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Person(s) of Interest: Extending the Boundaries

• Linda MacDonald Glenn, JD, LLM

• Dr. Jeanann S. Boyce

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Presenters

• Linda MacDonald Glenn, JD, LLM, Attorney, Bioethicist, Professor Albany Medical Center, CSUMB, Singularity University, Fellow at IEET & recently featured in “FutureScape with James Woods” on Science Channel

• Dr. Jeanann Boyce, Professor of Computer Science, Montgomery College, Specialist in AI and Neurotechnology, Member of National Cybersecurity Colloquium

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Purpose

• The purpose of this presentation is to extend the traditional models of personhood.

• These have included considerations of – Proportional Autonomy– Privacy– Culpability to include non-humans

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Property – Personhood Dichotomy in Law

• Historically, nonhuman animals have been considered “property”,

• Slaves, women, and children were regarded as mere chattel until mid-to-late 1800’s and early 1900’s

• Yet, nonhumans entities, such as corporations and ships have been recognized and given rights as “persons”

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Traditional notions of personhood

• Hierarchical perspective, Great Chain of Being

• Personhood – property dichotomy

• If you are property, you have no rights

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Nontraditional views

• Holistic interdependent worldview

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The Convergence

• Nano – Bio – Info – Cogno• The creation of new beings• As creators, what our moral

responsibilities?

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Exponential growth of AI

• Apply intelligent engineering to Nth degree to biologically-inspired designs

• Sentience quotient? (more accurately, Sapiens quotient)

• Combine analytical skills with the science of networking (Barabasi & Outliers)

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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/futurescape-host-james-woods-future-657380

Robot Revolution?

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Bionic & Enhanced beings

• Communication• Empathy• Rights and responsibilities• Questions of Telos & Enhanced

morality

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Mind uploading?

• Development of neuroscience, connectome & AI

• Extended mind thesis (not brains in a box)

• Whole brain emulation (must persons be biological?)– Destructive uploading– Gradual uploading (or stopping

aging)– Nondestructive (copying)

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Posthumans & non-humans

• Does substrate matter?• What virtues?• Empathy• Peaceful co-existence• Sharing of experience• Emulations (Em’s)• The Golden Rule

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Proposal• Development of the interdisciplinary study

of interspecies communication, including but not limited to:

– Electromagnetic fields– Biochemical signals (pheromones)– Neuroscience of linguistics

» Thinking in images vs words» Reading images in mind» Connectome: Mapping the brain

– Physical (touch)– Telepathy/techlepathy– Echolocation– Cybernetic dolphins– And more…

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Coming soon – a 3D dynamic network model

We do not exist in a vacuum…

Like the extended mind, persons are part of complex system

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The future?

Our capacity to truly understand what it may be like to be another being may be limited to our cognitive capacity,

BUT we are extending our cognitive capabilities and if we can capture the experience, we can share the experience.

Boundaries will blend and blur, and the question will not be who or what are persons, but sort of beings do we want to be?