I've received some wonderful comments on William Cornwell's talk at the last CIPHER workshop, who argued that technologically advanced augmentation of our senses, bodies, and minds make us "more human".
"I do believe that chips implanted into someone’s neurophysiology wouldn’t make them more human, but rather less human. To have a machine do decision-making for us, affects all parts of the brain, and mechanizes us to the degree that our humanity is compromised. To some degree electronics augment us cognitively, but to a greater extent it hinders us and provides us with more trouble. (...) The stakes are high. Are you willing to put your life in the hands of a robot, even if it is controlled by “your” own brain? Augmentation cognition would alienate us from humanity. (...) We are not made to last pharmaceutically beyond 106 years old, and not only would a robot be essentially not human but it would outlive generations."
"But this is all reminding me of the Tower of Babel. Humans have this tendency to try to build themselves higher and higher, and to make themselves gods, improving upon everything they can. (...) Although it might seem mysterious and unreasonable to us, God doesn’t want us to all band together and become more and more powerful as a race. We can see this clearly from how he reacted to the building of Babel: “The Lord Said, ‘if as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other” (Genesis 11:6). There is a line in my mind between using tools to make our lives easier and trying to improve upon ourselves as a species because we think what we are is inadequate."
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