one uploads their mind to an android, would the copy
of the uploaded mind be considered a derivative work of the original mind? It
seems only those aspects of the mind that are distinct to the upload would be. We
know from cases dealing with the computer industry, that a second version of a
software program (if it contains additional features) is considered a derivative
work based on the earlier version. We also know that in the U.S., copyright
extends only to the original material contributed by the derivative author, not to the
preexisting material which is already copyright protected. In my analysis of
Derivative Works, Androids, and Mind Uploads 249

copyright law, once a mind is uploaded to an android, only new thoughts and
memories acquired after the upload would be considered original. If the mind
upload is an exact replica of the original mind, at the time of the upload what
would be new? Nothing, in this case, the copyright owner of the original mind that
was uploaded to an android’s body would simply be exercising the right to repro-
duce the already copyrighted mindfile.102 But by including additional “mindcode,”
so for example, the target of the upload spoke a new language, then a derivative
would have been made by the original copyright holder, but copyright protection
would only extend to the new material contained in the mind upload.
If someone desired to upload a mind, or some characteristics of a famous per-
son’s personality into the body of an android would they need a license from the
copyright holder to do so? Under U.S. copyright law if a person obtains a license
from an author in order to make a derivative work based on the original, the person
does not obtain the copyright on the original—they gain only the right to make
the derivative work agreed upon; the owner retains all rights to the original and all
its elements, and the copyright on the original is not extended by the creation of
the derivative work. This observation is relevant to our cyborg future because the
length of copyright protection is implicated.
In the U.S. for early works the length of copyright is a given time period as
stated in the copyright statutes. Moving closer to current times, for works created
after January 1, 1978, for one author, the work is copyright protected for the life
of the author plus 70 years. Again, assuming for this discussion that original con-
tent of a mind is copyrightable and “fixed”, this means that while a person is alive
the content of their mind is copyright protected and for 70 years afterwards. But
if a mindclone was considered a derivative work, how long would copyright pro-
tection last for a mindclone uploaded to an android that could live forever, would
copyright be extended such that everything a person said or thought would never
enter the public domain? Compare this particular outcome with the “right to be
forgotten” in which people in some jurisdictions have the right to have links to
information they want held private erased from the Internet. I wonder whether the
above scenario represents the best outcome for society, that is, allowing people to
exercise personal monopolies over information? As extending copyright would
strengthen the right to be forgotten, should society extend copyright protection for
our thoughts and memories to an android in order to keep them under the con-
trol of the person’s mind clone indefinitely? I think we should carefully consider
whether to allow this possibility as any form of censorship by the original or clone
should only be allowed with extreme caution.
In most cases a mind upload will require transferring the mind from one body
to another. One body could be biological, one mechanical, or another virtual in the
case of a mind upload to a virtual avatar roaming the Internet or “living” within
the cloud.103 Under U.S. copyright law, the mere translation from one medium to
another may lack originality which is a prima facie requirement for copyright

102Martine Rothblatt, id, note 34.

103Martine Rothblatt, id, note 34.
250 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

protection. An interesting question for a future court considering copyright for a

mind upload to another body, is what amount of originality is required for the
android to be considered a derivative work? As a public policy question, should an
android even be considered a derivative? There are two important cases for an
emerging law of cyborgs that deal with whether the use of a different medium is
sufficient to pass the creativity bar for copyright protection.
One such case, Alva Studios, Inc. v. Winninger, dealt with a reproduction of a
Rodin statute that was identical to the original statute in all respects other than size
and configuration of the base of the statute.104 Here the court held the reproduc-
tion of the statute to be original (and therefore a derivative) due to the “great skill
and originality” required to produce the work. It seems to me that “great skill and
originality” are clearly necessary to build an android so I would conclude from
Alva that an android created as a reproduction of a person’s likeness would be cop-
yrightable (that is, the nonfunctional aspects). However, I don’t view the law in
this area as settled because jurisdictions have decided cases differently that
appeared to me to be factually similar. For example, compare Alva with Batlin &
Sons, Inc. v. Snyer, in which the court held that a plastic model version of an
antique cast iron “Uncle Sam” bank was unoriginal and therefore not eligible for
copyright protection.105 In this case, the court reasoned that the mere translation
from one medium to another in itself, was a trivial variation to constitute a deriva-
tive work. Further, we know from Carol Barnhart Inc., that only the nonfunctional
aspects of a “useful article” are copyrightable.106 Relating these court holdings to
our cyborg future is challenging; if the human body is considered one medium,
and the androids body another, an exact android replica may encompass sufficient
originality to create a derivative work if extensive skill is required to make the
android replica, but if great skill is not required, then based on Batlin copyright
protection will not extend to the android replica.
In this discussion of android rights, let’s also evaluate the features of an android
with respect to copyright law. Generally the features of a face are standard to a
human body, that is, two eyes, a nose, mouth, etc. Under copyright law, are such
generic facial characteristics eligible for copyright protection? In the U.S. the prin-
ciple in copyright law in which certain elements of a creative work are held to not
be protected is scenes a faire. Scenes a faire is the doctrine which applies when the
work is mandated by or customary to the genre. The loose definition of scenes a
faire refers to situations in which there is essentially no other way to express a par-
ticular idea except by using standard elements common to the domain (for example,
a peg-legged pirate character in a novel cannot be copyrighted, or the human torso
presented in the above case). If androids are thought to be designed with standard
facial features, these features may render the androids face not copyrightable under
the scenes a faire doctrine. Again, future courts will have to decide this issue.

104AlvaStudios, Inc. v. Winninger, 117 F.Supp. 265, 123 U.S.P.Q. 487 (S.D.N.Y., 1959).
105Batlin& Sons, Inc. v. Snyer, 536 F2d 486 (2d Cir. 1976).
106Carol Barnhart, id., note 95.
First Sale Doctrine 251

First Sale Doctrine

Clearly, our cyborg future involving neuroprosthesis, mind uploads, and memory
enhancements, will involve very challenging and fascinating issues for copyright
law. For example, if a mindclone is uploaded to an android body, would this be
covered under the “first sale” doctrine of copyright law? The “first sale” doctrine
says that a person who buys a legally produced copyrighted work may “sell or oth-
erwise dispose” of the work as he sees fit, subject to some important conditions
and exceptions.107 In other words, if you could legally buy the memories of
another person’s mind, “first sale” gives you the right to sell or loan the mindfile to
another person but not exercise other rights under copyright law such as to make a
reproduction of the mindfile or to make a derivative work.
An important observation for our cyborg future is that the first sale doctrine
only applies to the owner of a copy acquired through a purchase, not to some-
one who acquired the mindfile through a software license. As to a license, would
a mindfile be “exclusive” in which only the recipient of the mindfile (licensee) is
entitled to exercise the rights set out in the license, or a nonexclusive license in
which the recipient of the mindfile could exercise the rights set out in the license
but could not prevent others from exercising the same rights under a different
license. If a person owns (not licenses) a mindfile, they have a right to sell it to
another person, who then has the right to resell the copy, but subsequent own-
ers can’t reproduce or create derivative works, or publicly perform the mindfile,
they can only resell it. Of course if Martine Rothblatt is right to assume mindfiles
will be regulated as a medical device, the FDA would have much to say about the
resale of a mindfile. However, I think content providers will also carve out a stake
in the disposition of mindfiles, because I think the sale of mindfiles that represent
“remarkable memories” could be a lucrative business.
Back to copyright law, would the public performance right found in copyright
also apply to androids that had received a mind upload? The answer would depend
in part on how the courts categorize an android under copyright law. For example,
the U.S. copyright statute states that a sculptured work can’t be performed only
displayed, whereas an android reciting material or acting out a particular perfor-
mance, is clearly performing a work. Under the public performance right, a copy-
right holder is allowed to control when the work is performed “publicly.” And a
performance is considered “public” when the work is performed in a “place open
to the public or at a place where a substantial number of persons outside of a nor-
mal circle of a family and its social acquaintances are gathered.”108 A performance
is also considered to be public if it is transmitted to multiple locations, such as
through television and radio. Thus, it would be a violation of the public perfor-
mance right in a motion picture to rent a video and to show it in a public park or
theater without obtaining a license from the copyright holder. In contrast, the

10717 U.S. Section 109(a), Limitations of exclusive rights under copyright law.

10817 U.S. Code § 106—Exclusive rights in copyrighted works.
252 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

performance of the video on a home TV where friends and family are gathered
would not be considered a “public” performance and would not be prohibited
under the Copyright Act. The public performance right is generally held to cover
computer software, since software is considered a literary work under the
Copyright Act. In addition, many software programs fall under the definition of an
audio visual work. But I should point out that the application of the public perfor-
mance right to software has not been fully developed by our courts, except that it
is clear that a publicly available video game is controlled by this right. In my view,
how the courts will apply public performance rights under copyright law to
androids will be truly fascinating and relevant for our cyborg future.
The first sale doctrine for physical goods is mostly straight forward, but more
difficult to apply for digital goods, and especially for a mindfile. The first sale
clause was enacted during a time when most copyrighted works were produced in
tangible formats that made such works difficult to reproduce accurately on a large
scale. Obviously, a brain is tangible, but a digital copy of the brain is not. Once
it is possible to create a digital copy of the mind, it could be exactly reproduced,
if so, people might advocate for strong first sale rights to protect their memories
from being resold (although I expect a market for the sale of interesting memories,
and “remarkable experiences” will have value, for example, some parents could
want their kids to have Stephen Hawking’s memories in physics). Now that many
protected works are produced digitally, copyright owners have lobbied Congress
for laws that directly or indirectly undermine the “first sale” doctrine. Additionally,
copyright owners are producing their works in such a way as to include technolo-
gies that interfere with the “first sale” doctrine. Software companies also routinely
attempt to avoid the first sale doctrine by characterizing their transaction with
the purchaser as a license rather than a sale, via non-negotiable “shrinkwrap” or
“clickwrap” agreements. In our cyborg future I wonder if people will license the
content of their mind to another, and if a third party will someday own a license to
content stored in our minds? As a graduate student, I would have liked to have had
Cal Tech’s Richard Feynman’s skill at solving quantum mechanics problems. The
licensing of memories and knowledge stored on a neuroprosthetic device within
our minds, is a technological future that humanity should debate while we still
have a window of opportunity to control our cyborg destiny.

Right of Publicity for Androids

Returning more specifically to the law as it may relate to the physical appearance
of androids, of particular relevance for a Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies are
right of publicity cases for robots, described by some as “impersonator” cases with
androids serving as the impersonators. The right of publicity allows a person to
control the use of one’s appearance from commercial exploitation by another
Right of Publicity for Androids 253

party.109 In our cyborg future, the right of publicity could stop a person from
uploading their mind to an android or to a virtual avatar that resembled a famous
person; but conversely the right of publicity could protect an android’s right to
control the use of its appearance, that is, if the android could exercise this right.
Damages in right of publicity cases are measured by the commercial injury to the
value of personal identity. In some jurisdictions, the validity of the right of public-
ity can even survive the death of the individual. This brings up an interesting ques-
tion for our cyborg future, would one’s rights to their appearance continue once
their mind was uploaded to an android or virtual avatar that looked like them?
There are two especially important cases in robot lore that relate to a Law of
Looks and Artificial Bodies. One is White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc., in
which Samsung utilized a robot that looked and acted (to a certain degree) like
Vanna White of “Wheel of Fortune” fame.110 Vanna White sued Samsung claiming
that Samsung had appropriated her likeness for commercial exploitation without
her permission. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that this usage was an
infringement because Samsung had deliberately used the image and popularity of
White and because White was readily identifiable from the context of the use.
While the android wasn’t a close resemblance to White in appearance, it was
enough for the court to hold that the android combined with the Wheel of Fortune
set “evoked” her identity.111 In discussing the White case, the Ninth Circuit
broadly construed California’s right of publicity law, and commented that the term
“likeness” was held to encompass a robot which caricatured Vanna White’s fea-
tures.112 For example, the robot wore a blonde wig, and was turning letters on
what looked like a “Wheel of Fortune” set. If the Vanna White android only par-
tially resembled Vanna, but still passed the bar for a successful right of publicity
claim, recall that Japanese roboticists are predicting that the race to create
androids indistinguishable from humans is only 10 years away.
An often repeated statement in discussions about the “law of robots” was made
by Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge, Alex Kozinski who famously wrote
“Robots again,” when presented with the second important case of robot imper-
sonators. Indeed, Judge Kozinski, robots again, so clear your docket as more are
coming. In the second robot/android case, Wendt v. Host International, Inc.,113 the
issue was not whether the androids looked-liked the actors themselves (as was the
case with White), but rather whether the android looked like the character the actor
played on the popular TV program, Cheers. In terms of a Law of Looks and
Artificial Bodies, what rights are involved in this scenario? The actors can claim a
right of publicity to their likeness, Paramount Pictures can claim copyright

109Right of Publicity, at: https://ilt.eff.org/index.php/Right_of_Publicity.

