Althouse: "TNT would mean that when humans have robot partners with their own distinct personalities, they will be able to create children together."

March 25, 2018

"TNT would mean that when humans have robot partners with their own distinct personalities, they will be able to create children together."

"The personality of the robot partner, in theory, could be made into artificial chromosomes. Then, both the genetic information from the robot and the human partner could be inserted into a human embryo, via TNT [tissue nanotransfection technology]. This embryo could then be carried and given birth to by a surrogate. It may even be possible to create robot-human children at various different ages. Levy said: 'If one creates robot-human babies… you have to wait 15 years, until they are sufficiently adult-like, to see whether there are problems with the technology. I think what is likely to happen is [a research team] will try to produce robot-human children at different ages - aged 5, 10, 15 and so on.' Imagine a future where we may be able to create children that skip the teething stage and go straight to being moody teenagers."

That's at techradar by Claire Hutchinson who I don't think is taking this seriously enough. For one thing, if we had all this technology, why would we still have to exploit women to do "surrogate" work? For another thing, what's the point of having robot children if we can't picture them behaving with superhuman intelligence and ethics and kindness? Robot child is virtuous and respectful, not rude and selfish.

38 comments:

rhhardin said...: A man never stands taller than when he stoops to help a robot.; 3/25/18, 8:43 AM
rhhardin said...: Deathpool: "Look! I'm a teenage girl! I'd rather be anywhere than here. I'm all about long, sullen silences, followed by mean comments, followed by more silences." So what's it gonna be? Long, sullen silence? Or mean comment? Go on.

Teenaged girl: You got me in a box here.; 3/25/18, 8:46 AM
buwaya said...: The state of technology is far behind that.
It would take, among other things, a complete understanding of the biological mechanics of human personality.
The other fallout of THAT would make this speculation trivial.; 3/25/18, 8:52 AM
Fernandinande said...: "For one thing, if we had all this technology, why would we still have to exploit women to do "surrogate" work?"

White men gotta exploit somebody.; 3/25/18, 8:55 AM
tim maguire said...: No way it happens like this. Approval will never be given to experiment with hybrid humans from scratch.

Instead, the technology will be implanted in born humans with severe defects. Then we may experiment with genetic therapy in the womb. Then, maybe, robot hybrid embryos.; 3/25/18, 8:56 AM
Michael K said...: Time to read "Brave New World" again.; 3/25/18, 8:59 AM
Michael K said...: "Approval will never be given to experiment with hybrid humans from scratch."

There are already experiments with visual devices implanted in the retina.

That is not what they are talking about but it is going on. Eventually, there will be brain implants for things like chronic pain.; 3/25/18, 9:03 AM
JackWayne said...: If you think that true AI will happen, then yes, you will get random personalities and behavior. The only real “benefit” is the speed of data retrieval.; 3/25/18, 9:09 AM
David Begley said...: My high school classmate wrote a good novel with this premise. “The Little Life of Richie Millipede,”

Don’t mess with Mother Nature.

What a stupid commercial idea. Who would pay big money for this? Where’s the demand?; 3/25/18, 9:12 AM
Jaq said...: When you start seeing extinction reversals, you can start worrying about stuff like this.; 3/25/18, 9:17 AM
Jaq said...: What a stupid commercial idea. Who would pay big money for this? Where’s the demand?

So his novel didn’t sell?; 3/25/18, 9:18 AM
Mark said...: There are people who read Brave New World and Frankenstein and even Jurassic Park and reports about Dr. Mengele who are horrified, and then there are those that are turned on by such evil.; 3/25/18, 9:21 AM
buwaya said...: By the time such a thing was practical, the technology required to get to this point will have changed everything else to such a degree that our assumptions about society and value systems of that future time will be entirely wrong.; 3/25/18, 9:22 AM
Oso Negro said...: Well, anyone who has survived their children's teenage years will certainly be able to understand the potential appeal.; 3/25/18, 9:23 AM
Roughcoat said...: I'd like to see extinction reversals. I'm an advocate. I'm interested in de-extinction studies and read everything I can get my hands on about it. I hope to see the de-extinction of woolly mammoths before I die. And the white rhino. etc., etc.; 3/25/18, 9:24 AM
etbass said...: Maybe I am missing something. But from what I understand, no one has ever succeeded in creating any life form of any kind. And so how is this going to happen?; 3/25/18, 9:25 AM
buwaya said...: There is no evil in Brave New World or Frankenstein or Jurassic Park. Mengele was a man, so he could be evil.

