12 Venter’s team’s work is described in the journal Nature in 2016. Callaway, E. (2016). “‘Minimal’ cell raises stakes in race to harness synthetic life.” Nature 531: 557–558. http://doi.org/10.1038/531557a
13 Despite my portrayal of InGen’s scientists as enthusiastically short-sighted, the company’s Chief Scientist, Henry Wu (played by BD Wong), is increasingly revealed to have serious evil-scientist tendencies in subsequent movies in the series.
14 The paper was titled “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow” and was published in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. Edward N. Lorenz (1963). ”Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow”. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. 20 (2): 130–141. http://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1963)020<0130:DNF>2.0.CO;2
15 James Gleick (1987) “Chaos: Making a New Science.” Viking, New York.
16 Nidhi Subbaraman and Jessica Garrison (2017) “Here’s What Happened In The Hours After Hurricane Harvey Hit A Chemical Plant, According To A Staff Log” Buzzfeed, November 16, 2017. https://www.buzzfeed.com/nidhisubbaraman/arkema-chemical-plant-houston-timeline
17 Charles Perrow developed his ideas in his 1984 book “Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies,” published by Princeton University Press.
18 Greely was being quoted in an article by Sharon Begley in Business Insider (“Here’s why we’re still not cloning humans, 20 years after Dolly the sheep.” July 5, 2016. http://www.businessinsider.com/can-you-clone-a-human-2016-7). He also noted that the world’s best polo team at the time (the horses) was made up of clones.
19 Although, as New York Magazine pointed out in September 2016, “Paying $100,000 to Clone Your Dog Won’t Give You Your Dog Back.” https://www.thecut.com/2016/03/why-do-people-get-the-same-pet-over-and-over.html
20 The US Food and Drug Administration approved the sale of cloned animals and their young for food in 2008—just in case you were wondering.
21 General Assembly Adopts United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning by vote of 84-34-37. March 8, 2005. Accessible at http://www.un.org/press/en/2005/ga10333.doc.htm
22 George Dvorsky (2014), “9 Unexpected Outcomes Of Human Cloning.” io9, July 17 2014. http://io9.gizmodo.com/9-unexpected-outcomes-of-human-cloning-1606556772
23 Admiraal, P., Ardila, R., & Berlin, I. (1997). Declaration in defense of cloning and the integrity of scientific research. Free Inquiry, 17(3), 11-12.
24 Raël (2001) “Yes to Human Cloning.” https://www.clonaid.com/request.php?1
25 This must surely be the ultimate “three-step program.”
26 Talking to my mother now, she readily admits that her view of the world has changed quite substantially over the past few decades. This is definitely not the sort of question she’d be asking these days.
27 “Do IVF babies have souls?” Posted on the website Catholic Answers Forums, January 2015, https://forums.catholic.com/t/do-ivf-babies-have-souls/387786
28 “The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
29 There are many parallels between this discussion of how we think about and define what it is to be “human,” and discussions around the meaning and nature of “personhood.” In some ways of thinking, the idea of personhood encapsulates a set of attributes that are not uniquely tied to Homo sapiens, and as a result transcend the distinction between “human” and “non-human.” This opens the way to exploring the rights and responsibilities of personhood as it extends to animals, artificial intelligence, and other non-human life forms. However, the question remains: Who decides what the defining attributes of “personhood” are, and if it’s us that decide this, what are the chances that we’re bringing our own pro-human biases to the table?
30 In among these answers, I suspect there would also be a fair number of people who included “having a soul.”
31 Boeke, J. D., et al. (2016). “The Genome Project-Write.” Science 353(6295): 126-127. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf6850
32 It has to be said that, had Anderton had his head screwed on, it might have occurred to him that tracking down the person he was allegedly going to murder to make sure he didn’t, in fact, murder him, wasn’t the smartest move in the book.