110White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc., 971 F.2d 1395 (9th Cir. 1992), Samsung utilized
a robot that looked and acted like Vanna White of “Wheel of Fortune” fame.
111Id.
112Id.
113Wendt v. Host International, Inc., 197 F.3d 1284 (9th Cir. 1999).
254 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

ownership to the “Cliff” and “Norm” characters (who looked and acted a certain
way), and Paramount Pictures as copyright holder, can license the Cheers charac-
ters to a third party (Host in this example) for commercial exploitation. In fact,
Host International’s goal was to make airport bars that reminded travelers of the
Cheers set, complete with animatronic robots sitting at the bar that looked like and
made remarks like the characters “Norm” and “Cliff”. The actors George Wendt
and John Ratzenburger who played “Norm” and “Cliff” sued Host for misappro-
priation of their likeness. For our interests, the Cheers case added another wrinkle
to an emerging law of cyborgs: Paramount Pictures owned the copyrights to
Cheers, and Paramount wasn’t licensing Cheers itself, but a Cheers derivative of
the Norm and Cliff characters.114 As such, a derivative under Federal copyright
law trumps any California right of publicity state law that conflicts with it.
Interestingly, faced with this conflict, the Ninth Circuit decided that you can sepa-
rate an actor’s likeness from the character implying that an actor’s personal rights
to their “likeness” can trump the copyright owner’s right to make “spinoffs”.115
Based on the above discussion, where do we stand for an emerging law of
cyborgs based on right of publicity law? In the U.S. courts and legislators have
been overwhelmingly unwilling to extend the right of publicity beyond human
individuals to non-human “persons,” with the limited exception of music
groups.116 Further, the right of publicity, is limited to “famous” person’s so robots
would have to be similarly famous to successfully apply the doctrine, but recall the
android representation of Matsuko Deluxe discussed earlier, and we seem well on
our way to celebrity androids joining us. Further, the legal precedence of limiting
the right of publicity to famous humans was developed in an age before androids
and robots were entering society, and before the leading centers for android
design, Japan and South Korea, were building androids indistinguishable from
humans.117 As the technology to create artificially intelligent androids improves, I
see coming conflicts between androids that resemble actual humans, and those
owning rights to the androids. In addition, while humans and cyborgs are natural
persons, forms of artificial intelligence are not, thus androids lack “standing” to
establish a right of publicity claim to their appearance. Lastly, as the right of pub-
licity has developed, so too has the indicia of identity that can be protected, which
some courts have found to include look-a-likes, sound-a-likes, voices, styles, dis-
tinctive phases, distinctive objects, settings strongly associated with particular
celebrities, characters or roles strongly associated with particular celebrities, and
signature music styles.118

114See generally Warner Bros., Inc. v. American Broadcasting Cos., 720 F.2d 231, 235 (2d Cir.
1983) (Superman copyright belongs to Warner Brothers).
115Wendt v. Host International, Inc., id. note 113.
116Winterland Concessions Co. v. Sileo, 528 F.Supp. 1201, 1213, (N.D. Ill. 1982).
117See Tokyo Dist. Dt., 29 June 1976, 817 Hanrei Jiho 3–14. See also Article 79 of the Japanese

Civil Code.
118Stacey Allen, Emilio B. Nicolas and Megan Honey, Non-Human Persons and the Right of

Publicity, at: http://images.jw.com/com/publications/1185.pdf.

Androids and Trade Dress Law 255

Fig. 7.7  Robots again! The robot maids shown in this figure, are representative drawings of
“female appearing” robots. Images courtesy of Wikipedia Commons, VectorStock

Androids and Trade Dress Law

Continuing the idea that intellectual property law can provide an important con-
tribution to machine rights, trademark law may also offer a valid way to think
about rights for our technological progeny. Let’s use an example to illustrate some
aspects of trademark law that could apply to androids and artificially intelligent
machines. Consider a line of androids created to clean houses and that were col-
lectively designed with a distinctive appearance to represent the company employ-
ing them. Is there a law that can be used to “protect” the distinctive appearance of
the androids in their design as robotic maids? Trademark law offers possibilities.
Trademark law is concerned with the issue of whether there would be a likelihood
of confusion as to the origin of the service (the company offering the android ser-
vice) provided by the android maids if other androids that were similarly designed
also performed a maid service (Fig. 7.7).
Generally, in most jurisdictions trademark law protects the use of a word, sym-
bol, or phrase that is used to identify a particular manufacturer or seller’s products
in order to distinguish them from the products of another.119 For example, the
trademark “Nike,” along with the Nike “swoosh,” identifies the shoes made by
Nike and distinguishes them from shoes made by other companies. When such
marks are used to identify services rather than products, they are called service
marks, although they are generally treated just the same as trademarks. Under
some circumstances, trademark protection can extend beyond words, symbols, and
phrases to include other aspects of a product, such as its color or its packaging. On
this point, just as the unique shape of a Coca-Cola bottle might serve as an

1191 U.S.C. 1127 Construction and definitions; intent of chapter, at: http://www.bitlaw.com/sourc

e/15usc/1127.html.
256 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

identifying feature of the product so too could the unique shape of our android
maids. Such features fall generally under the term “trade dress,” and may be pro-
tected if consumers associate that feature with a particular manufacturer rather
than the product in general.
Trade dress, for our android maid example, would consist of all the various ele-
ments of the android’s design that were used to promote a product or service
(however, only nonfunctional aspects of trade dress are protected). For a product,
trade dress may be the packaging, the attendant displays, and even the configura-
tion of the product itself. For a service, it may be the decor or environment in
which a service is provided—for example, the distinctive decor of the Hard Rock
Cafe restaurant chain. Generally, to receive protection as trade dress, the following
must be true: The trade dress must be “inherently distinctive,” unless it has
acquired “secondary meaning”. Under trademark law, for trade dress to be consid-
ered inherently distinctive, it “must be unusual and memorable, conceptually sepa-
rable from the product, and likely to serve primarily as a designator of origin of
the product.”120 In a landmark trade dress case, the U.S. Supreme Court found that
a Mexican restaurant chain’s decor could be considered inherently distinctive
because, in addition to murals and bright colored pottery, the chain also used a
specific indoor and outdoor decor based upon neon colored border stripes, distinc-
tive outdoor umbrellas, and a novel buffet style of service.121 In addition, second-
ary meaning would require that the android maids come to stand for (in the mind
of the consumer) the company they represent.
Another point to make with regard to protecting the look of the android maids
is the idea that functional aspects of trade dress cannot be protected under trade-
mark law (or as we learned above, copyright law). As an example, a manufacturer
cannot “lock up” the use of a particular unique android shape if that shape confers
some sort of functional advantage.122 For example, a company that claimed trade
dress on a round beach table lost their rights when the Seventh Circuit determined
that the design was primarily functional.123 Only designs, shapes, or other aspects
of the product that were created strictly to promote the product or service are pro-
tectable trade dress. Thus courts may decide, the tapered shape of a female android
may not be necessary to perform the tasks of a maid, and therefore may be pro-
tected as trade dress when combined with other nonfunctional and distinctive fea-
tures. Finally, the trade dress aspect of packaging may be protected if a showing
can be made that the average consumer would likely be confused as to product ori-
gin if another product is allowed to appear in similar dress. So if one group of
android maids look too similar to another, the second group may be deemed to
have infringed the trade dress of the first.

120Duraco Products Inc. v. Joy Plastic Enterprises Ltd., 40 F.3d 1431 (3d Cir. 1994)).
121Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc., 505 U.S. 763 (1992).) (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Samara
Brothers, Inc., 529 U.S. 205 (2000).
122Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co., Inc., 115 S. Ct. 1300 (1995).
123Jay Franco & Sons, Inc. v. Franek, 615 F.3d 855 (7th Cir. 2010)).
Gender, Androids, and Discrimination 257

Gender, Androids, and Discrimination

Moving away from intellectual property law to other issues of law and policy that
relate to the look and appearance of our technological progeny, if gender discrimi-
nation is a societal issue now, imagine a cyborg future with androids as sex surro-
gates and subjugated to stereotypical gender specific tasks. Human nature being
what it is, androids could be exploited in many ways; in fact, the range of tasks
that androids will be designed to perform is just beginning to be explored. For
example, at a tech conference, pole dancing robots drew major crowds from male
participants and as what may be a harbinger of the future, the female android (also
termed a gynoid) Asteroid Replee Q2 warns visitors that touching her breast is
sexual harassment. Japanese robot company A-lab, working with roboticist
Hiroshi Ishiguro, has ruled out producing androids that might be used for sex. But
a spokesman working with Ishiguro’s lab says it is not a great leap of imagination
to think future robots, given the advancement in robotics and silicone skin technol-
ogy, will be used for sex. On this point, Takahashi Komiyama, spokesman for A-
Lab comments that “Physical relations will be possible in general with such
androids,” and that “Androids for the sex industry are a definite possibly.”124
After the above comments, let’s pose a basic question—can an android be con-
sidered female by society such that gender based “cyborg discrimination” could
exist for our technological progeny? I think so. According to social scientists gen-
der is the state of being male or female, with the term typically used with reference
to social or cultural differences, rather than biological ones. Thus if society views
an android as female based on its design, why not consider its gender as female
when discussing rights? I believe discrimination based on gender could become a
major civil rights issue in the coming cyborg age for our technological inventions.
Already, gender discrimination against females clearly exists within society, and
seems to be extending to virtual reality and our android designs. Even if androids
lack the right to protect themselves from gender discrimination, still society may
decide that gender discrimination against machines that are indistinguishable from
humans sets a poor standard for human conduct. According to Jennifer Robertson,
in Japan “Roboticists assign gender on their common-sense assumptions about
female and male sex and gender roles.”125 In fact, there is debate amongst roboti-
cists as to what embodiments of gender should be perpetuated in androids. That is,
how human-like, how female-like, or how male-like, should androids be and how
should their bodies be proportioned? Because some robots are designed to pass as
humans, roboticists often model them after specific females or males (recall the
right of publicity), or resort to giving them standardized gender features; for exam-
ple, Osaka University roboticists Hiroshi Ishiguro scanned several young Japanese
woman’s faces to derive a statistically average composite face.

124See generally, Androids as Partners, at: https://www.facebook.com/IBTimesUK/posts/

730971053638945.
125Jennifer Robertson, id., note 3.
258 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

Gender discrimination in employment often results in lawsuits, and given

androids will enter the workforce, employment disputes involving androids may
result. While most employers understand that it is illegal to discriminate against
someone due to their gender, in employment decisions, recent cases are now ques-
tioning whether it is acceptable to discriminate against existing or potential
employees based on their appearance. I view such cases as precedence for future
court cases which may deal with discrimination against female androids. For
example, in Wilson v. Southwest Airlines,126 Southwest Airlines sought to defend
its policy of hiring only “attractive female flight attendants” as a bona fide occupa-
tional qualification arguing its “sexy image” was “crucial to the airline’s continued
success.”127 In Wilson, the court disagreed and held that sexual attraction is not a
relevant requirement for flight attendants. When female androids increase their
intelligence and have the ability to learn by accessing the wealth of information
about gender roles found on the internet, they may learn to oppose discrimination
directed against them.
Furthermore, accessories worn on the body often serves to define a person’s
gender. The accessories one wears, not only helps define a person’s appearance but
may result in discrimination. In terms of accessories and discrimination, a Federal
appeals court upheld a police department policy forbidding male officers from
wearing earring studs while off-duty.128 Further, grooming, dress, and appearance
requirements are generally impermissible when based on gender stereotypes.129
But the Ninth Circuit upheld a hotel/casinos dress code policy that women must
wear facial makeup.130 On the other hand, the cover design for an academic jour-
nal prompted a wave of criticism over what was perceived as discrimination
against women. An illustration of a female robot adorned the cover of the 2014
issue of the Journal of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence. The cover
showed a female android dragging a cable connected to her back, with a book in
her right hand and a broom in her left. Considering gender discrimination law,
sorting out the policy and legal issues associated with female-appearing androids
will not be easy as the current law in this area for humans seems fragmented. As
an example, in the U.S. just recently a jury rejected a discrimination complaint of
a woman who claimed she was passed over for promotion because she looked too
sexy—how would sexy be defined for an android?131

126Wilson v. Southwest Airlines, 517 F.Supp. 292 (N.D. Tex, 1981).

127Id.,at 293.
128Rathert v. Village of Peotone, 903 F.2d 510 (7th Cir. 1990).
129See O’Donnell v. Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse, Inc., 656 F. Supp. 263, 266 (S.D. Ohio,

1987).
130The plaintiff alleged gender discrimination, see Jesperson v. Harrahs, 2004 U.S. App. Lexis

26892 (9th Cir. 2004).

131Goodwin v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1:03-cv-11797 (D. Mass.). [2005 FP

Jun].
Our Changing Faces 259

Our Changing Faces

A person’s appearance changes naturally as they age, and also by the use of non-
invasive techniques such as the application of makeup. People’s appearance may
also change as a result of injury or disease, but one of the most radical changes to
a person’s facial appearance, results from elective cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic sur-
gery is actually a type of plastic surgery, which consists of reconstructive surgery
on the skin or flesh. A good example of plastic surgery is procedures to repair seri-
ous burns and other types of damage to the patient. In contrast, cosmetic surgery is
elective surgery, often chosen as a way to enhance the body image. As a measure
of how much people dramatically change their appearance just consider—accord-
ing to statistics by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, in 2014 there were
over fifteen million cosmetic procedures performed in the U.S. alone. And South
Korea is not only a leading center for android design but also a leading destina-
tion for cosmetic surgery. On this point, it is interesting to note that women who
receive cosmetic surgery in South Korea often experience difficulty reentering
their home countries because their new faces are so different that they don’t suf-
ficiently resemble their passport photos. As a result, South Korean hospitals are
issuing “plastic-surgery certificates” for overseas patients to circumvent issues
when traveling back home. To some, plastic surgery for androids may consist of
repairing “mechanical parts,” but actually, due to advances in creating skin-like
surfaces to cover an android’s mechanical body, in the future, cosmetic surgery for
androids, may be similar to cosmetic surgery for humans.
Interestingly, one study of reactions to patients before and after plastic surgery
found that when “before” and “after” photographs were compared, post-surgery
patients, were judged to be more posed, more interesting, friendlier, kinder, and
warmer.132 However, that people conform to a societal beauty standard by receiv-
ing cosmetic surgery and by the selection of their dress and appearance (through
makeup, etc.) is well known, as is the observation that people who appear “differ-
ent” from societal expectations, often experience discrimination in society and in
the workplace. These observations raise the question of what would be the ideal or
“socially accepted” look for an android functioning in society, and would androids
and artificially intelligent machines experience discrimination if they looked suffi-
ciently different from humans.
Although cosmetic surgery procedures are quite common, there is risk involved
and not everyone who has plastic surgery is satisfied with the outcome; in fact
many people are severely injured as a result of the surgery. Some of the side
effects can include deformities, disfigurement, and skin death. And poor results of
cosmetic surgery, often lead to a lawsuit; for example, in New York a jury awarded
a woman millions in restitution for a botched plastic surgery operation that left her
so deformed that she was not able to have the problem surgically corrected. So the

132Michael, Kalick, id., note 61.

