After fighting against ALS for nearly 5 years, on June 15, the world's first real "cyborg" (also known as a cyborg, which is a fusion of human and electronic machinery) - Peter Scott Morgan's life is fixed at 64 years old.
In November 2017, Peter was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as ALS.
ALS is listed by WHO as one of the top five terminal diseases. The incidence is not high, but there is no cure.
As motor nerves degenerate, patients gradually lose their ability to walk, speak, swallow, and breathe, and most patients die of respiratory failure within three to five years after symptoms first appear.
As a well-known scientist in the field of global robotics research, Peter decided to transform himself with existing technology - replacing parts of his organs with machines.
In his view, as long as you can still live and have the ability to think freely, life has meaning.
Peter's departure is not the end, many people believe that he has opened a new journey for mankind.
Many interviewed experts believe that this is a scientific and technological exploration centered on the quality of human life and a cutting-edge experiment in which technology serves people.
And when the tentacles of human-machine fusion penetrate deep into life itself, people want to know: how to define the meaning of human beings being "trapped" in the body in the future?
Are there new possibilities for human evolution?
How to rationally understand the complexity of life?
'Unprecedented' medical attempt
It is understood that in order to maintain the normal operation of life, the first step to transform Peter with existing technology is to perform a "triple ostomy" before various complications occur, namely gastrostomy, cystostomy, colostomy to meet the needs of feeding and excretion that may be gradually lost.
Yao Dezhong, director of the Sichuan Institute of Brain Science and Brain-like Intelligence and director of the Information Medicine Research Center of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, told reporters that medically, the development of ostomy technology is relatively mature, and the three operations themselves are not difficult.
The challenge is to combine the previously performed separate operations, and no patient in the world has yet had all three operations at the same time.
Peter's "unprecedented" operation faced numerous controversies, the central question being whether destructive surgery could be performed on uninjured organs.
Liu Ruishuang, deputy director of the Department of Medical Ethics and Law at Peking University School of Medicine, said that all parts of the body serve the overall health of people, and surgery is only a means.
Under normal circumstances, the operation of patients should follow basic medical ethics principles such as non-harm, benefit, fairness, and respect.
The interviewed experts reminded that the principle of no harm needs to clarify the relationship between injury and harm.
In medical practice, damage exists objectively, for example, most surgeries cause damage to the skin.
Do not harm, mainly refers to not causing patients to suffer undue harm in medical services.
The core of the favorable principle is to weigh the risk-benefit ratio of surgery.
If the benefits of surgery outweigh the risks, the doctor is obliged to help the patient.
The principle of justice means that doctors should treat every patient fairly.
In the allocation of scarce medical resources, it is necessary to rationally allocate medical resources based on the actual needs of each person.
The principle of respect should fully respect the autonomy of patients and test subjects.
This means that whether to accept a certain treatment plan or not to participate in a certain medical trial should be completely decided by the patient or the test subject, and the doctor cannot substitute for any judgment.
According to public information, many doctors initially did not agree to operate on Peter.
The experts interviewed speculated that the doctors’ starting point may have been mainly based on the principle of no harm – on the one hand they were worried that general anesthesia would hinder breathing, and on the other hand they were worried that the surgery might lead to the disease progressing more quickly.
The doctor who finally performed the operation for Peter mainly followed the principle of benefit and respect.
In Liu Ruishuang's view, if no operation is performed, Peter can only slowly "wait to die", and his quality of life will be seriously degraded, which may be more painful for him.
More importantly, as a scientist Peter, his ideas are more advanced and open, and he is more clear about the pros and cons of organ reconstruction. The doctor respects Peter's wishes and maintains the dignity of the patient's life.
Peter's "triple ostomy" lasted 3 hours and 40 minutes.
The prospective and importance of the medical paper on the procedure, selected as the 2019 Oxford Annual Medical Case Report, is evident.
Several experts interviewed said that Peter's surgery was a good attempt.
In the future, in the absence of other options, the "triple ostomy" for patients with ALS may become the norm.
Human body digital transformation technology has a long way to go
After completing the basic transformation of his body, Peter decided to use intelligent machines to solve problems such as movement and communication.
In order to maintain his mobility, the team of scientists customized a high-end wheelchair for him, equipped with a computer display screen, which can control the computer through eye-tracking technology, and then control the wheelchair to help him stand, lie down and move around.
In order to communicate with the outside world, when Peter was still able to speak, he relied on the technical team, left a lot of language and image materials, and created his own 3D image. He could control the computer through his eyeballs and interact with the outside world with a 3D avatar.
In October 2019, Peter had his final operation, a total laryngectomy, to avoid life-threatening saliva entering his lungs due to his inability to control the movement of his throat.
And this month, it was originally the doctor's estimate of the time of Peter's death.
After the operation, Peter lost his voice completely, but was able to express his thoughts through a synthetic voice stored in a computer.
Thus, a "Peter 2.0" that relies on the brain, eyes, artificial intelligence and various electronic devices to fight against fate was born.
Relying on the blessing of technology, Peter became the first "cyborg" in human history.
However, there is a big difference between the real-life "cyborg" and the omnipotence of sci-fi characters in film and television works.
According to media reports, Peter experienced unimaginable pain after the transformation.
For example, the smart device does not fully understand his intentions, and it takes a long time to say a word.
Liang Zheng, deputy dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence International Governance at Tsinghua University, said that these details show that there are still bottlenecks in the application of relevant intelligent technologies.
Yao Dezhong said that Peter's body function is constantly degraded, and the speed of technology learning and updating is far behind the changes in the body.