All those others are "what if" speculations. The act of speculating turns me on. What if this were possible.

Frankenstein btw is not just "what if". Its pretty deep stuff, especially if you have the background for it, as Mary Shelleys intended readers did, the sort of education that is uncommon today.; 3/25/18, 9:28 AM
wildswan said...: "For one thing, if we had all this technology, why would we still have to exploit women to do "surrogate" work?"

I misunderstood "surrogate work" at first glance, which made me think: when I see a robot maid doing housework well and the way I want it done, I'll start to believe in the possibility of the rest of this.; 3/25/18, 9:47 AM
Roughcoat said...: De-extinction technology has the potential for vastly increasing the planet's biological diversity. (There's that magic word, "diversity," should get the attention of the progs.) And for perpetuating species on the brink of extinction. And because it's so damn cool and fun. Yeah, I know there are pitfalls and dangers. I don't care. Life is all about pitfalls and dangers. The planet could get hit tomorrow by an asteroid resulting in an ELE. Let's do it. Let's bring 'em back.; 3/25/18, 10:17 AM
Gahrie said...: why would we still have to exploit women to do "surrogate" work?

Why is surrogate work exploitation? I am unaware of any woman being forcibly impregnated to serve as a surrogate. Every case I am aware of is the result of a voluntary contract between a woman and others to provide a service in exchange for goods.; 3/25/18, 10:41 AM
Gahrie said...: Deathpool:

It's Deadpool.; 3/25/18, 10:42 AM
Fernandinande said...: "Mr. Busch pushed [the boy] into a wall at the base of a stairwell resulting in [the boy] hitting the back of his head against the wall. At that time, [the boy's] nose began to bleed."

Because he's Robot Boy and his nose is on the back of his head.

How does Robot Boy smell? Not like Cinnamon, I bet.; 3/25/18, 10:43 AM
Michael K said...: But from what I understand, no one has ever succeeded in creating any life form of any kind. And so how is this going to happen?

Craig Venter has. That was in 2010.; 3/25/18, 10:45 AM
Gahrie said...: I'd like to see extinction reversals.

This is a worse idea that the current obsession with preventing species from going extinct. Extinction is a natural process central to evolution. Preventing extinctions and reversing extinctions are crimes against nature.; 3/25/18, 10:45 AM
buwaya said...: "crimes against nature"

So was breeding the Chihuahua.
Better to bring back the velociraptor.; 3/25/18, 11:27 AM
Daniel Jackson said...: Levy said: 'If one creates robot-human babies… you have to wait 15 years, until they are sufficiently adult-like, to see whether there are problems with the technology.'

Well, damn, that sounds like regular children!; 3/25/18, 11:48 AM
Roughcoat said...: Preventing extinctions and reversing extinctions are crimes against nature.

Guilty as charged. Come and get me, coppers, I dare ya. Top of the world.; 3/25/18, 12:23 PM
campy said...: Why is surrogate work exploitation?

Because women are always victims.; 3/25/18, 12:24 PM
Roughcoat said...: Extinction is a natural process central to evolution.

