Smart Chips Get Under Our
Skin
Source: ZDNet
January 23, 2001
While sci-fi concentrates on apocalyptic visions of
intelligent machines, us humans are busy putting machines under our
skin.
The mystique and fear surrounding artificial
intelligence (AI) tends to focus on the idea of sentient machines
somehow challenging man's role on earth, conjuring up images of HAL,
the softly spoken computer with malicious intent. Less talked about is
the reverse idea of humans adopting some
of the qualities of machines via embedded or implanted chips.
As technology advances so the gap between human and
machine closes, fuelling ever more feasible science fiction scenarios
that inevitably provide us with new worries. To some, the idea of
computer-assisted bodies fuels fears that we are all about to become
automatons like the evil cyborg men made famous
in Dr Who.
In reality, the relationship between computers and us is
far more contrived, giving machines powers that serve the most mundane
purposes. While we worry about the idea of contaminating our bodies
with technology thousands of our pets are unconcernedly roaming around
with chips implanted in their
necks.
The use of chips in pets -- now a legal requirement for
anyone wanting to ship a cat or dog abroad -- seems fairly harmless
but suggestions that it be extended to their owners is greeted with
less enthusiasm.
But such implants are no longer the preserve of fiction.
One US-based company, Applied Digital Solutions, has already developed
a microchip -- dubbed Digital Angel -- which was originally marketed
as a tracking device for humans. The makers dwelt on benevolent uses
of the chip -- such as allowing doctors to monitor heart conditions.
But despite its short lifespan (it was only launched in October) the
company has decided to abandon its embedded chip idea in favour of
wearable devices.
"We are not pursuing any applications for embedded chips
and we have moved away from that for a couple of reasons," says a
spokesman for Applied Digital Solutions. While he insists that the
main reason is an economic one -- a small end market and the amount of
time such a technology would take to get FDA (Food and Drug
Administration) approval are the reasons he states -- he also cites
privacy worries and ethical issues. "We don't want the adverse
publicity. There are a number of privacy concerns and religious
implications -- fundamentalist Christian groups regard it [implanting
computer chips] as the Devil's work," he says.
It would seem that even those companies that had hoped
to turn the notion of embedding chips into humans into a viable
business opportunity are having second thoughts. Perhaps they are put
off by the myriad civil liberty groups willing to fight tooth and nail
to prevent such technologies being adopted.
The biggest concern appears to be that once humans are
fitted with computerised implants, all other Big Brother fears will
look like a walk in the park.
The theory goes that once such devices are put inside of
us, it will be a quick and easy step for governments to centrally
coordinate and monitor our movements. It would certainly make all the
current RIP-based plans for Internet snooping appear costly and
technically complicated way in comparison.
Some privacy advocates claim governments already have
the technology to spy using human implants and worry that in a society
obsessed with surveillance such devices could be the last straw. Head
of Privacy International Simon Davies believes implanted chips that
could be employed as tracking
devices could be as little as five years away.
"The pattern for these things is they start as medical
uses, then becomes used in the military or in prisons. Then become
voluntary, then compulsory," he says. For the time being though,
Davies is more concerned by the likelihood that devices like mobile
phones and PDAs could be used to monitor our activities. In the
future, he argues, nanotechnology, where atom-sized robots are used,
could pose a very real threat to privacy.
"Then technology will be as universal as the smallpox
injection, which raises very grave privacy issues," he says.
Even scientists, usually relatively blase about such
issues are concerned about the possibility of a "chip network".
Professor Brad Myers of the Computer Science department at Carnegie
Mellon University in the US raises
no objections to the idea of chip implants, but concedes he is worried
about government use of such technology should it become the norm.
"If the chips are wirelessly connected to networks, that
opens up a whole new set of issues," he says.
BT -- which has followed developments in the use of chip
implants closely -- believes communications using smart chips will
have "profound implications on how people communicate with networks".
The company's chief futurologist, Ian Pearson, is not
convinced however that implants will necessarily be the favoured
method of use.
"There is nothing you can do with embedded chips that
you can't do with wearable ones, and I can't imagine there will be
queues of people lining up to get chips embedded," he says. He
predicts the idea of wearable identity chips could be implemented
within five years. Pearson too is concerned about
privacy using implanted chips: "They give an extra capacity for
surveillance. We are already living with complete invasion of privacy
and I would hate to live in a society that was policed to the extent
embedded chips would allow," he says.