33 Ian Sample (2017), “Brain scans can spot criminals, scientists say.” The Guardian. Published online March 13, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/mar/13/brain-scans-can-spot-criminals-scientists-say
34 The original research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. Vilares, I., et al. (2017). “Predicting the knowledge—recklessness distinction in the human brain.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(12): 3222-3227. http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1619385114
35 The research was published in 2011 by Jeffrey Valla, Stephen J. Ceci, and Wendy M. Williams in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology. Valla, J. M., et al. (2011). “The accuracy of inferences about criminality based on facial appearance.” Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology 5(1): 66–91. http://doi.org/10.1037/h0099274
36 Satoshi Kanazawa (2011) “Criminals Look Different From Non-criminals.,” Psychology Today. Posted March 13, 2011. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201103/criminals-look-different-noncriminals
37 In a 2008 study, researchers showed that fMRI scans of subjects’ brains indicated what decision they were going to make in a specific situation, some ten seconds before they actually made it. Eerily, this meant that the scientists knew what the subjects were going to do before they themselves realized. The research was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Soon, C. S., et al. (2008). “Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain.” Nature Neuroscience 11: 543. http://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2112
38 In this case the research—published in 2017 in the journal Cell—showed that facial images seen by macaque monkeys could be reconstructed by monitoring specific brain cells. Chang, L. and D. Y. Tsao (2017). “The Code for Facial Identity in the Primate Brain.” Cell 169(6): 1013-1028.e1014. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2017.05.011
39 This study by Emily Faulk and colleagues was published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Falk, E. B., et al. (2010). “Predicting Persuasion-Induced Behavior Change from the Brain.” The Journal of Neuroscience 30(25): 8421. http://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0063-10.2010
40 Their paper, “Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images” was uploaded to the scientific paper archiving website arxiv.org in November 2016. Wu, X. and X. Zhang (2016). “Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images.” Arxiv 1611.04135v1. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.04135v1.pdf
41 Xiaolin Wu and Xi Zhang’s response to critics of their work can be read at https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.04135
42 Beyond the cadre of science fiction writers who have dabbled with this idea over the years, the philosopher Nick Bostrom argued in a 2003 paper in Philosophical Quarterly that we are already living in a computer simulation (available at https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf). This idea appeared to be debunked in 2017 by two researchers from Oxford University whose theoretical research suggested there is not enough matter in the universe to create a classical computer system capable of simulating it. What is even more interesting is that, despite their paper being near-impenetrable to the vast majority of people on Earth, it still got a sizable amount of press coverage. You can read it—or attempt to—in the journal Science Advances. Ringel, Z. and D. L. Kovrizhin (2017). “Quantized gravitational responses, the sign problem, and quantum complexity.” Science Advances 3(9). http://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1701758
43 In Europe, the recently-introduced General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, addresses some of these concerns as it sets out to protect the privacy of individuals in a data-rich society. But experts are skeptical as to the extent to which it can truly prevent massive amounts of data being collected and used against individuals.
44 The report “Dismantling Predictive Policing in
Los Angeles” was released on May 8, 2018, and garnered considerable press attention for its echoes of a Minority-Report-like approach to pre-crime. It’s accessible at https://stoplapdspying.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Before-the-Bullet-Hits-the-Body-May-8-2018.pdf
45 Andrew Maynard (2009) “Ten emerging technology trends to watch over the next decade” Posted on 2020 Science, December 25, 2009. https://2020science.org/2009/12/25/ten-emerging-technology-trends-to-watch/
46 It should be pointed out here that, because we have a habit of defining success as what humans do, we’d think we were phenomenally successful whatever we achieved as a species.
47 “SF Peak Performance meet-up: biohacking, fitness tech, nutrition.” https://www.meetup.com/PeakPerformance/
48 Sara Solovitch (2017). “Tweaking brains with ‘smart drugs’ to get ahead in Silicon Valley.” Washington Post, June 11, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/tweaking-brains-with-smart-drugs-to-get-ahead-in-silicon-valley/2017/06/09/5bc9c064-0b35-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html?
49 I checked—they can. Maybe not with the psychedelics included, but neuroIgnite, Neuro Spark, Genius Joy and many other concoctions are but a click away. Who knew?
50 Chaterjee, A. (2004). “Cosmetic neurology. The controversy over enhancing movement, mentation, and mood.” Neurology 63: 968–974. http://doi.org/10.1212/01.WNL.0000138438.88589.7C
51 Taken from “The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World’s Most Popular Drug,” by Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie K. Bealer (Routledge, 2002). Balzac had a stupendous coffee habit, and ended up eating the grounds to achieve the enlightenment he craved. He died at age forty-nine, not necessarily from hacking his brain with the brown stuff.