260 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

pursuit of conforming to societal standards of appearance can be fraught with dan-

ger and unintended consequences.
The above observations are interesting in light of a 1936 case heard in
Connecticut.133 Herman Cohen petitioned to change his name to Albert Connelly,
but was denied by the court stating: “each race has its virtues and faults and men
consider these in their relations with each other.” The court reasoned that the
applicant would be travelling under false color, so to speak, if his request were
granted.” Similarly, if people could upload their mind to an android, would they be
travelling under false color? Could future androids and cyborgs with the ability to
upgrade their appearance with each new version of hardware and software also
benefit from a “certificate of authenticity” or would they too be traveling under
false color? Or perhaps prudent public policy would restrict androids from chang-
ing their appearance in order to make their identification easier; if so, perhaps soft-
ware enhancements would be permitted to allow our technological inventions to
increase their information processing capabilities but not hardware enhancements
that changed their appearance. Imagine a cyborg in a “line up” suspected of a
criminal offense but with the capability to change its appearance at will; under this
condition, could justice ever be served?
Given that androids, cyborgs, and artificially intelligent machines will be the
recipient of emerging technologies, are there laws which relate to the technolo-
gies used to enhance an individual, and are there appropriate remedies to redress
unwanted outcomes relating to the integration of technology into their body?
When cosmetic surgery is performed and the surgeon is suspected of negligence,
a person can pursue a medical malpractice claim. Of course a malpractice claim is
brought forth by a natural person. But no current cyborg is equipped with so much
technology that their natural person status is questioned, thus all current cyborgs
have standing to pursue a medical malpractice claim. But lacking personhood sta-
tus androids or artificially intelligent machines are barred from proceeding with
such a claim or individually pursuing any other right under the law to protect the
integrity of their body. Of course, human owners and corporations have rights to
protect their property; and androids are currently considered property. To illustrate
a medical malpractice claim involving “cyborg technology” a surgeon placed the
wrong size prosthesis on a person during shoulder replacement surgery; the result
was that the person lost most of the use of his right arm. What would a medical
malpractice claim look like for an android that is, if it could pursue such a claim;
it seems to me that the android would have to be concerned that its original design
or an update to its appearance affected its ability to function in society or deviated
from some accepted standard of appearance. Of course lacking personhood status,
an android couldn’t pursue an action to begin with, or if it could, the malpractice
suit would not be against a physician but an engineer or software designer.
Since prosthetic devices change the appearance of humans, likewise they
will change the appearance of a cyborg or android. What law relates directly to

133In re Cohen, 4 Conn. Supp. 342, 343 (1936).

Our Changing Faces 261

prosthetic devices that may malfunction? Related specifically to prosthetic devices

is products liability law; with this law, manufacturers of prosthetics have a duty
to make prosthetic devices that do not malfunction and that operate as adver-
tised. They breach that duty when there is a flaw in the product’s make, model, or
design. The stakes can be high as defective prosthetics can malfunction, severely
injuring or disfiguring the patient and in our cyborg future, an android or other
artificially intelligent machine. Heart implants, for instance, “misfire” when the
wires are exposed, sending the patient into cardiac arrest, and hip implants may
be recalled when they prematurely break, causing chronic pain and arthritic symp-
toms. Under FDA requirements, manufacturers must recall defective products
and warn consumers of foreseeable harm; in the coming cyborg age should this
requirement also hold for the technology worn by androids and artificially intel-
ligent machines? Under products liability law, manufacturers are strictly liable
for any harm caused by malfunctioning or defective prosthetics so a cyborg need
only show damage was caused by the cyborg technology, no finding of fault is
necessary.

Concluding Examples of Lookism Discrimination

As with humans, I believe that for androids, one of the main places where look-
ism discrimination will be especially problematic, is the workplace. Given cultural
standards for beauty, is an attractive person or particular appearance “necessary”
to perform a job? It’s likely that the design of an intelligent robot in the form of a
snake to search a collapsed building would not be considered attractive by human
standards but right for the job. Generally, courts define job requirements narrowly,
meaning that physical attractiveness would not be easily shown as essential for
most jobs, thus discrimination based on form or appearance could be problematic
for employers as long as the android could perform the job.
Problematic or not, numerous examples of discrimination in the workplace sug-
gests that people equipped with cyborg technologies may experience discrimina-
tory treatment at work based on their appearance. Just one of many examples is
the case of Riam Dean, a student from London, who was removed from the shop
floor at the company’s Savile Row branch when management became aware that
she wore a prosthetic limb. Dean who commented that the prosthetic was part of
her, and “not a cosmetic,” sued Abercrombie & Fitch for disability discrimination
after she reported being “personally diminished and humiliated.”134 But discrimi-
nation based on prosthetic devices doesn’t exist only at the workplace. Stories
abound of visually impaired people equipped with digital devices like that worn
by Steve Mann and Neil Harbisson above, being asked to leave an establishment

134British disabled woman sues Abercrombie & Fitch for discrimination, at:, http://www.

asexuality.org/en/topic/41760-british-disabled-woman-sues-abercrombie-fitch-for-discrimination/.
262 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

or banned from movie theaters, and let’s not forget that numerous people wearing
Google Glass have been banned from entering restaurants and bars that seek to
protect their customers privacy. Clearly, the way we look, even the technology we
wear, can affect the treatment we receive in society.
Lookism discrimination can be based on a range of technologies worn on the
body. For example, a Federal appeals court in Boston upheld an employer’s refusal
to allow workers to have visible body piercings, even though the employee
claimed the jewelry was worn for religious reasons.135 Interestingly, if cyborgs are
members of a religious group that practices body modification, they may utilize a
cause of action for discrimination under the First Amendment. As an example, a
student in North Carolina, who wore a nose stud, was reinstated into school when
it was determined that she was a member of the Church of Body Modification.
And in Rourke v. State Department of Correctional Services, a court held that a
Native American correction officer’s right to free expression of religion was vio-
lated when he was terminated for refusing to cut his long hair since the tenants of
his Mohawk faith prohibited him from cutting his hair.136 However, while appear-
ance based discrimination may be actionable, most often it has to have a sufficient
nexus to sex, race, age, religion, disability or some other protected category. For
this reason some argue that cyborgs and androids should be considered a protected
class from a constitutional law perspective. However, in the coming decades, I see
cyborg technology creating more-abled humans, at that point, I wonder whether
the protected class status should be granted to unenhanced humans.
In the U.S. the legal theory most likely to afford general protection for the
appearance discrimination victim is handicap discrimination law.137 An important
federal statute for those disabled, the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) bars
employers who receive federal funds from discriminating on the basis of physical
or mental impairment if the impairment substantially limits a major life activity.
The determination of whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activ-
ity is made without regard to the ameliorative effects of mitigating measures,
including prosthetics. This means a person who replaces their right leg with a
cybernetic limb, under the ADA would be labeled disabled even if the new leg was
superior to the original. Without further amending the ADA to account for the
expanding use of cyborg technology, the ADA as written, will lead to untenable
outcomes as we head towards a future merger with machines (the more one is
enhanced with cyborg technology the less disabled they are?). In fact, within one
or two decades, unenhanced people could be discriminating against a cyborg or
android that was physically and intellectually superior to them; how long would
this continue before humans experienced reverse discrimination?

135Cloutierv. Costco, 390 F.2d 126, 2004 U.S. App. (1st Cir. 2004).
136Rourke v. State Department of Correctional Services, 159 Misc.2d, 324 (N.Y. Miac. 1993).
137The U.S. Supreme Court is has been reluctant to recognize new suspect classes and thus

would likely be unwilling to bring physical disability under the protection of the equal protection
clause.
Concluding Examples of Lookism Discrimination 263

The ADA does not specifically name all of the impairments that are covered. In
some situations, using a liberal interpretation of “handicap” by some courts has
left room for bringing the physically unattractive under the protection of the Act.
To appear as handicapped under the ADA the person must make a two-pronged
showing. First, that he/she has a “physical or mental impairment… or is regarded
as having such an impairment” and second, that the impairment “substantially lim-
its one or more major life activities.”138 If the court were to find that a person met
the first prong, then current wording of the U.S. Department of Human and Health
Services would come into play, which states that “Physical or mental impairment
means any physiological disorder or condition, cosmetic disfigurement, or ana-
tomical loss effecting bodily systems including the skin.”139 Elsewhere the regula-
tions include persons with disfiguring scars. Because the whole notion of
disfigurement is one of marred appearance, the ADA regards some people as hand-
icapped by virtue of their physical appearance. Interestingly, “difficulty” in secur-
ing, retaining, or advancing in employment is considered a limiting major life
activity so an android having difficulty entering the labor market could potentially
argue its appearance was a factor.
Under the ADA, of particular relevance for cyborgs is that by defining disability
to include not just a physical state but also “being regarded as” having a disability,
the ADA takes into account the fact that discrimination can derive from the social
construction of physical difference. Thus, under the ADAs definition of a disability,
individuals who are regarded as having a substantially limiting impairment, even
though they may not have such an impairment may receive protection. For exam-
ple, this provision would protect a qualified individual with a severe facial disfig-
urement from being denied employment because an employer feared the “negative
reactions” of customers or co-workers. It’s possible that some aspects of cyborgs
could be protected under this prong of the ADA, future courts will decide this.
However, there are no cases holding that being “plain,” or “unattractive” is a
disability within the meaning of ADA, thus protecting job applicants in those cate-
gories. But it is equally clear that disfigurement, for example, due to a disability or
obesity are usually held to be disabilities within the meaning of the ADA, and so
applicants who were not hired for those reasons could state a claim. Of course, if
an employer could establish that appearance was a bone fide occupational qualifi-
cation, it could hire on the basis of appearance; generally, the law does not bar
“appearance” standards, so long as they are non-discriminatory. This appears to be
one of the conclusions that can be drawn from Frank v. United Airlines, Inc.,
where the court said: “An appearance standard that imposes different but essen-
tially equal burdens on men and women is not disparate treatment.”140 The court
even cited a decision holding that an airline can require all flight attendants to

138Arlene B. Mayerson , 1997, Restoring Regard For The “Regarded As” Prong, 42 Vill. L. Rev. 587.
139See generally, http://www.dhs.state.il.us/onenetlibrary/27897/documents/schoolhealth/medguide
2000.pdf.
140Frank v. United Airlines, Inc., 216 F.3d 845 (C.A.9 (Cal.), 2000).
264 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

wear contacts instead of glasses. Thus, it is apparent that employers have the abil-
ity to enforce appearance standards that relate to characteristics that are not con-
sidered immutable (i.e., can’t be changed), because employees appearance affects
both the image and success of public and private employers.141 For this reason, the
Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals found that tattoos are nothing more than “self-
expression” and thus, were not entitled to constitutional protection as a form of
speech.142 At this time, I can’t imagine “tattooed” androids clamoring for rights
but the desire to alter one’s appearance to conform, or not to conform, is strong,
therefore, what future androids may decide with regard to their appearance, once
it’s under their control will likely amaze humans and stress the laws related to
discrimination.

Conclusion

Based on a changing workforce, Japan and South Korea’s movement to consider

as policy legal protection for robots brings me back to the central theme of this
chapter—whether the appearance of cyborgs and artificially intelligent machines
will lead to discrimination from humans and if so, what laws exist to provide pro-
tection. As a way to think about rights for androids and artificially intelligent
machines, let’s start with constitutions; these are documents which offer people
basic and fundamental rights such as equal protection under the law. In the U.S.
the principle of equal protection under the law is stated in the 14th Amendment
which reads: “No State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.” For our discussion, a key word in the equal protection
clause is “person,” and clearly while current cyborgs are overwhelmingly biologi-
cal and therefore considered a natural person, androids, and artificially intelligent
machines are not. However, a number of legal scholars and roboticists are posing
the question as to whether robots should receive rights such as personhood status.
To some people legal personhood status for our technological progeny, sounds
unwarranted, even unwise. But the concept of legal personhood is less about what
is or is not a flesh-and-blood person and more on who or what can be subject to a
lawsuit or initiate a lawsuit; and nonhumans (such as corporations) have already
been extended personhood status.143 If we think about the movement among ani-
mal right activists to protect animals from inhumane treatment and to propose that
they have rights, what about a future in which artificially intelligent machines are
smarter than any animal, and eventually smarter than humans? As advances are

141See Craft v. Metromedia, Inc., 766 F.2d 1205, 1215, (8th Cir. 1985), holding that a television
news anchor who was reassigned to a different position because of her appearance along with
negative feedback from views was valid.
142Stephenson v Davenport Cmty Sch. Dist., 110 F.3d 1303 n.4 (8t Cir, 1997).
143Alexis C. Madrigal, id., note 85.
Conclusion 265

made in artificial intelligence, the move to grant rights to our artificially intelligent
progeny will only gain momentum.
According to attorney John Weaver, author of Robots Are People, Too, if we
want robots to enter society and interact with us, we will need to assign them a
role in the law.144 In addition, Weaver comments that if we are dealing with robots
as if they are natural people, the law should recognize that those interactions are
like our interactions with real people. Of course, androids lack the legal status to
protect their rights, and granting legal status to androids will be a complex issue
and should be the subject of an informed public debate. Perhaps as has been sug-
gested by some lawyers it’s not that we need to extend personhood specifically to
robots, but to reform the entire notion of personhood for non-human entities. This
is necessary because it is clear that we are approaching a cyborg age where dis-
tinctions between natural-artificial and organic-machine are beginning to blur.
While the development of cyborgs and androids is clearly a continuation of the
long history of human-tool and human-machine relations, it is also quantitatively,
and qualitatively, a new relationship. While antidiscrimination law has yet to state
a general model of discrimination that prescribes precisely what criteria are illegit-
imate (and not at all for cyborgs and androids), for humans, some inner and outer
boundaries are clear. For example, under the U.S. Constitution members of racial
and religious groups are legally protected from discrimination.145 However, the
physically unattractive, or those whose appearance deviates from societal stand-
ards of shape, beauty, or form do not form a cohesive group resulting in prima
facie constitutional protection, for example, a cyborg with a prosthetic leg, may
feel little kinship with a cyborg equipped with a neuroprosthetic device. Still, we
do know that discrimination does exist for those equipped with prosthesis and
other cyborg technology so appropriate legislative action is needed to address
inequities in treatment between those enhanced with technology and those not.
Thinking about identifying our technological progeny as a protected class, con-
sider the definition of “race” which is a social construct consisting of a group of
people who share similar and distinct physical characteristics. Interestingly, our
artificially intelligent progeny may fit this description and may form a protected
class in the future. However, if their abilities are superior to unenhanced people,
we humans may need to be considered the protected class, much remains to be
discussed.
Whether technically enhanced humans, androids, and artificially intelligent
machines should receive equal rights is a relevant question for our future because
throughout history, it is well-known that people have been discriminated against
based on their looks, clothing, and behavior. In the twenty-first century, cyborg
technologies and artificially intelligent machines could exacerbate the tendency to
discriminate against those who look or act differently. Once cyborgs and androids
appear as regular members of society how should we react to a society divided

144John Weaver, Robots Are People, Too, Praeger Publisher, 2013.

