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Bio-machine Hybrid Technology: A Theoretical Assessment and Some Suggestions for Improved Future Design

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Abstract

In sociology, there has been a controversy about whether there is any essential difference between a human being and a tool, or if the tool–user relationship can be defined by co-actor symmetry. This issue becomes more complex when we consider examples of AI and robots, and even more so following progress in the development of various bio-machine hybrid technologies, such as robots that include organic parts, human brain implants, and adaptive prosthetics. It is argued that a concept of autonomous agency based on organismic embodiment helps to clarify the situation. On this view, agency consists of an asymmetrical relationship between an organism and its environment, because the continuous metabolic and regulatory activity of the organism gives rise to its own existence, and hence its specific behavioral domain. Accordingly, most (if not all) of current technologies are excluded from the class of autonomous agents. Instead, they are better conceptualized as interfaces that mediate our interactions with the world. This has important implications for design: Rather than trying to help humans to achieve their goals by duplicating their agency in artificial systems, it would be better to empower humans directly by enhancing their existing agency and lived experience with technological interfaces that can be incorporated into their embodiment. This incorporation might be especially facilitated by bio-machine hybrid technology that is designed according the principles of biological autonomy and multi-agent coordination dynamics.

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Notes

  1. Because capitalism is founded on the untenable ideal of constant economic growth in a world of limited resources, it might be argued that these global crises have more to do with the economic system in which most technology is nowadays embedded, rather than with the technology per se. But this is not entirely accurate. The development of new technology already grew exponentially long before the modern rise of capitalism (Ambrose 2001), and the demise of many pre-capitalist ancient civilizations is closely linked to the technologically enabled overexploitation of resources (Wood 2005). Nevertheless, capitalism has surely contributed to the scale of the crises.

  2. It is an interesting open question to consider what the essential differences are between tools and technologies more generally. As one reviewer asked, can one extend the concept of tool to all techniques: house, books, robots, cities, factories, or machines? We may want to differentiate the tool itself from the totality of equipment to which it belongs and also the kinds of relationships humans can have with tools when compared with large-scale techniques (De Preester 2012). In any case, there are good reasons to believe that all techniques mediate our relationship with the world to some extent (Khatchatourov et al. 2007), and that is what is most important here.

  3. This work is part of a European Commission FP7 funded project on the Collective Experience of Empathic Data Systems (CEEDs), which aims to develop novel, integrated technologies to support human experience, analysis, and understanding of very large datasets. I share their idea of placing our experience at the center of technical solutions, which I try to motivate as being applicable to all kinds of complex problems, including our understanding of major crises.

  4. Interestingly, bio-machine hybrid robots could also be considered examples of lived technology in this specific sense—except that in this case it is the perceptual interactions of nonhuman organisms that are primarily being modulated. This change in perspective could be useful for future design of hybrid robots because the goal of creating an augmenting interface for one or more existing biological individuals, rather than creating another genuine hybrid agent as such, places significantly less demands on the engineering process (Froese and Ziemke 2009).

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Acknowledgements

Tom Froese is grateful to Mark Bishop and Yasemin Erden for their support and encouragement during the writing of this article. He also thanks three anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments.

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  1. Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico

    Tom Froese

  2. Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico

    Tom Froese

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Correspondence to Tom Froese.

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Froese, T. Bio-machine Hybrid Technology: A Theoretical Assessment and Some Suggestions for Improved Future Design. Philos. Technol. 27, 539–560 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0130-y

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