Privacy versus benefits to human understanding
For cybernetic enthusiasts such as Professor Kevin
Warwick, head of cybernetics at Reading University, and Peter
Cochrane, ex-chief technologist at BT, the worries about privacy take
second place to the benefits to human understanding.
Within 50 years, downloading thoughts and emotions will
be commonplace, Cochrane has famously predicted. While this may sound
far-fetched, remember that scientists are well on the way to mapping
the building blocks of what it is to be human via the Human Genome
Project, which is due to complete in 2003. Cochrane believes smarter
than-human-computers -- which he thinks will be reality within ten
years -- will be able to interpret the information available from the
project and use it to understand how the human brain works.
Warwick is perhaps one of the UK's most best-known
cyberenthusiasts and certainly practises what he preaches. Warwick has
chip implants that allow him to open doors and operate his PC
remotely. He is currently taking part in an experiment attempting to
download human emotions onto a PC.
The idea that human emotions can be collected and stored
as data is unappealing to many, reducing as it does the complexities
of our emotional responses to a series of electrical impulses (which
actually is not that far removed from the physiological process of the
brain). In the medical arena
implanted chips could play a very important role in creating cures.
In 1998, scientists at Emory University in the US
developed brain implants which could be controlled by the power of
thought. Each implant, made of cone-shaped glass, contained an
electrode to pick up impulses from nerve endings. It is hoped the
development will one day allow paralysed patients to control
artificial limbs.
In 1999, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) announced a breakthrough method of storing chemicals
on microprocessors, creating a "pharmacy-on-a-chip" which could one
day replace painful injections, difficult-to-swallow pills and provide
medicines for patients unable to follow a regimen of use.
Professor John Santini has been involved in the
lab-on-a-chip project since its inception and believes the power of
embedded chips to do good outweighs any negatives. "We are focused
strictly on the therapeutic, to deliver drugs in a better way and to
treat diseases that are currently untreatable.
The feedback that we have had so far from the public has been very
positive. People can see that we are trying to do something for the
good," he says.
It is anticipated that 98 percent of the human body will
have the potential to be replaced by machines by 2025 and Pearson
believes that within ten to 15 years all people with medical needs or
disabilities will function with the help of some sort of implanted
chip.
Is this the dawn of a new cyborg era for mankind? Is it
not that most sacred of organs, the brain, that provides man with his
uniqueness? Shouldn't it follow then that the brain should never be
influenced by a computer?
But already work has begun on implanted chips that could
be used to treat psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and
psychosis. For a society currently wrestling with how to care for
mentally disturbed patients, ideas like MIT's lab-on-a-chip could
prove hugely valuable. Patients would
no longer be responsible for taking vital medicines, as it would all
be controlled remotely.
Santini believes there is no conceptual reason why the
lab-on-a-chip idea could not be extended to the treatment of
psychiatric patients, but points out that a great deal of political
work, particularly on the ethical side, would have to go on before it
was possible. "Parliamentary procedures would
have to be in place to make sure the technology was used properly and
respected individuals' health and rights," he says.
The question of computers interfering with or modifying
higher brain function, thus altering behaviour, raises important and
fundamental ethical issues about where the machine ends and the human
being begins.
Myers is not fazed by the idea of chips altering
personality. "I don't see it as any different morally or ethically
than drugs which do the same thing," he argues. BT's Pearson agrees:
"I had screws inserted in my legs and I didn't feel any less human.
Some people have ear or eye implants and
there are lots of people running about who are partially bionic. It is
not an enormous ethical issue, as I don't believe it dehumanises us,"
he says.
While it would seem people are unfazed by the threat to
humanity of relying more and more on chips and machines to run our
bodies, the privacy threat is not about to go away. Interestingly,
while sci-fi has focused on how governments and authorities will use
chips to curtail our freedoms, Pearson is bothered by a more mundane
threat.
"You could have a scenario where insurance companies
refuse to insure you unless you agree to have a chip implant to
monitor the level of physical activity you do," he says.
As with so much in the globalised, corporate world, it
is big business that remains the real threat to a technology that has
the potential to improve our lives in ways we cannot yet even dream
of.
by Jane Wakefield
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2001/3/ns-20299.html