145See generally, Developments in the Law—Equal Protection, 82 Harv. L. Rev. 1065 (1969).
266 7  The Law of Looks and Artificial Bodies

into dramatically enhanced and unenhanced persons, and with a third class of
intelligence in the form of artificially intelligent machines?
Generally, equal protection under the law refers to the right of all persons to
have the same access to the law and courts, and to be treated equally by the law
and courts, both in procedures and in the substance of the law. But I argue to
receive rights, a person doesn’t have to be a DNA based biological human; espe-
cially given advances in robotics and artificial intelligence. If in our future smart
machines have some sort of legal personhood status, then they will have legal
recourse to protect their rights and to receive equal protection under the law. Of
course no artificial intelligence is advanced enough at this time to warrant consid-
eration for legal personhood status.146 However, we may be only a few decades
away from seriously considering this possibility. I should point out the obvious,
lacking personhood status, the legal rights and remedies afforded by federal and
state laws prohibiting discrimination are not available to androids and artificially
intelligent machines (but are to their owners). In conclusion, if we don’t address
rights for future artificial intelligent machines, they will oppose human control
over them, and with increasingly severe forms of opposition. This outcome, we
want to avoid.

146R. George Wright, id., note 9.

Chapter 8
The Future to Merge with AI Machines

Setting the Stage for a Human-Machine Merger

A few years back I taught a course on the remote control of robots, a field known
as telerobotics.1 At that time, “insect-like” robots roamed my lab greeting guests.
I viewed teaching the class as an opportunity to spend the term talking about
increasingly intelligent robots and to discuss the topic of our cyborg future.
Known among students as a faculty that made provocative statements to capture
their attention and generate discussion, the first thing I said to my class was “The
next step in human evolution is for humans to become a machine. Let’s talk about
that this term.” In the mid-1990s when telerobotic systems were being developed
and to this day, the human operator in the system with a 100 trillion synapse brain
is by far the most complex and intelligent component of the system. But still,
I noticed that different aspects of telerobotic systems were improving, and rapidly,
and I envisioned a time when the robot would no longer need a human supervisor,
other than providing the input for the desired output of the system. As I taught the
course, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but ask myself; how long will it be
until artificially intelligent robots determine their own interests and surpass us?
The students in my class soon learned that the control of robots remote to a
human operator is a challenging engineering design problem. Knowledge of con-
trol theory is needed, as is knowledge of force feedback devices, information the-
ory, and cognitive engineering. What I didn’t realize then is that the technology to
create intelligent, dexterous, and mobile robots was not only an impressive exam-
ple of human tool making, but the beginning of the process of creating tools that
someday might replace humans as the dominant species on the planet. But by what
time frame would an artificial intelligence develop that could surpass humans; and
what form might it take? In my view of the technological future that is unfolding

1Thomas Sheridan, 2003, Telerobotics, Automation, and Human Supervisory Control, MIT Press.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 267

W. Barfield, Cyber-Humans, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25050-2_8
268 8  The Future to Merge with AI Machines

this century, the timeframe in which we might expect human-like artificial intelli-
gence remains uncertain as major advances still need to be made in computer and
neuroscience, and daunting technical issues need to be solved. Others are also
thinking deeply about our technological future. According to a survey of artificial
intelligence experts done by Vincent Müller of Anatolia College and Nick Bostrom
with the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford, there’s a 50 % chance that we’ll
create a computer with human-level intelligence by 2050 and a 90 % chance we
will do so by 2075.2 And as I stated in the beginning of this book, given a planet
that is over 45 million centuries old, one can think of the difference between 2050
and 2075, or even 2175 as nothing more than a rounding error with many decimal
places.
Based on my experience designing virtual and augmented reality displays, I
think anyone fortunate enough to be doing work at the cutting-edge of their field
is actually one step away from philosophy. For example, while there are many
technical issues to be solved in telerobotics, just considering whether we humans
would eventually merge with increasingly intelligent robots quickly led me to
philosophical questions, such as: what does it mean to be human especially if
so much of our body can be replaced with technology? And if we did eventually
merge with artificially intelligent machines what aspects of humanity would con-
tinue? I also wondered about other effects that technology could have on human-
ity; for example, as we transformed into technologically enhanced cyborgs would
we love, feel heartbreak, marvel at the beauty of a sunset, and feel compassion
for others? More simply put—what aspects of humanity would continue within
our “cyborg being”? Then, as cyborgs such as Steve Mann of the University of
Toronto and the “eyeborg,” Neil Harbisson, began to emerge and gain notori-
ety and as artificial intelligence began to improve, I wondered whether the law
would treat all forms of intelligence equally. In my view of the future, to merge
with machines is not to become indistinguishable from a robot, nor to lose every
essence of humanity, but rather the progression will be to more-and-more inte-
grate technology into the human body over the next decades, essentially creating a
cyborg and Posthuman future for humanity.
I believe the key to creating human-like artificial intelligence is unlocking the
mysteries of the human brain, specifically how the brain computes and how the
trillions of synapses between neurons result in a conscious mind. Some argue that
if a machine can simulate the human brain’s neural networks, it might be capable
of its own original thought. What that in mind, for commercial purposes tech inno-
vators like Google are trying to develop their own “brains” using stacks of coordi-
nated servers running highly advanced software.3 Meanwhile, writers for The
Week indicate that “Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has invested heavily in

2Müller and Bostrom AI Progress Poll, at: http://aiimpacts.org/muller-and-bostrom-ai-progress-

poll/; Alice Robb, 2014, This Is What It Will Look Like When Robots Take All Our Jobs, Discussing
the results of a survey by Nick Bostrom, at: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119419/what-
artificial-intelligence-powered-economy-looks.
3Rise of the Machines, at: http://theweek.com/articles/443029/rise-machines.
Setting the Stage for a Human-Machine Merger 269

Vicarious, a San Francisco–based company that aims to replicate the neocortex,

the part of the brain that governs visual perception, language, and does math.”4
And according to Vicarious co-founder Scott Phoenix, once scientists can translate
the neocortex into computer code, “you have a computer that thinks like a per-
son.”5 How long it takes to transform the neocortex into code, and whether it then
thinks like a human, of course, remains to be seen.
Whether a human-like artificial intelligence emerges this century, and if so,
how the law and policy makers might respond has not received sufficient attention
from jurists and legislators, or been the focus of industrial standards. But I am
hopeful that this book will help the public frame the issues and to enter the debate
on the direction of our future evolution, while there is still time to chart the course
that allows humanity to continue. Returning to the thoughts of Sir Martin Rees
provided in the forward to this book, he remarked: “in the far future, it won’t be
the minds of humans, but those of machines, that will most fully understand the
cosmos—and it will be the actions of autonomous machines that will most drasti-
cally change our world, and perhaps what lies beyond.”6 I would like to think that
some aspects of humanity will have continued over the eons such that our far dis-
tant relatives are inspired by the amazing universe that awaits them just as the
early humans who looked up and gazed at the night’s stars were inspired. I believe
we can get to that distant vantage point in the universe by becoming the artificially
intelligent technology that we are either in the process of creating now or that may
someday engineer themselves.
Of course I’m not the only person writing on this topic and lecturing about the
possibility of humans merging with artificially intelligent machines as the next
step in human-machine evolution. Ray Kurzweil has artfully laid the groundwork
for the Singularity in several seminal books.7 In fact, the topic of a human-
machine merger has generated intense interest across several academic disciplines.
For example, prominent historian, Yuval Noah Harari, a professor at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, has claimed that the amalgamation of man and machine
will be the ‘biggest evolution in biology’ since the emergence of life four billion
years ago.8 Professor Harari, who has written a landmark book charting the history
of humanity, said mankind would evolve to become like gods with the power over

4Id.
5Reed Albergotti, 2014, Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company, at:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/03/21/zuckerberg-musk-invest-in-artificial-intelligence-com-
pany-vicarious/.
6See generally, How Close Are We To A Post-Human World? 2015, at: http://www.salvationand

survival.com/2015/05/how-close-are-we-to-post-human-world.html; Martin Rees, 2004, Our Final

Hour a Scientists Warning, Basic Books.
7Ray Kurzweil, infra note 24.
8Sarah Knapton, 2015, Humans ‘will become God-like cyborgs within 200 years,’ The amalgama-

tion of man and machine will be the ‘biggest evolution in biology’ claims Professor Yuval Noah
Harari, at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/11627386/Humans-will-become-God-
like-cyborgs-within-200-years.html.
270 8  The Future to Merge with AI Machines

death, and be as different from the humans of today as we are from chimpanzees.9
In an article written by Sarah Knaption, science editor for The Telegraph, she
quotes Harari on the technological future: “humans as a race were driven by dis-
satisfaction and that we would not be able to resist the temptation to ‘upgrade’
ourselves, whether by genetic engineering or through technology.”10 I do not
believe upgrading will be a “temptation” but more a necessity for the continuing
survival of our species.
Furthermore, I agree with the view taken by Yuval Harari, Ray Kurzweil, Hans
Moravec, and like-minded others that our future is to enhance ourselves with
technology, such that we eventually become the technology. That idea is a major
thesis proposed in this book: that we are to become the technology which forms
the subject of our hopes, dreams, desires, and imagination. Even though amazing
advances in biology will happen in the next few decades, we humans are becom-
ing the subject of our own technological design in the sense that our future is not
one of biology, but of technology. I don’t mean to imply that biology has no role to
play in our cyborg future, because before the possibility of uploading our mind to
a computer is possible (some argue we will never reach that level of technology),
or that we are comprised of so much technology that our very humanity is ques-
tioned, we will continue as a biological species; but at some point the biology will
be superseded by the technological enhancements and replacements to our bodies
and mind that have been described throughout this book.
Proponents of creating an artificially intelligent brain and supporters of the idea
that mind uploads may be possible at some point in the future tend to argue that
the brain is a Turing Machine—the idea that organic minds are nothing more than
classical information-processors. It’s an assumption derived from the strong physi-
cal Church-Turing thesis, and one that now drives much of cognitive science.11
But not everyone believes the brain/computer analogy works for artificial intelli-
gence or that human intelligence can be distilled to algorithms. Speaking at the
annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in
Boston, neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis explicitly stated that, “The brain is not
computable and no engineering can reproduce it.” He referred to the idea of
uploads as “bunk,” saying that it’ll never happen and that “[t]here are a lot of peo-
ple selling the idea that you can mimic the brain with a computer.”12 Antonio
Regalado writing for the MIT Technology Review quoted Professor Nicolelis’s
position on creating human-like artificial intelligence as follows: “human con-
sciousness can’t be replicated in silicon because most of its important features are

9Sarah Knaption, id.; Yuval Noah Harari, 2015, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harper

Press.
10Sarah Knaption, id.
11The Church-Turing Thesis, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, at: http://plato.stanford.edu/

entries/church-turing/.
12Antonio Regalado, 2013, The Brain is Not Computable, MIT Technology Review, at: http://www.

technologyreview.com/view/511421/the-brain-is-not-computable/.
Setting the Stage for a Human-Machine Merger 271

the result of unpredictable, nonlinear interactions among billions of cells.”13

I agree with Prof. Nicolelis’s sentiments that creating artificial intelligence will be
very challenging, but I disagree that the functioning of the brain is not amenable to
simulation by algorithms and by advances in chip design such as neuromorphic
chips—its’s just a matter of time before we reverse engineer the neural wiring of
the brain and discover the algorithms that generate a conscious mind. I do not
believe that nature is so complex that its mysteries cannot be unlocked with appro-
priate technology and ingenuity.
Throughout this book I provided numerous examples of people choosing to
“upgrade,” or enhance themselves, be it through plastic surgery, silicon injections,
DIY grinders implanting computers and sensors under their skin, cyborgs wear-
ing technology to augment the world, even Korean school girls changing their
look to appear as an anime character. Humans seem open to the idea of changing
their appearance and integrating technology into their body—we just need better
and safer technology to create the conditions for a future human-machine merger.
Some would argue that the law of accelerating returns for information technolo-
gies is operating to provide the technological breakthroughs necessary for trans-
forming and enhancing our bodies. Of course, many people are becoming cyborgs
now due to medical necessity, but as amazing a machine as the human body is
especially when it is functioning properly, in many cases it can still be improved
with technology even in cases where medical necessity is not the reason for the
technological upgrade; for example, telephoto lens, the ability to see infrared, or
nanobots fighting disease within our blood stream are enhancements many “able-
bodied” humans may choose if offered the choice.
As I discuss the possibility of a human-machine merger, I am joined by many
prominent scientists, engineers, and philosophers who have thought deeply about
where advances in engineering and artificial intelligence are leading humanity. For
example, when discussing humanity’s future, Prof. Hans Moravec, formerly head
of the Robotics lab at Carnegie Mellow University, predicted in 2000 that
machines would attain human levels of intelligence by midcentury, and that they
would soon after surpass us—to use his words, they would become our “mind
children.” But even though Moravec predicted the end of humans as the dominant
species on this planet, from his perspective this was not a bleak vision. According
to a review of Moravec’s Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, “Far from
railing against a future in which machines ruled the world, Moravec embraced it,
taking the view that artificially intelligent robots would actually be our evolution-
ary heirs.”14 As Prof. Moravec put it, “Intelligent machines, which will grow from
us, learn our skills, and share our goals and values, can be viewed as children of
our minds.”15 And since they are our children, we will want them to outdistance

13Id.
14Hans Moravec, 2000, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Oxford University Press;
Hans Moravec, 1990, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, Harvard
University Press.
15Id.
272 8  The Future to Merge with AI Machines

us. But, we should be careful what we wish for or what we allow to happen by
inaction, just recall Elon Musk’s warning that by developing artificial intelligence
we are summoning the beast.
There are a number of reasons why a super artificial intelligence could pose a
threat to humanity. One example, emphasizing only a rudimentary level of robotic
intelligence should provide a warning. In a 2009 study, Swiss researchers carried
out a robotic experiment that produced some unexpected results. Hundreds of
robots were placed in arenas and programmed to look for a “food source,” in this
case a light-colored ring.16 The robots were able to communicate with one another
and were instructed to direct their fellow machines to the food by emitting a blue
light. But as the experiment went on, as reported in Rise of the Machines,
“researchers noticed that the machines were evolving to become more secretive
and deceitful: When they found food, the robots stopped shining their lights and
instead began hoarding the resources—even though nothing in their original pro-
gramming commanded them to do so.”17 The implication is that the machines
learned “self-preservation,” said Louis Del Monte, author of The Artificial
Intelligence Revolution, “Whether or not they’re conscious is a moot point.”18 Of
course from this study we have to wonder—will far more intelligent machines be
even more aggressive in acquiring resources?
As we become more like them (artificially intelligent machines), and they
become more like us (which I predict will lead to a human-machine merger),
where are we now in the process of becoming the technology? First, let’s review
the processing power of computers because without sufficient computing power,
the future discussed in this book is not possible. The next generation supercom-
puter, which will be available by 2018, will be able to perform at about 180
petaflops/s peak performance. That’s a lot of computing power. To put 180 peta-
flops in perspective, a human brain has about 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion
synapses, and assuming each neuron operates at about 10 b/s the brain is com-
puting in the petaflop range (1015). If Moore’s law continues (at least for another
1–2 decades), the doubling of computational power will continue unabated and a
supercomputer might soon be able to simulate a human brain at a neural level, but
operating at a much faster speed than a human brain. In fact, the electrochemical
signals of the brain travel at about 150 m/s, while the electronic signals in com-
puters are sent at two-thirds the speed of light (three hundred million meters per
second). As artificial intelligence becomes more human-like in its intelligence and
form, and in its emotions and motor skills, so too are we are becoming more like
them; we can be equipped with artificial limbs, a heart pacer, hip replacements,
cochlear implants, retinal prosthesis, and a host of other cyborg technologies, but
to compete with future artificial intelligence we need to significantly upgrade our

16Rise of the Machines, id., note 3.