For ALS patients, how to use the remaining bodily functions to convey the correct signals to the machine is the key to determining whether the technology can serve them well.
For the development of technology itself, whether it can continue to track the process of physical degradation and make corresponding adjustments and changes synchronously, and whether it can find the law of technology adapting to changes, still needs to be explored.
Liang Zheng introduced that there are currently many application scenarios for technologies such as speech synthesis and virtual avatars in entertainment and life services, such as intelligent customer service, virtual idols, etc. The related technologies have gradually matured, but the digital transformation of the human body is a relatively special scene, which is still in the exploration phase.
Especially in terms of thinking expression, emotional output, etc., the technical difficulty is far greater than we imagined.
Taking the brain-computer interface as an example, Yao Dezhong said that the technology may play an important role in the treatment of brain injuries in the future, including severe depression, morbid obesity, and low sleep quality, but this technology is expected to be very good. Practice is difficult.
Because brain signals are constantly changing, acquiring signals can be difficult.
Even if the signal can be accurately extracted, it is difficult to accurately understand the meaning of the signal due to too little data at present, and there are not many successful cases in the world.
The experts interviewed suggested that the development of artificial intelligence technology mainly relies on learning.
In the future, we can consider increasing the sample size and encourage more experts, patients and even healthy people to participate in tracking and learning the laws of human body movement and physiological changes.
When the learning samples are sufficient and the technical performance is relatively stable, the technology may provide more opportunities for improving the survival status of patients.
How human and machine are deeply integrated
As a realistic example of "robot human", Peter's self-transformation provides more imagination space for the deep integration of human and machine.
Pan Enrong, a professor at the School of Marxism at Zhejiang University, said that since the 1760s, the invention and use of modern machines has opened up many climaxes of "machine substitutions".
It is understood that in the era of "machine substitution", with the development of automation, informatization, and digital technology, part of the manpower has been replaced, resulting in a confrontation between man and machine to a certain extent.
However, while replacing some traditional jobs, machines have also spawned many new occupations, such as automation trainers, digital managers, and Internet marketers.
"Human-machine is a complementary relationship rather than a substitute relationship, and will gradually move towards in-depth cooperation." Liang Zheng said.
Especially as deep learning technology pushes artificial intelligence into a new stage, it once again deeply transforms the relationship between human and machine, making "robot human" gradually possible.
Pan Enrong said that if the traditional "machine substitution" is that machines intervene between people, then "robotization" is a "post-human" formed by machines intervening in human life itself - cyborg.
According to Liang Zheng, different from the current machine learning mainly based on deep neural network and large-scale data training, there are two main technical routes for human-computer interaction and even "fusion" in the next step: one is to simulate the way of human learning, but Because the human learning process cannot be accurately restored at present, and the causal relationship is not clear, the depth and accuracy of machine learning are limited; The library is injected into the machine, but due to the huge amount of data, it is also difficult to smoothly call all kinds of data.
In general, human-machine fusion is still in the peripheral field, such as replacing patients with motor function loss with prosthetics.
For deeper human-machine integration, there are few successful cases in the world.
In Yao Dezhong's view, "In addition to the lack of technological maturity, what is more critical is that human-machine integration has not yet formed a consensus. For example, whether machines will replace humans, in what ways can they replace humans, whether machines will have their own consciousness, whether Allow it to have consciousness, etc."
How to draw the boundary of human-machine integration
Peter's life has ended, but the discussions he left behind on the boundaries of human-machine fusion continue.
Technology is a double-edged sword.
While the new round of scientific and technological revolution helps the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries and drives the rapid development of the intelligent economy, when the tentacles of human-machine integration penetrate deep into human life, it may also cause some social risks.
The interviewed experts said that once the relevant technologies are implemented, there may be inequities in their use, such as whether all people have the opportunity to enjoy the resources of digital transformation equally, and the transformed human may have natural advantages in some fields, which is more likely to cause problems. polarization, etc.
Therefore, the relevant institutional norms of human-machine integration must be ahead of technological development to escort social governance.
Liang Zheng suggested that clarifying the boundaries of human-machine fusion first requires clarifying the purpose of use.
When human-machine fusion is used to treat diseases and improve the quality of life of individuals, it is usually sufficient to meet the four basic principles of medical ethics.
Yao Dezhong agreed with this: "For some rare disease groups, technology may be the only channel for them to gain a new life, and this door must be opened for them."
When human-computer fusion is used to enhance body functions, experts propose to set more red lines, analyze them according to the usage scenarios, and follow the principle that risks are known and controllable, that is, the enhancement technology that can control the risks can be appropriately released, and the risks cannot be controlled. Estimated or difficult to control should be strictly limited.
For example, Liang Zheng said that in the field of sports competition, it is obvious that the human body cannot be enhanced and transformed, otherwise it will run counter to the fair purpose of sports.
In education, the potential for injustice and future risks to be created by augmenting intelligence-enhancing technologies requires restrictions on the use of similar scenarios.
If technology can help humans get rid of repetitive operations in learning, this type of human-machine fusion application may be feasible, but how to accurately and scientifically delineate the boundaries must be strictly demonstrated.
Liu Ruishuang, Liang Zheng and others said that assessing risks requires the introduction of an ethics committee review mechanism in the whole process of human-machine integration. The general members of the ethics committee include medical scientists, ethicists, sociologists, legal experts, community personnel and ordinary people.
For typical cases involving major social interests, it even requires court intervention and approval by relevant administrative organs.
In a sense, what we need may not be an ideal "superman", but a unique and free self.
According to Xinhua News Agency, according to "Looking" Newsweek