No it's not. It's a consequence of evolution, one of several. Species that underwent adaptive mutations and survived albeit in altered form are another consequence of evolution. Evolution does not take place in extinct species. A species must exist in order to evolve. One could say therefore that extinction is maladaptive from the standpoint of evolution. But I'm not saying that. I am saying that evolution is not contingent on species extinctions. Extinction is not casual. The great Ice Age mammals of North America did not die out because of a failure to adapt to changing climates and environments, rather they went extinct because humans hunted them to extinction. The same thing almost happened to the plains bison in the 19th century. You might want to call human agency in their near-extinction a variant of the evolutionary process but that would be a crime against logic and I'd have to place you under arrest. Bringing the bison back from near-extinction was not a crime against nature anymore than bringing back an extinct animal would be. Nature is not a living entity. It is a metaphorical construct. Metaphorical constructs have no legal standing or Constitutional rights.; 3/25/18, 12:37 PM
Roughcoat said...: Nor is extinction necessary as an enabler of evolution. This can't be proved except via a tautology. I.e., we can only know that species that went extinct enabled evolution by their going extinct. Similarly, we can only know that species that did not go extinct did not go extinct because ... they did not go extinct. That's tautological reasoning.

There is an argument to be made that the theory of natural selection underpinning the theory evolution is tautological. I am inclined to agree with this view.

Bring 'em back, I say. If human agency in the form of hunting species to extinction can be regarded as a form of evolution the same holds true for human agency in bringing them back.; 3/25/18, 12:47 PM
Sebastian said...: "what's the point of having robot children if we can't picture them behaving with superhuman intelligence and ethics and kindness?"

Having robot children that we can picture successfully bullying or eliminating your robot children.; 3/25/18, 1:28 PM
Fernandinande said...: Roughcoat said...
Nor is extinction necessary as an enabler of evolution.

Extinction of one species changes the environment of other species, and so affects their evolution. (using "enable" in this context is weird)

"Study proves that one extinction leads to another"; 3/25/18, 1:37 PM
Roughcoat said...: "Extinction of one species changes the environment of other species, and so affects their evolution. (using "enable" in this context is weird)."

What causes the extinction of the species whose extinction changes the environment of other species thus affecting their evolution? Was it the extinction of a prior species? And so on back to the beginning of time? Is it turtles all the way down?

You can't identify the cause of evolution nor the reasons for the directions it takes except via a tautology and/or to posit randomness, which is really no explanation at all -- it is a failure of explanation, a weasel word and weasel concept. You can't identify evolution as anything other than an effect or a consequence or something prior. Evolutionary processes can only be recognized after the fact: i.e. evolution took place because evolution took place. For the same reason you cannot say that an evolution path was adaptive hence successful because that is only evident after the fact. I.e., those that survived are the fittest and we know they are the fittest because they survived. This is tautology not science. Those little bipedal dinosaurs took million upon millions of years to evolve into birds. Millions of years had to pass before their little forearms evolved into wings. What happened during the long middle period when those little forearms had mutated into mere stumps with claws but before they had transformed into the marvelously aerodynamic appendages that we know call wings? How did those not-foreams/not-yet-wings contribute if at all to species survival? What use did nature make of them or were they for a very long period fundamentally useless and if so why did the species not go extinct due to a maladaptive mutation?; 3/25/18, 1:54 PM
Roughcoat said...: "(using "enable" in this context is weird)."

Okay. What word would you use in that context?; 3/25/18, 2:06 PM
Jaq said...: You know Roughcoat, better you than me to take that idea on. It's so unexamined, where does one start? I mean really, if we can de-extinct species, that's as much a part of evolution as anything else that happens.; 3/25/18, 3:59 PM
Luke Lea said...: So Ann thinks the Turing test might be passed, even in three dimensions? I don't.; 3/25/18, 6:38 PM
Fernandinande said...: Roughcoat said...

You can't identify the cause of evolution nor the reasons for the directions it takes except via a tautology and/or to posit randomness, which is really no explanation at all -- it is a failure of explanation, a weasel word and weasel concept.

It's just chemical processes. The fact they're hard to predict doesn't mean anything except that humans are bad at predicting: you can't predict exactly how a glass will break if you knock it off a table, but there's no transcendent meaning to that inability.

Here's an example of simple evolution, which was predicted and then observed.

"(using "enable" in this context is weird)."
Okay. What word would you use in that context?

You were going after a straw man.; 3/25/18, 7:50 PM
Gahrie said...: You can't identify the cause of evolution

There are two: sex and random mutation.; 3/25/18, 10:00 PM