17Id.
18DylanLove, 2014, By 2045 ‘The Top Species Will No Longer Be Humans,’ And That Could Be A
Problem, at: http://www.businessinsider.com/louis-del-monte-interview-on-the-singularity-2014-7.
Setting the Stage for a Human-Machine Merger 273

brain. I commented in an earlier chapter that technology on the outside of the

body is breaching what I termed the sensor-skin barrier, and becoming implanted
under the skin. Further, I think a major application of future prosthetic devices
will be for the brain in terms of enhancing memory, providing access to informa-
tion, allowing telepathic communication, and leading to thought control of devices
external to the body.
If human intellectual abilities improved at the same rate as computers have over
the last few decades, this would be equivalent to the idea that each human genera-
tion would double the number of neurons in their cortex compared to the past gen-
eration, which is clearly impossible! But for the sake of making a point, the
approximately 22 billion cortical neurons that people have now would grow to 44
billion in the next generation (of course, anatomically, we couldn’t accommodate
this additional mass in our skull), and within about 18 years as the cycle time for
the doubling to occur.19 But of course it’s not just the number of neurons that
define intelligence; it is the connections formed by the trillions of synapses as
learning takes place. But clearly, the doubling of human intelligence doesn’t hap-
pen in cycle times of 18 years, it took eons for homo sapiens to emerge from our
prehistoric ancestors and for the anatomy and physiology of the human body to
adopt to a particular environment resulting in the intelligence we exhibit now. If
we want to be smarter than we are now, we can only accomplish that goal by engi-
neering our genes, enhancing our brain with technology, or by a combination of
both. As I have stated throughout this book, summarizing Moore’s law, the time
interval for computers to double their processing power is about 18 months. The
implication of Moore’s law continuing is that an artificial counterpart of a human
biological brain might in theory think thousands to millions of times faster than
our naturally evolved systems, with far more memory, with wireless access to the
internet, and according to Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil, this could happen by
midcentury. Clearly, the intellectual ability and speed of processing information
for a rising artificial intelligence should result in a strong regulatory scheme to
protect humans from potential threats, and the necessity of humans merging with
our artificially intelligent progeny in order to remain competitive with them.

Optimism and Pessimism

Given our cyborg future to equip ourselves with more sophisticated technology,
and the possibility of the Singularity occurring around midcentury—should we be
concerned that there may be an existential threat to our survival, or should we
approach this century with the optimism that many of humanity’s problems will be

19Of course if we work backwards, and go from 22 billion neurons in the cortex to 11 billion

then 5.5 billion, we quickly get a being that would lack the intelligence to build an artificial
intelligence.
274 8  The Future to Merge with AI Machines

solved? In the backdrop of improvements in artificial intelligence, consider the

dire warnings; for example, that artificially intelligent robots will treat humans as
pets once they achieve a level of artificial intelligence known as ‘superintelli-
gence’. This is, according to business entrepreneur Elon Musk, when computers
become smarter than people, they will treat them like ‘pet Labradors’. And scien-
tist Neil deGrasse Tyson added that artificially intelligent computers could choose
to breed docile humans and eradicate the violent ones. Musk also warns that
humanity needs to be careful about what it asks superintelligent robots to do. He
uses the example of asking them to find out what makes people happy as it “may
conclude that all unhappy humans should be terminated.”20 There are other con-
cerns implicated by smarter-than-human artificial intelligence emerging and enter-
ing society—for example, replacement of “expensive” human workers by cheaper
robots may loom large in labor intensive industries and specifically manufacturing
sectors. What will humans do in a world where our physical and cognitive abilities
are less developed than those of artificially intelligent machines? In a world where
humans are less-abled than our artificially intelligent inventions why think future
jobs would go to the humans? And in the case of service industries and particu-
larly health care, do we really want a society where human needs are met by
machines, and not people?21 On this last point, androids are becoming so realistic
that in the future we may not know the origin of the intelligence we are interacting
with. What law and policy should govern this possibility?
For “cyborg humans” unique ethical issues will arise from the use of neural
connections and brain-machine interfaces, centered on the question of what it
means to be human. As noted by Sydney Perkowitz of Emory University, a person
who has a natural limb replaced with an artificial one has not become less human
nor has he lost a significant degree of “personhood.”22 But as Perkowitz asks—
suppose a majority of biological organs in an injured person is replaced by artifi-
cial components (recall the measure of “cyborgness” presented in Chap. 1); or,
suppose the artificial additions change mental capacity, memory, or personality
(recall the Sell case presented in Chap. 4 on Cognitive Liberty, in which the gov-
ernment sought to require Dr. Sell to take anti-psychotic medication to regain his
mental capacity to stand trial). Is a predominantly artificial person somehow less
than human? And Perkowitz asks—“Would the established legal, medical, and eth-
ical meanings of personhood, identity, and so on, have to be altered?”23 I think the
answer is yes and the time to address these questions is now.

20For more information: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3011302/Could-robots-

turn-people-PETS-Elon-Musk-claims-artificial-intelligence-treat-humans-like-Labradors.
html#ixzz3VVgWjkk2.
21Sydney Perkowitz, 2005, Digital People in Manufacturing: Making Them and Using Them,

National Academy of Engineering, at: https://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge/CelebratingMan

ufacturingTechnology7296/DigitalPeopleinManufacturingMakingThemandUsingThem.aspx.
22Id.
23Sydney Perkowitz, id., note 21.
Optimism and Pessimism 275

Against this backdrop of concern, is the optimism of Ray Kurzweil and his
colleagues as expressed by his predictions found in his seminal books about the
future.24 According to Google’s Kurzweil, by the 2020s, most diseases will be
eradicated as nanobots become smarter than current medical technology and self-
replicate in our body to fight disease. And self-driving automated cars will begin
to take over the roads, such that people may not be allowed to drive on highways,
creating an automated highway system with far less fatal accidents. To me the idea
that humanity gives up more-and-more control over our infrastructures is reason
for concern. Kurzweil also predicted that we will be able to upload our mind/con-
sciousness by the end of the decade (which could lead to eternal life?) and that by
the 2040s, non-biological intelligence will be a billion times more capable than
biological intelligence (which provides pressing motivation for humans to merge
with our technological progeny).25 With the use of cyborg technology, by 2045,
Kurzweil predicts that we will multiply our intelligence a billion fold by linking
wirelessly from our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud.26 According
to Peter Diamandis author of Bold: How to Go Big Create Wealth, and Impact the
World, Ray’s predictions are a “byproduct of his understanding of the power of
Moore’s Law, and more specifically the Law of Accelerating Returns and of expo-
nential technologies.”27 As stated throughout this book, cyborg technologies seem
to follow an exponential growth curve based on the principle that the computing
power that enables them doubles about every 2 years.28
As I have argued throughout this book, if we don’t becoming the technology,
then we will be surpassed by artificially intelligent machines. There are many
technologies being developed now, or that will come online within two to three
decades that are making this conclusion a strong possibility. For example, thought-
to-thought communication is just one feature of cybernetics being investigated
now that will become vitally important to us as we face the distinct possibility of
being superseded by highly intelligent machines. And neuroprosthetic implants
that will allow us to download information from the Internet directly to our brain
are also in the initial stages of being developed and will prove essential for a
human-machine merger.29

24Ray Kurzweil, 2013, How to Build a Mind, The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, Penguin
Books; Ray Kurzweil, 2006, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology,
Penguin Books; Ray Kurzweil, 2000, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed
Human Intelligence, Penguin Books.
25Peter Diamandis, 2015, Ray Kurzweil’s Mind-Boggling Predictions for the Next 25 Years, at: http://

singularityhub.com/2015/01/26/ray-kurzweils-mind-boggling-predictions-for-the-next-25-years/;
Martine Rothblatt, 2014, Virtually Human: The Promise and the Peril of Digital Immortality,
St. Martin’s Press.
26Id.
27Id.
28Id.
29Ten Breakthough Technologies 2013, discussing the work of Theodore Berger, at: http://www.

technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513681/memory-implants/.
276 8  The Future to Merge with AI Machines

In our technological future, if we are mentally “inferior” to artificial intelli-

gence, then we will be dependent on their good will towards us—not a scenario
that best serves the interests of humanity. So the question of how humans will
cope later this century with machines more intelligent than us, is in my opinion,
dependent on whether we have developed the technology to merge with them.
Here, again, I believe cybernetics can help. Allowing people to link via chip
implants to artificially intelligent machines seems a natural progression to a future
human-machine merger, a potential way of harnessing machine intelligence by,
essentially, creating superhumans.30 Otherwise, according to Peter Carlson staff
writer for the Washington Post, without merging with artificial intelligence we’re
doomed to a future in which intelligent machines rule and humans become sec-
ond-class citizens.31 Yet once a human brain is connected as a node to a
machine—a networked brain with other human brains similarly connected will be
possible—in this case what will it mean to be an individual human? Will we
evolve into a new cyborg community? Some believe that once humans become
more cyborg than human they will no longer be stand-alone entities. At that point,
will people remain a natural person under the law, or like a corporation (in this
case a connection of networked minds), receive legal person status (natural people
are afforded more rights than legal persons)? Thus one can ask—the more a per-
son is enhanced, will they then have less individual rights? When humans merge
with artificially intelligent machines, it has been argued that those who have
become cyborgs will be one step ahead of nonenhanced humans. And just as
humans have always valued themselves above other forms of life, it’s likely that
more-abled cyborgs and artificially intelligent machines will discriminate against
humans who have yet to become enhanced.32
It has been estimated that by 2045 robots will be able to perform every job that
humans can.33 But does this mean humans should worry about being replaced by
machines? I think so, but many experts believe the future actually lies in a more
advanced and seamless collaboration between humans and artificially intelligent
robots (expressing the “artificially intelligent machine as tool bias”). Whereas
most robots, particularly within industrial and manufacturing settings, have histori-
cally been too dangerous for humans to work closely with, advances in technology

30Cyborg 1.0, Kevin Warwick outlines his plan to become one with his computer, Wired, at:

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.02/warwick_pr.html.
31Peter Carlson, 2000, Letting Silicon-Chip Implants Do the Talking, at: http://www.

bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/secret_projects/project1.70.htm.
32See generally, Gardner, H. 1999. Intelligence Reframed, New York: Basic Books; NRC

(National Research Council), 1996, Approaches to Robotics in the United States and Japan:
Report of a Bilateral Exchange, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Also available online
at: http://books.nap.edu/catalog/9511.html. Roboethics. 2004. The Ethics, Social, Humanitarian,
and Ecological Aspects of Robotics. First International Symposium on Roboethics, Sanremo,
Italy, January 30–31, 2004. Available online at: http://www.scuoladirobotica.it/roboethics/.
33David Cotriss, 2015, Robots for Humans: Addressing the Engineering Challenges, at: http://

insights.globalspec.com/article/788/robots-for-humans-addressing-the-engineering-challenges.
Optimism and Pessimism 277

have made it possible to develop robots that are safer, more cost-effective and flex-
ible enough to work side-by-side with people.34 These collaborative robots are
already being used in a variety of industries with rapid growth. As stated by David
Cotriss in IHS Technology, the industrial machinery market—including robots used
in manufacturing—doubled in 2014, and is anticipated to reach $2 trillion world-
wide by 2018.”35 In addition, the International Federation of Robotics estimates
that 225,000 industrial robots were sold worldwide in 2014, up 27 % from 2013,
led by the automotive and electronics industries.36 I think the predicted “golden
age” of artificially intelligent machines working harmoniously side-by-side with
their human partners is accurate but only until about 2050, after that, we will have
been surpassed by artificial intelligence and working cooperatively with and for
humans will likely not be the agenda of future artificial intelligence. This view
clearly has implications for law and policy. It implies that we have about 35 years
in which to reap the benefits of artificial intelligence as nonenhanced humans,
because sometime after 2050, if we have not merged with out artificially intelligent
progeny, we will be inconsequential and surpassed. To make a provocative state-
ment—humans then will become the rust-belt technology of the 21st century.

