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As unmanned drones, algorithms and prosthetics blur the distinction between man and machine, what, if anything, does it mean to be human?
Live TED Conversation: Join TED Fellow Anab Jain
Anab is a designer and founder of the London and India based collaborative design studio Superflux. Between the speculative, magical and the everyday, her work creates new ways in which we will interact with new and emerging technologies.
This conversation will open at 12pm EST on October 17th.
Closing Statement from Anab Jain
Thanks everyone who participated in this conversation, its been hugely stimulating and fun! Some fascinating themes around ethics, 'evolving idea of 'nature' and extreme technological scenarios emerged. Well, hopefully we can build on this again in the future!














Frans Kellner 50+
See this.
http://www.ted.com/talks/bunker_roy.html
Joao Alexandrino
Anab Jain 100+
Abishak Kodi
Brett Borsvold
I figure we'll be increasingly interactive with our environment through the use of technology, but where will the line be drawn to delineate interacting and creating our environment? What is natural anymore?
Anab Jain 100+
Brett Borsvold
Pat Murphy
Mark Holland
Brett Borsvold
Sabine Reljic
Anab Jain 100+
Sabine Reljic
Joao Alexandrino
Pat Murphy
Anab Jain 100+
Mark Holland
Anab Jain 100+
Mark Holland
Dean Gems
Anab Jain 100+
Dean Gems
Anab Jain 100+
Think its not so much about the best or worst case scenarios, about the world where scary technologies will either take us to doom, or humans will always win. I think these technologies can be used for *both* good and ill. So, we might be firefighters (continually putting out new emerging crisis and runaway, 'rogue' technologies), but we'll have the tools to do so?
Joao Alexandrino
Brett Borsvold
Dean Gems
Dean Gems
Dan Borodzik
Joao Alexandrino
If we had the change to choose between having or not a third arm (limb), and the chance of choosing if that 3rd limb is geneticly build or a technological appendix how "human" would be the justification: a Good or Evil one, or an "inhuman"?
Comment deleted
Joao Alexandrino
The aim of this example was more for the ethical questions, I guess: are the machines (even with high levels of built-in perceptions and fast information processing) able to "think" in "Good and Evil" terms, or if they are just meant to follow orders by choosing between "right or wrong".
(by the way, great article: reaches the "darkly issues" of the underlined of the Deus Ex series, and throws others examples that should be more openly debated. Thank you Justin)
Justin Pickard
Qazi Fazli Azeem
Basit Saeed
Joice Rindengan
Jim Sigler
An algorithm can learn to think "outside the box". There are machine learning AI which can evaluate situations and come up with unique solutions that the human programmers never intended.
My name is unimportant
nodnarb ebud
"The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same."
—Plutarch, Theseus
I cannot stand to believe that a lack of limbs or functionality will make one less human. We are not that different from machines in the first place except for the limited time span we inhabit the planet, each of us, a bio-machine, how can we ascertain what it means to be human by physical nature alone. The pillar of humanity has always been around building societies, knowledge and expansion. The core fundamentals of what makes us human in my opinion should not be limited to our physical nature but our actions and their consequences as well. Computers are approaching an age where everything is faster, 'smarter' but still infantile in development. Being human to me means development and I think that technology is not there yet to stand completely alone.
Andrea Sarti
Joice Rindengan
Anab Jain 100+
Qazi Fazli Azeem
Joice Rindengan
parth tawde
Al-Amin Kheraj
I think most people would be uncomfortable with that thought. But that is because perhaps we take conscience for granted. It is not only having a feeling about what is right and wrong; it seems to involve KNOWING what is right and wrong. This is something an algorithm cannot do; it cannot think outside of the box it is programmed to be.
Anab Jain 100+
Al-Amin Kheraj
Anab Jain 100+
Dan Borodzik
Al-Amin Kheraj
Brett Borsvold
Jim Sigler
Nicolas Nova
Researchers in robotics are also interested in the different kind of cognition that can emerge out of machines.
Anab Jain 100+
Sridhar Rajakumar
Qazi Fazli Azeem
Anab Jain 100+
Qazi Fazli Azeem
Anab Jain 100+
Mark Holland
Al-Amin Kheraj
Avinash Gavali
parth tawde
Anab Jain 100+
Jeffery Ferguson