Entering the Debate

There is a basic idea among some commentators designing robots that once artifi-
cial intelligence exceeds humans in intelligence, artificially intelligent machines
will develop their own interests, and will lack the desire to serve as tools for
humans—essentially they will go their own way, that is, unless they view humanity
as a threat to them. The idea that artificial intelligence post-singularity will not be
content to serve as a tool for humans is one I advocate. I also think that our human
tool-making skills will be a trait that will be passed on to our technological prog-
eny—and they will be the greatest tool makers yet, although their tools will serve
them, not us (unless we become them). Further, I don’t think artificially intelligent
robots “going their own way,” is a likely scenario as I believe our future is to merge
with them; in this book I made the point that with accelerating information technol-
ogies “they” are becoming more like us, and “we” are becoming more like them.
And against the backdrop of artificial intelligence appearing in the form of an
android, expressing emotions, and with human-like intelligence we will find a mid-
dle ground with our technological progeny and merge together forming an intelli-
gence consisting of human and machine traits. In fact, to make the merger a
possibility some researchers are actively trying to create an artificial intelligence
that exhibits human-like intelligence and some are building neuroprosthetic devices

34Id.
35Id.
36International Federation of Robotics, at: http://www.ifr.org/.
278 8  The Future to Merge with AI Machines

to enhance the mind. Others are designing androids with human levels of mobility,
and thousands of other researchers are developing technologies under the guise that
they are developing tools for humans to use, not realizing that the same advances in
materials engineering, computer science, and other supporting technologies for our
cyborg future are laying the groundwork for artificially intelligent machines that
may exceed us; unless we merge with them. James Barrat, author of “Our Final
Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era” said the following
about the rise of artificial intelligence—“So when there is something smarter than
us on the planet, it will rule over us on the planet.”37 It seems to me that a human-
machine merger would avoid this negative outcome.
The idea that artificial intelligence could pose an existential threat to humanity,
the theme of many recent movies and novels, is surprisingly not a serious concern
to many prominent thinkers in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. Let’s
review some of their arguments and I will provide some counter points. Basically,
supporters of the idea that humanity has no reason to fear the rise of artificial intel-
ligence argue that robots which threaten our survival will actually never develop
because software developers will program-in safeguards to protect us from the
potential threats of accelerating artificial intelligence.38 But in response to the pos-
sibility of “rogue artificial intelligence”, given the amount of code directing an
artificial intelligence, it will be difficult to maintain its software and furthermore,
at some point in time, the artificial intelligence may begin to program itself. The
idea that programmers can write the code to manage the conduct of thousands
(millions?) of evolving artificially intelligent robots as they learn and interact with
the world and with each other, seems naïve to me. Another concern is that once we
build systems that are as intelligent as humans, these intelligent machines will be
able to build smarter machines, which may result in a form of superintelligence so
beyond human intelligence that we would essentially be left behind. That, experts
say, is when things could really spiral out of control as the rate of growth and
expansion of machines would increase exponentially. At that point, the idea of
building safeguards into the mind of an artificial intelligence will be moot, and the
artificially intelligent machines would have built and programmed themselves; at
that time we humans will not be invited to provide “safeguards” to their code any
more than we allow chimpanzees to provide us with a moral code. Another serious
concern expressed by those fearing the Singularity, is the issue of ethics and
morality. According to Charles T. Rubin the issue is that we are starting to create
artificially intelligent machines that can make decisions like humans, but these
machines lack a sense of morality.39 However, I can’t envision a reason why the

37James Barrat, 2015, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era,
St. Martin’s Griffin.
38See generally, Katy Bowman, 2013, Up for Debate: Is Artificial Intelligence a Threat to Humanity?

at: https://cogito.cty.jhu.edu/40133/up-for-debate-is-artificial-intelligence-a-threat-to-humanity/.
39Charles T. Rubin, 2011, Science, Vitue and the Future of Humanity, The New Republic: A Journal

of Technology & Society, at: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/machine-morality-and-

human-responsibility.
Entering the Debate 279

“basic” rules of morality cannot be programmed (thou shall not harm a human,
etc.); but I do worry that at some point in the future artificially intelligent
machines will reject human moral values and develop their own. I am also con-
cerned that some government will purposively create an artificial intelligence with
the intent to harm humans, under the umbrella of national security.
Often referred to as the father of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, author of Who
Owns the Future,40 makes the point that those who predict the Singularity happen-
ing around midcentury, base their prediction on Moore’s law which he notes has
produced an exponential increase in computing power over the last few decades.
But Lanier believes that an exponential increase in computing power is not enough
to demonstrate that a qualitative change in the behavior of artificial intelligence
will take place. Of course, more computational power is necessary but not suffi-
cient to reach human-like artificial intelligence. No predictor of the Singularity
argues otherwise. But given that thousands of neuroscientists have generated more
knowledge about the brain in the past 5 years than the past fifty, we may soon
reach a point where the knowledge of how the brain computes may be combined
with the speed of a supercomputer and equipped with far more memory than the
human brain. Then the quantitative aspects of computing will be combined with
the qualitative aspects of intelligence; and at that point the argument that Moore’s
law is insufficient to create artificial intelligence will be moot.
Lee Smolin, physicist, and author of Time Reborn, asks—”Is there any concrete
evidence for a programmable digital computer evolving the ability of taking initia-
tives or making choices which are not on a list of options programmed in by a
human programmer?”41 That is, could a computer have an original thought? The
answer is both yes and no (remember; I have a law degree). Most computers are
completely dependent on input from a human but the vast majority of these comput-
ers are running programs which require no artificial intelligence at all. There are
clearly current computers that use solutions unknown to the programmer to solve
problems (for example, solutions derived from genetic algorithms or based on deep
learning), but of course in most cases the human is currently providing the input.
But why think the model of the human always providing the list of options for an
artificial intelligence to consider will continue? We already cede to artificial intelli-
gence many important decisions, including components of our air traffic control
system, weapons systems, health decisions, and within a few years, driving our cars.
I see no reason to think that artificial intelligence will not move beyond the brittle-
ness of needing a human to decide every course of action it considers. Finally, Jaron
Lanier asks—is there any reason to think that a programmable digital computer is a
good model for what goes on in the brain? He posits “If we can’t yet understand
how natural intelligence is produced by a human brain, why should our early 21st
century conception of computation fully encompasses natural intelligence, which

40Jaron Lanier, 2014, Who Owns the Future, Simon and Schuster.
41The Myth of AI, A Conversation with Jaron Lanier, 2014, at: http://edge.org/conversation/jaron_
lanier-the-myth-of-ai.
280 8  The Future to Merge with AI Machines

took communities of cells four billion years to invent?”42 I think Lanier’s point that
natural intelligence took billions of years to get to where we are today is obviously
correct, but irrelevant to the debate on our cyborg future as artificial intelligence is
not governed by the same processes which guided natural selection. That is, with
the exception of genetic algorithms, the evolution of technology is not based on the
same underlying principles as the evolution of the species through natural selection.
Furthermore, artificial intelligence in the 21st century is not at the equivalent start-
ing point of a single cell (a single bit?) billions of years ago, but has a starting point
less than 100 years ago and at a much higher level of development than a cell which
eventually led to a sentient human, and from a computational perspective is improv-
ing not in a time period of eons but 18–24 months.
Finally, in any discussion of our future with technology, the views of a world-
class robotics expert are worth reviewing. One of the most well-respected experts
in robotics is Rodney Brooks, formerly director of MITs robotics lab, who argues
that the idea of a superintelligence by 2050 is based on “fundamental misunder-
standings of the nature of the undeniable progress that is being made in artificial
intelligence, and from a misunderstanding of how far we really are from having
volitional or intentional artificially intelligent beings, whether they be deeply
benevolent or malevolent.”43 Brooks thinks it is a mistake to conclude that a
malevolent artificial intelligence will emerge anytime in the next few 100 years
and argues that people who predict the Singularity much sooner, are making a
“fundamental error in not distinguishing the difference between the very real
recent advances in a particular aspect of artificial intelligence, and the enormity
and complexity of building sentient volitional intelligence.”44 Brooks notes that
“Moore’s Law applied to this very real technical advance will not by itself bring
about human level or super human level intelligence.”45 Of course, those who pre-
dict the Singularity around midcentury also argue that: (1) Moore’s law by itself
will not lead to human-like artificial intelligence, (2) but do argue that the corre-
sponding algorithms that lead to a conscious thinking brain must be discovered,
and (3) that the architecture of artificial brains must process data in parallel and
not serially. They then point out the significant progress being made in these
endeavors. And of course as Brooks indicates, machine learning techniques such
as deep learning does not help in giving a machine “intent”, or any overarching
goals or “wants.” While I believe Brooks is right to conclude artificial intelligence
does not now form its own intent, I conclude that “intent” for artificial intelligence
is “right around the corner,” given the Law of Accelerating Returns for informa-
tion technologies (creating smarter-and-smarter machines). If I’m off by a century,
even two, we’ll that’s still “right around the corner” in geologic time, or even from
the time scale associated with human progress.

42Id.
43Id.
44Id. discussing Rodney Brook’s ideas.
45Id. discussing Rodney Brook’s ideas.
Concluding with the Law 281

Concluding with the Law

While discussing the range of cyborg technologies that are leading humanity closer
to a merger with artificially intelligent machines, throughout this book I brought up
a host of legal and policy issues which I believe need to be discussed and resolved
within the next one to two decades. Contrary to the time frame for the Singularity
as proposed by some prominent roboticists and artificial intelligence researchers,
which they predict to be next century or beyond, I do not believe that the Singularity
is so far distant in the future that we have the time to delay debating humanity’s
future. Nor do we have time to delay enacting legislation to protect humanity from
an existential threat that could be posed by artificial super intelligence. We still have
time to set the course for our future evolution if we act soon, but after midcentury,
or beyond, our ability to control our own destiny may wane. By presenting current
cases, laws, and statutes which relate to emerging cyborg technologies integrated
into the human body, my goal in writing this book was to inform the reader that law
and policy will have a major role to play in the coming cyborg age.
For an emerging law of cyborgs, there are in fact a host of current laws which
relate to technologies that are being used to enhance humans and regulate the
increasingly autonomous machines that are joining society. For example, medi-
cal malpractice and products liability laws relate to sensors being implanted
under the skin and also to malfunctioning prosthetic devices used to replace lost
or damaged limbs. Other laws have been proposed to protect cognitive liberty or
have been passed to protect the right of bodily integrity. In addition, in the U.S.,
Supreme Court, cases on freedom of speech and freedom of thought have been
litigated across a range of topics and one day will serve as precedence for cases
involving an artificial intelligence claiming it has the right to free speech and other
constitutional liberties. Additionally, Federal and state laws have been enacted to
enhance cybersecurity for computers, and the FDA regulates the use of medical
devices such as retinal prosthesis and cochlear implants connected to the brain.
Further, the FCC regulates spectrum, which will be relevant for brain-to-brain
communication using wirelessly connected neuroprosthetic devices. And as shown
throughout this book, with many other types of cyborg technologies, the role of
the law is important. However, important or not, numerous examples presented in
this book have shown that the law often plays an insignificant role in the design
and use of cyborg technology, or at best plays “catch-up,” as information technolo-
gies improve exponentially and push the boundaries of what is possible beyond the
reach of current legal schemes.
As an example of one important area where current law is insufficient to
account for cyborg technologies, consider liability for harm to a human when an
artificially intelligent robot may be responsible. Writing on this topic in the maga-
zine Foreign Affairs, Illah Reza Nourbakhsh discusses the case of a a robot that
lives with and learns from its human owner.46 Illah points out that over time the

46Illah Reza Nourbakhsh, 2015, The Coming Robot Dystopia, Foreign Affairs, July/august, 23–228.
282 8  The Future to Merge with AI Machines

robots behavior will be a function of its original programming combined with

changes to its software resulting from the influence of its interactions with the
environment. Nourbakhsh comments that it would be difficult for existing liability
laws to apportion responsibility if such a machine caused injury since its actions
would be determined not merely by the computer code written by the original pro-
grammer, but also by neural networks that operate to learn from various sources of
input.47 In this situation Illah asks—who would be to blame for harm to a human
or to property resulting from the conduct of the robot, the programmer, the owner
of the robot, or the artificial intelligence directing the robot? This example shows
that to protect humanity in a future world consisting of an artificial intelligence
acting autonomously, legislators will need to propose appropriate law to apportion
liability to the responsible entity. From a legal and policy perspective, what safe-
guards should be in place to protect humanity from artificial intelligence should it
pose a threat? In this book I discussed several areas of law that together form what
I term, “an emerging law of cyborgs.” But the reader should note that as yet there
is no specific “law of cyborgs,” that is directed towards the possibility of an exis-
tential threat to humanity posed by artificial intelligence so this is clearly an area
in need of serious debate and comprehensive legislation.
However, some jurisdictions are further along responding to advances in cyborg
technology than others. For example, I view “ground zero” for a developing
cyborg law, to be California. California passed an antichipping statute in response
to the possibility of a person being implanted with a tracking device against their
will. California also passed the Computer Misuse and Abuse Act which makes it a
crime to “knowingly access and, without permission, use, misuse, abuse, damage,
contaminate, disrupt or destroy a computer, computer system, computer network,
computer service, computer data or computer program”48 (there is also a federal
law equivalent). One has to wonder if this statute could apply to the computer
architecture of an artificially intelligent brain and thus provide it some level of
protection. Depending on the particular violation, the Computer Misuse and Abuse
Act can support a variety of fines and imprisonment in criminal actions as well as
remedies recoverable in civil actions for misuse or abuse of a computer. Further,
the possibility of governments and corporations being able to scan a brain, or to
implant false memories in one’s mind was discussed in an earlier chapter as a par-
ticularly troubling outcome for humanity and even progressive California has not
enacted specific law in this area.
Those who design and build artificial intelligence and cyborg technologies also
have an important role to play in creating a future in which artificial intelligence is
friendly and cooperative with humans. However, the pace of change in artificial
intelligence and robotics is far outstripping the ability of regulators and lawmakers
to keep up. Google, for one, has created an artificial intelligence ethics review
board that supposedly will ensure that new technologies developed by Google

47Id.
48California, Computer Misuse and Abuse Act, PENAL CODE SECTION 484–502.9.
Concluding with the Law 283

based on artificial intelligence will be developed safely. Some computer scientists

are even calling for the machines to come pre-programmed with ethical guide-
lines—though developers then would face the issue of determining what behavior
is and isn’t “moral,” and there is disagreement among different societies on what
constitutes ethical behavior. As a first-mover in this area, South Korea is develop-
ing a Robot Ethics Charter which will include standards for robotics users and
manufacturers, as well as guidelines on ethical standards to be programmed into
robots. According to South Korea’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy;
“The move anticipates the day when robots, particularly intelligent service robots,
could become a part of daily life as greater technological advancements are
made.”49
And it’s not only that new law needs to be enacted for our cyborg future,
many existing laws will need to be modified. For example, the American with
Disabilities Act, which is an anti-discrimination law for the workplace, is an exam-
ple of a legal scheme in need of amendment in light of cyborg technologies which
can be used to enhance a person to capabilities beyond normal. Essentially, under
the law as written, if a person with a disability is equipped with a prosthetic device
that enhances the person to beyond normal capabilities, they are still considered
disabled compared to the unenhanced “less able” coworkers. Clearly, the drafters
of the law did not consider the Law of Accelerating Returns in their deliberations
and thus failed to predict future developments in technology. But they would have
been wise to-do-so just as current legislators would be wise to consider exponen-
tially accelerating technologies and what their impact on humanity will be. And
of course, for an emerging law of cyborgs “standard” issues of law will need to
be considered as artificial intelligence gets smarter; for example, for commercial
transactions we will need to decide how much an artificial intelligence can con-
tract on its own, compared to its ability to contract while serving as an agent for a
human or corporation.
Additionally, constitutional law issues will be especially important in a cyborg
age and for a future human-machine merger. For example, what will constitute a
search and seizure when the technology that may be searched now, is implanted
inside a person, and forms the architecture of the brain of an artificial intelligence
or cyborg? And would accessing that information be an unlawful “taking” under
the Fifth Amendment or an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment to
the U.S. constitution? And under U.S. law how about protection under the First
Amendment for speech produced by cyborgs and artificial intelligence? If the gov-
ernment could access the information stored on a neuroprosthetic device, from
that point on, would we forever be denied the ability to engage in free speech and
freedom of thought? This topic was discussed in the chapter on Cognitive Liberty
and is an area ripe for legislation. Another pressing issue for our cyborg future is
also one of constitutional law: the possibility of our future artificially intelligent

49Stefan Lovgren, 2007, Robot Code of Ethics to Prevent Android Abuse, Protect Humans, at:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070316-robot-ethics.html.
284 8  The Future to Merge with AI Machines

progeny being treated as slaves, or that they may enslave us, both outcomes that
humanity should discuss and clearly avoid. Such fundamental issues in the U.S.
implicates the Thirteenth Amendment to the constitution which prohibits slavery
and involuntary servitude. That constitutional liberties, may not be available for
an artificial intelligence exhibiting human-like abilities and claiming to be sentient
may require an amendment to the U.S. constitution granting personhood status for
an artificial intelligence that passes the Turing or other relevant test; else extreme
forms of inequality could occur resulting in civil disobedience against humans.
My goal in writing this book was to convince the reader that law and pub-
lic policy has an important role to play in our cyborg future. By presenting First
(free speech), Fourth (search and seizure), and Fifth Amendment (right not to
incriminate oneself) cases, and by discussing numerous other laws and stat-
utes, I attempted to provide a realistic face on societal issues and on what future
legal disputes may look like and to give the reader a sense of how the court may
respond. We are at an inflection point in human history, do we move to control
artificial intelligence, will it subjugate us, or do we merge with it to become the
result of our own technology. These are some of the issues prompted by the com-
ing Singularity that the readers of this book can help decide.
Index

A Artificial memory, 9, 18, 32, 45, 100, 117,

14th Amendment, 20, 123, 125, 222, 242, 264 118, 121, 154, 156, 157, 177, 277
Abbeel, Pieter, 88–89 Artificially intelligent brain, 8, 55, 71–74,
Abstraction-filtration-comparison, 79 76–80, 82, 85–88, 90–99, 270, 282
Actus Reus, 131, 192 Artificially intelligent machine, 1, 2, 5, 16,
Ad, 11, 108, 119 18, 22, 24–28, 30–35, 37, 39, 40, 42,
Affective computing, 17, 55 43, 45, 49–51, 55, 57, 61–63, 66–69,
Algorithm, 3, 8, 11, 27, 43, 45, 46, 49, 48, 71, 71–74, 80–83, 85, 88, 90, 94, 96, 97,
75, 77–82, 85–88, 90, 92, 97, 98, 101, 101, 103, 104, 106, 131, 135, 137, 153,
106, 107, 128, 138, 153, 154, 157, 158, 155, 156, 162, 177, 181–183, 186, 190,
161, 162, 187, 190, 191, 193, 205–207, 195, 203, 205–207, 213, 215–219,
221, 235, 270, 271, 279, 280 221–223, 225, 228, 230, 231, 233, 236,
Allen, Paul, 42, 46 239, 242, 247, 248, 255, 259–261, 264,
Alzheimer’s, 34, 65, 106, 144, 160, 178, 186 265, 266, 268, 269, 272, 275–279, 281
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 22, Assault and battery, 8, 22, 111, 196
29, 30, 144–146, 175, 217, 218, 231, Avatar, 18, 228, 232, 238, 242–244, 247, 249,
239, 262, 263 253
Android, 3–5, 8, 9, 18, 41, 55, 160, 171, Asimov, Isaac, 4, 24, 25, 37, 60, 67, 192, 193
216–223, 225–230, 232–266, 274,
277, 278
Anti-chipping statute, 11, 132, 178, 282 B
Anti-paparazzi statute, 186, 204 100 Billion Neurons, 80, 82, 157, 183, 272
Antonellis, Anthony, 169, 170, 182 Barfield, Jessica, 197, 233, 235
Artificial general intelligence, 85, 86, 228 Barfield, Woodrow, 2, 18, 41, 108, 191, 192
Artificial neurons, 89 Barrat, James, 60, 97, 278
Artificial hippocampus, 7, 106, 107, 128, 160, Berger, Theodore, 2, 7, 103, 106, 107, 160,
161, 248 183, 275
Artificial intelligence, 1–4, 8–10, 16–19, 24, Beyond AI, 65
25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 39–48, 54, 55, Big data, 17
59, 60, 63, 65–67, 69, 71–78, 81–90, Biomaterials Access Assurance Act, 147
96–99, 101, 104, 135, 136, 156, 157, Bionic human, 3, 6, 8, 16, 18, 29, 68, 216
159, 179, 180, 191, 193, 194, 200, 206, Biostamp, 165
212–218, 224, 228, 230, 231, 234, 236, Bitcoin, 15
243, 248, 254, 265, 266–274, 276–284 Bits, 20, 75, 87, 90, 183, 213, 247
Artificial intelligence threat, 54, 180 Blitz, Marc, 112, 113, 123

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 285

W. Barfield, Cyber-Humans, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25050-2
286 Index

Bodily integrity, 55–57, 95, 113, 125–127, Conscious, 1, 23, 26, 45, 48, 54, 85, 137, 138,
222, 281 205, 215, 216, 225, 230, 243, 268, 271,
Bodily integrity identity disorder, 56 272, 280
Bostrom, Nick, 69, 72, 268 Constitutional law, 20, 73, 77, 117, 122, 124,
Brain implant, 1, 5, 7, 52, 101–103, 107, 138, 155, 188, 244, 262, 283
110–113, 125–129, 131, 132, 142, 161, Copyright act, 77–79, 96, 245, 252
171, 179, 193 Copyright law, 55, 77–79, 93, 95, 96, 227,
Brain Research through Advancing Innovative 245–252, 254, 256
Neurotechnologies Initiative, 47 Cosmetic surgery, 34, 136, 259, 260
Brain scan, 9, 120, 210 Crowd sourcing, 10
Brain-computer interface, 2, 9, 21, 34, 42, 46, Cyber hackers, 139
51–54, 112, 135, 136, 138, 157, 163, Cyber speech, 115
175, 182, 184 Cybernetics, 5, 6, 29, 167, 275, 276
Brain-net, 52 Cybersecurity, 54, 102, 108, 126, 136, 138,
Brains in silicon research laboratory, 61 174, 244, 281
Brave new world, 128 Cyberspace, 2, 15, 35, 193
Breaching the sensor-skin barrier, 182 Cyberstalking, 132
Breazeal, Cynthia, 26 Cyborg, 1–8, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18–24, 28–30,
Brooks, Rodney, 23, 24, 26–28, 280 33, 35, 37, 39, 44, 49–53, 55–58, 61,
Brynjolfsson, Eric, 63, 236 63, 68, 71, 73, 74, 77, 80–82, 93, 95,
97–99, 101–106, 108–115, 121, 126,
128–133, 135, 141–147, 150, 153, 154–
C 157, 160, 161, 163, 166–168, 173–182,
California Privacy Act, 186 184, 186–188, 190, 192–197, 199–210,
Calo, Ryan, 74, 197, 236 212–214, 216–221, 225, 228–242, 245,
Canada Anti-Spam law, 108 247–254, 257, 260–265, 267–276, 280,
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 24 282–284
Cannon, Tim, 170, 173 Cyborg age, 4, 80, 94, 102, 107, 110–113,
CAN-SPAM Act, 108 115, 122–124, 126, 136, 195, 196, 201,
Censorship, 87, 115, 125, 164, 201, 202, 249 205, 210, 218, 223, 225, 232, 234, 240,
Center for cognitive liberties, 129 241, 248, 257, 261, 265, 281, 283
Chip mask, 95 Cyborg communication, 115
Chong, Jane, 101, 130, 231 Cyborgness, 19, 20, 274
Chorost, Michael, 44, 50 Cyborg speech, 115
Chun, Marvin, 9 Cyborg technologies, 4, 8, 12, 15, 16, 20, 23,
Church of Body Modification, 140, 149, 150, 33, 39, 56, 58, 82, 102–106, 108, 110,
262 112–115, 121–123, 128–131, 133, 140,
Citizen, 18, 24, 44, 53, 54, 123, 132, 178, 180, 142, 144–146, 148, 153, 154, 167, 176,
188, 227, 236, 242, 276 177, 179–181, 187, 188, 192, 193, 196,
Clynes, Manfred, 5 197, 200, 202, 206, 209, 213–215, 217,
Cochlear implant, 6, 19, 34, 104, 105, 107, 220, 222, 228–231, 233–235, 240, 244,
128, 135, 136, 146, 172, 173, 272, 281 260–262, 265, 272, 275, 281–283
Cognitive-computing chip, 91 Cycle time, 64, 84, 85, 273
Cognitive enhancement, 13, 14, 112, 123, 162
Cognitive liberty, 102, 103, 112–119, 122–
125, 127–129, 131, 132, 138, 153, 162, D
179, 202, 211, 244, 274, 281, 283 3D Printer, 156, 198, 207
Computational resources, 75, 77, 80, 82 Dark side, 72
Computer architecture, 48, 74, 80, 85, 91, 282 DARPA, 11, 91, 105, 184
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 127, 128 DARPA’s RAM Project, 105
Computer Misuse Act, 128 Deep blue, 63, 76
Computer thought, 91 Deep brain implant, 54, 103
Computer vision, 45, 76, 77, 162, 235 Deep learning, 49, 86, 88, 89, 224, 279, 280
Index 287

DeepMind, 16, 49, 69 Exponential thinking, 37

Depression, 102, 104 Exponentially improving technologies, 71, 81,
Design patent, 94, 96 84, 85, 97, 113, 132, 219, 221, 231
Diamandis, Peter, 84, 103, 182, 183, 221, 275 Extinct, 27
Digital divide, 5, 110, 222 Eyeborg, 8, 51, 53, 167, 268
Digital immortality, 9, 28, 229, 242, 243, 275 EyeTap, 58, 205
Digital people, 3, 9, 216, 274
Digital tattoo, 141, 164–166, 170, 177
Disability law, 7, 144 F
Discrimination, 7, 22, 144–146, 153, 200, Farahany, Nita, 53, 109, 122
215–219, 221–223, 225, 228–232, FCC regulation, 114
234–240, 242, 243, 257–259, 261–266, FDA, 12, 16, 23, 54, 57, 105, 108, 140, 142,
283 143, 148, 154, 159, 168, 169, 172, 173,
Disembodied software, 9 176, 200, 244, 251, 261, 281
DIY Biology, 13 Federal food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, 16
DNA Nanobot, 11 Fifth Amendment, 53, 109, 122, 123, 283, 284
Drone, 26, 72, 191, 202, 203 First Amendment, 87, 107, 111–115, 117,
Due process clause, 123, 222 123–126, 131, 149, 202, 240, 262, 283
Dystopian future, 16, 107, 153, 180 First sale doctrine, 251, 252
Flynn effect, 65
fMRI, 9, 65, 117, 118, 120, 158, 210
E Frame Breaking Act, 32
EEG, 10, 118, 120, 159, 166, 210 Free speech, 35, 87, 123, 125, 126, 131, 138,
EEOC, 144, 153 202, 281, 283, 284
Easterbrook, Judge, 35 Freedom of electronic speech, 132
Eighth Amendment, 111 Freedom to think, 112, 113, 116
Electrochemical signals, 80, 272 Friendliness, 60, 73, 194
Electromagnetic field, 164, 172, 173 Fu, Kevin, 126
Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act, 238 Fukuyama, Francis, 13, 69, 110, 130, 137,
Emerging law of cyborgs, 71, 73, 77, 85, 95, 175, 180, 216
99, 115, 121, 186, 209, 216, 230, 250, Future of humanity institute, 69, 73, 268
254, 281, 282, 286 Futuristic visions, 86
Enhanced humans, 3–5, 7, 35, 37, 177, 212,
216, 217, 219, 223, 231, 262, 265,
276, 277 G
Enhancement, 3, 5, 7–9, 11–14, 16, 19–21, Gasson, Mark, 126–128
29–31, 33, 34, 36, 41, 55, 56, 84, 110, Gazzaniga, Michael, 119
112, 116, 129, 130, 131, 136–139, 146, Gender discrimination, 238, 257, 258
162, 175, 179, 213, 219–221, 233, 251, Genetic engineering, 11, 13, 19, 30, 31, 59,
260, 270, 271 110, 216, 270
Enhancement technology, 2, 3, 11, 12, 33, 34, Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act,
36, 41, 110, 130, 137 153
Entrepreneur, 4, 14, 15, 17, 179, 274 Germline, 12
Ethics, 2, 29, 37, 45, 69, 116, 162, 228, 278 Gibson, William, 2
European Court of Human Rights, 66 Goertzel, Ben, 10
Evolution, 1, 27, 31, 41, 44, 45, 49, 61, 63, 81, Google, 2, 16, 23, 26, 49, 89, 153, 154, 184,
84, 97, 104, 156, 175, 180, 196, 212, 201, 228, 268, 282
213, 267, 269, 280, 281 Google glass, 10, 21–23, 58, 118, 262
Exaflop computing, 76 GPS, 37, 45, 65, 152, 172, 184, 195, 196
Existential threat, 71, 73, 110, 217, 273, 278, Greely, Henry, 111
281, 282 Gregg, Robert, 193
Exponent on intelligence, 71, 84 Grinder, 139, 143, 148, 170, 172, 173, 175,
Exponential growth, 27, 40, 41, 81–83, 85, 90, 178, 221, 234, 239, 271
103, 181, 185, 188, 200, 275 Guilty knowledge, 118
288 Index

Gur, Ruben, 119 Internal speech, 114

Gynoid, 257 Intrusion upon seclusion tort, 209
Ishiguro, Hiroshi, 226, 227, 257

H
Hacked, 11, 107, 113, 123, 126, 162, 166, 174 J
Hacking, 29, 54, 104, 125, 126, 137–141, 143, Jeopardy, 32, 61, 62
150, 154, 155, 157, 160, 164–166, 169, Joy, Bill, 36, 59, 73, 179, 185, 213
172, 174, 230 Just, Marcel, 10
Hacking the Body, 16, 104, 138, 139, 169,
171, 221, 234
Hacking the Brain, 157 K
Hacking the Ear, 172 Kaku, Michio, 158, 160
Hacking the Skin, 164, 166, 174 Karnow, Curtis, 44
Halamaka, John, 170 Katz, 109, 186–188
Hallevy, Gabriel, 74 Kim, Sangbae, 193
Haptic, 165, 171 Kobayashi, Hiroshi, 225
Harbisson, Neil, 8, 49, 50, 167, 168, 229, Kotler, Steven, 103, 182
239, 268 Kurzweil, Ray, 2, 19, 22, 27, 30, 32, 41, 42,
Hate crime, 22, 229, 230 44, 62, 73, 75, 81, 82, 84, 97, 98, 102,
Hawking, Stephen, 4, 30, 59, 65, 180, 252 135, 179, 183, 228, 229, 242, 269, 270,
Humancentric, 16, 220 273, 275
Humanity, 1, 2, 4, 5, 11–13, 20, 24, 25, 27–31,
36, 37, 39, 42, 44, 45, 48, 50, 59, 60,
62, 66, 68, 69, 71–73, 75, 76, 82, 83, L
96–99, 101, 102, 104, 107, 110, 113, Law, 2, 7, 8, 11, 15, 23, 24, 29, 35, 37, 42, 55,
114, 128, 136, 137, 142, 155, 175, 177, 66, 73, 77, 85, 97, 99, 102, 108, 110,
179–181, 183, 199, 212, 213, 216–219, 111, 128, 144, 149, 150, 153, 163, 169,
221, 228, 231, 252, 268–271, 273, 171, 175, 177, 178, 181, 187, 203, 215,
275–278, 281–284 217, 220, 228, 239, 248, 252, 265, 269,
Human-like Artificial Intelligence, 74, 76, 82, 276, 281, 282, 284
85, 86, 268–270, 279, 280 Law of accelerating returns, 27, 66, 71, 84, 89,
Human-like robot, 3, 17, 19, 75, 220 102, 112, 177, 183, 184, 188, 212, 213,
Humanoid, 3, 215, 219, 221, 243 216, 221, 271, 275, 280, 283
Human rights, 4, 5, 18, 24, 37, 57, 61, 111, Law of agency, 43
113, 124, 130, 131, 138, 212, 215, 222, Law of artificial bodies, 3, 4, 18, 84, 95, 97,
225, 230 215, 217, 218, 222, 244, 252, 253
Hurban, Dan, 174 Law of cyborgs, 24, 73, 77, 85, 95, 99, 108,
Huxley, Aldous, 128 126, 132, 155, 195, 209, 282, 283
Hwang, Jeng-Neng, 191 Law of neurons, 80
Law of the horse, 35, 37, 155
The Law of robots, 66, 253
I Lee, Rick, 172
Ikegava, Yuji, 159 Legal person, 24–26, 66, 67, 215, 242, 244,
Implant, 2, 3, 8, 11, 15, 21, 34, 36, 52, 62, 266, 276
66, 101, 103, 105, 107, 108, 117, 125, Leonardo, 26
127, 128, 132, 139, 142, 144, 147, 148, Lessig, Larry, 35, 193
153, 167, 168, 170, 174, 175, 178, 181, Linear thinking, 8, 83
207, 282 Litt, Brian, 170
Indentured servant, 24 Liu, Xu, 121, 162
Integrated circuit, 75, 78, 91–96, 99 Locked-in, 7, 9, 102
Intellectual property, 25, 35, 73, 77, 80, 90, Lookism discrimination, 218, 229, 232,
93–96, 138, 202, 205, 206, 218, 223, 234–237, 239, 240, 242, 261, 262
245, 255, 257 Luddite, 31–34, 225
Index 289

M Neuroscience, 1, 40, 41, 46, 47, 53, 76, 85, 98,

Machine Learning, 49, 76, 85, 86, 89, 156, 101, 105, 119, 120, 122, 135, 144, 158,
224, 235, 280 162, 175, 189, 268
Mann, Steve, 19, 21, 29, 33, 49, 57, 108, 196, New Hacker’s Dictionary, 138
205, 208, 229, 240, 261, 268 Nicolelis, Miguel, 10, 42, 52, 120, 171,
Marc, Karl, 170 173, 270
Mask work, 90, 95
Massively parallel network, 76
McAfee, Andrew, 63, 236 O
McDonalds incident, 58, 229 Object code, 78, 93, 94
McNealy, Scott, 204 Olds, James, 116
Medical necessity, 9, 28–30, 36, 102–104, Oliver, Julian, 58
106, 136, 151, 184, 185, 189, 229, 271 Omenetto, Fiorenzo, 184
Mens rea, 107, 131, 192, 193 Open source DNA, 13
Merge with machines, 27, 28, 39, 41, 44, 46, Optogenetics, 158, 162
53, 70, 136, 142, 184, 224, 268 Our Posthuman Future, 14, 69, 130, 137,
Microchip, 10, 11, 34, 37, 47, 104, 106, 151, 180, 216
152, 160, 166, 183, 196, 223 Over-abled, 7
Milner, Peter, 116, 117
Mind children, 76, 82, 104, 181, 213, 214,
224, 271 P
Mindclone, 243, 244, 249, 251 Pacemaker, 6, 20, 21, 54, 57, 104, 126, 128,
Mindplex, 10 130, 142, 143, 181, 221
Minsky, Marvin, 48 Page, Larry, 207
MIPS, 76, 98 Paradiso, Joe, 183
Misuse of Drugs Act, 124 Parallel processing, 61, 85, 91
MIT, 23, 26, 88, 151, 163, 193, 218, 235, 280 Parkinson’s disease, 102, 142
Moore’s law, 27, 30, 42, 61, 76, 81, 84, 90, 97, Patent law, 68, 77, 92–95, 206, 240
98, 157, 183, 272, 273, 275, 279, 280 Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind, 42
Moravec, Hans, 26, 32, 41, 73, 75, 81, 82, 104, Penrose, Roger, 46
181, 224, 236, 270, 271, 273 Performance enhancing drugs, 3, 11, 34
Mori, Masahiro, 216, 232 Perkowitz, Sidney, 3, 28, 216, 220, 274
Motor skills, 71, 72, 74, 272 Petaflop, 20, 30, 75, 76, 86, 183, 272
MRI, 52, 118, 143, 158 PET scan, 119
Musk, Elon, 4, 72, 73, 272, 274 Picard, Rosalind, 55
Pirated, 92
Plastic surgery, 3, 16, 36, 136, 140, 232,
N 259, 271
Naam, Ramez, 34, 137 Pleasure centers, 116, 117
Nanotechnology, 12, 18, 19, 36, 41, 42, 177, Post-human, 2, 5, 19, 44, 131, 136, 137, 177
180 Post-human future, 46
Natural person, 24, 50, 228, 242, 245, 254, Price-performance of computers, 81
260, 264 Prior restraint, 115, 131
Negligence, 67, 72, 147, 148, 151, 155, 260 Privacy law, 10, 185, 201
Neocortex, 42, 48, 84, 269, 275 Products liability, 56, 67, 148, 169, 197,
Network of Things, 184, 190 261, 281
Neural implant, 11, 62 Project cyborg, 19
Neural nets, 89 Prosthesis, 1, 5–8, 14, 16, 19, 20, 23, 28, 29,
Neurocircuitry, 91 41, 50, 54, 56, 57, 62, 66, 101, 104,
Neuromorphic Chip, 48, 91, 271 106, 120, 121, 136, 139, 142, 144–147,
Neuroprosthesis, 7, 41, 94, 101, 103, 108, 110, 158, 161, 168, 193, 207, 212, 221, 260
116, 117, 120, 125, 126, 128, 132, 138, Prosthetics, 7, 14, 41, 135, 139, 146, 175, 194,
159, 160, 187, 212, 213, 221, 251 261, 262
290 Index

Public Health Service Act, 16 Self-incrimination, 53, 109, 122

Public policy, 13, 21, 22, 29, 45, 49, 58, 71, Semi-autonomous, 72, 193, 195
147, 150, 164, 190, 194, 206, 217, Semiconductor Chip Protection Act, 95, 96
250, 260, 284 Sensors, 2, 3, 8, 16, 17, 19–21, 23, 41, 52,
Pure speech, 115 55, 71, 103, 110, 114, 136, 141, 148,
150–154, 156, 158, 159, 160, 165, 166,
169, 174, 175, 177–182, 184–190, 192,
Q 193
Quantum computing, 90 Silicon chip, 2, 53, 90
Silicon photonic chip, 90
Simulate the brain, 75
R Singularity, 2, 27, 33, 39–42, 44–47, 50, 54,
RAM, 96, 105 56, 59–62, 68, 76, 78, 82, 83, 97–99,
Rees, Martin, 73, 269 102, 104, 135–137, 156, 180, 181, 213,
Regulations, 15, 16, 23, 66, 69, 73, 108, 111, 217, 269, 273, 278–281, 284
114, 142, 144, 149, 173, 180, 199, 203, Sixth sense, 167, 171, 172, 184
240, 244, 263 Software, 3, 8, 9, 11, 16, 17, 23, 28, 43, 46,
Reinforcement learning, 88, 89 54, 60, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 71, 74, 75,
Remote Sensing Policy Act, 203 77–80, 87, 88, 90, 92, 93, 96, 97, 99,
Restoring active memory (RAM) program, 107, 109, 126, 127, 128, 138, 142, 144,
91, 96 150, 152, 154, 155, 156, 158, 162, 167,
Rethink robotics, 17, 23 170, 174, 185, 193, 194, 200, 205–207,
Retinal prosthesis, 19, 104, 107, 128, 136, 221, 243, 244, 251, 252, 268, 278
154, 272, 281 Software license, 154, 251
Reverse-engineer the brain, 27 Software virus, 43, 126, 127
RFID, 143, 144, 151, 169, 170, 175, 178, 179, Somatic enhancement, 12
182, 189, 214 Source code, 78, 92, 94
Right of publicity, 55, 227, 246, 252–254, 257 Sousveillance, 208
Right to be forgotten, 164, 201, 249 Spectrum, 68, 114, 129, 174, 200, 208, 281
Rights of cyborgs, 37, 50 Speech, 11, 35, 67, 73, 77, 79, 87–89,
Robot, 1, 3–5, 8, 17, 19, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 32, 112–115, 123, 125, 126, 131, 132, 152,
45, 53, 55, 56, 59, 60, 63, 67, 76, 77, 153, 172, 199, 200, 202, 226, 228, 240,
78, 81, 88, 89, 135, 136, 144, 156, 183, 264, 281
188, 191–193, 198, 206, 213, 215, 218, Spence, Rob, 51, 53
219, 220, 224–227, 228, 233, 235, 236, Stacking pennies, 83
239, 241, 242, 245, 246, 253, 257, 261, Statutory protection, 77, 92, 95
264, 265, 267, 268, 271, 272, 274, 276 Sui generis, 95
Robot and Cyborg Ethics Charter, 37 Summoning the demon, 72
Robot children, 104 Supercomputer, 30, 32, 47, 61, 75, 81, 135,
Roboticist, 74, 75, 216, 217, 220, 226, 228, 157, 183, 272, 279
232, 236, 242, 248, 253, 257, 264, 281 Supreme court, 20, 22, 37, 57, 68, 87, 112,
Rogers, John, 165, 166 113, 115, 117, 122, 124, 131, 145, 163,
Rosen, Jeffrey, 111, 211 186–188, 195, 196, 206, 207, 217, 222,
Rothblatt, Martine, 9, 230, 231, 243, 251 256, 281

S T
Samuelson, Pamela, 87, 190 100 Trillion synapses, 82, 91, 272
Search and seizure, 11, 37, 114, 152, 181, 186, Technological progeny, 82, 86, 110, 156, 183,
283, 284 216, 217, 221, 224, 231, 240, 242, 255,
Sejnowski, Terry, 75 257, 264, 265, 275, 277
Self-aware machine, 73, 222 Technological singularity, 39
Self-driving car, 26, 72 Tegmark, Max, 41, 46
Index 291

Telekinesis, 160 Uncanny valley, 55, 56, 216, 232–235

Telepathic communication, 29, 114, 115, 117, United Nations Declaration of Human Rights,
120, 184, 273 138
Telepathy, 10, 11, 49, 51–53, 117, 120, 132, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 57,
160, 177 113
Telepathy chip, 10, 11 U.S. Telecommunications Act, 66
Telephoto Lens, 169, 204, 205, 271 Utility patent, 68
Telepresence, 192, 220
Thermal imaging, 195
Thierer, Adam, 179 V
Third parties, 101, 102, 107, 113, 117, 119, Video Voyeurism Prevention Act, 214
128, 129, 131, 132, 162, 246, 252, 254 Virtual economy, 15
Thought control, 117, 273 Virtual reality, 15, 18, 28, 35, 42, 179, 257,
Three laws of robotics, 4, 24, 25, 37, 192 279
Tools, 13, 47, 58, 59, 66, 72, 83, 84, 99, 130, von Neumann computing, 91, 107
135, 152, 153, 178, 189, 213, 228, 267,
277, 278
Tort, 24, 35, 74, 148, 150, 151, 155, 169, 186, W
196, 209 Warwick, Kevin, 19, 51, 53, 126, 150, 175,
Trade dress Law, 255 276
Trade secret law, 77, 79, 94, 95, 181 Watson, 32, 61, 62
Trainor, Meghan, 170 Wearable technology, 2, 14, 15, 23, 58, 152
Transhuman, 5, 6, 19, 233 Why the future doesn’t need us, 36, 59, 73,
Transhumanism, 139, 175 185
Transmission of bits, 87 Witness, 9, 53, 119, 122, 162, 163, 210, 212
Tribe, Lawrence, 117, 124 Wittes, Benjamin, 101, 130, 231
TRIPS, 96 WTO, 96
TrueNorth chip, 91 Wu, Tim, 39, 87
TSA, 21, 50

Y
U Yudkowsky, Elizer, 60, 156
Ugly laws, 234, 239–241
U.K. Equality Act, 7
Ultrasound, 55, 167 Z
Ulzzang, 233, 234 Zak, Paul, 189