52 There’s surprisingly little evidence that Adderall does increase performance in healthy adults. There’s more evidence to suggest it can enhance how well you think you’re performing. Sadly, university professors rarely grade on how well you think you’ve done.
53 See Maxwell J. Mehlman (2004) “Cognition-Enhancing Drugs.” The Milbank Quarterly, volume 83 issue 3, pages 483–506 http://doi.org/10.1111/j.0887-378X.2004.00319.x
54 Sahakian, B. and S. Morein-Zamir (2007). “Professor’s little helper.” Nature 450: 1157. http://doi.org/10.1038/4501157a
55 Maher, B. (2008). “Poll results: look who’s doping.” Nature 452: 674-675. http://doi.org/10.1038/452674a
56 Admittedly, this one may be difficult to detect in academics.
57 Giurgea, C. (1973). “The ‘Nootropic’ Approach to the Pharmacology of the Integrative Activity of the Brain.” Conditional Reflex 8(2): 108–115. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03000311
58 It’s amazing how readily we compare the human brain to the latest form of digital technology. Yet in reality our brains are nothing like the chips in our smartphones or laptops, or even the processors at the hearts of supercomputers.
59 The press release can still be read using Wayback Machine on the original WABDA website, set up especially for the occasion. https://web.archive.org/web/20080409091357/http://wabda.org:80/News.html
60 Most likely not all respondents were scientists or academics, but given the source of the poll, it’s likely that many were.
61 The use of cognitive enhancers isn’t unique here: Social pressures around working long hours, being hyper-productive, drinking, and many other behaviors, raise similar questions around what we expect of people, and the degree to which they are in control of their lives.
62 In 2008, Henry Greely and a number of colleagues published an opinion in the journal Nature calling for more efforts to support the responsible use of cognitive enhancers by healthy people. Greely, H. and colleagues (2008) “Towards responsible use of cognitive enhancing drugs by the healthy” Nature, 456, 11, pages 702-705. http://doi.org/ 10.1038/456702a
63 In 2013, President Obama launched the multi-year, multi-million-dollar US BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies)—a public-private partnership that’s researching how the brain works in order to better treat neurological diseases. The same year, the European Commission launched the Human Brain Project, focusing on advancing brain research, cognitive neuroscience, and brain-inspired computing.
64 Just in case it isn’t clear, I’m being sarcastic—our capacity for delusion is only matched by that for hubris.
65 I actually did a search for “humility pills” while writing this, thinking how telling it is that so many people are interested in substances that purportedly increase how smart they are, but not how humble they are. To my surprise, I came across the following paper, which isn’t about humility pills as such, but is about how we might think more broadly and ethically about cognitive enhancement. Goodman, R. (2014). “Humility Pills: Building an Ethics of Cognitive Enhancement.” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine 39(3): 258–278. http://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhu017
66 Joseph Stiglitz (2011) “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.” Vanity Fair, May 2011. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105
67 The petri-dish ear was just one of three tissue constructs produced by Atala and his team to demonstrate their technique. They also bioprinted a mandible fragment of a similar size and shape to something that could be used in facial reconstruction, and a rat skullcap bone. Kang, H.-W., et al. (2016). “A 3D bioprinting system to produce human-scale tissue constructs with structural integrity.” Nature Biotechnology 34: 312. http://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3413
68 Andrew Meiklejohn’s three-part history of lung diseases of coal miners in Great Britain provide a fascinating insight into the early understanding of coal miner’s pneumoconiosis: Meiklejohn, A. (1952). “History of Lung Diseases of Coal Miners in Great Britain” Part I, 1800-1875. British Journal of Industrial Medicine 8(3): 127-137. Part II, 1875-1920. British Journal of Industrial Medicine 9(2): 93-98. Part III, 1920-1952. British Journal of Industrial Medicine 1952: 208-220.
69 Frank Swoboda, “Coal mine operators altered dust samples” Washington Post, April 4 1991. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/04/04/coal-mine-operators-altered-dust-samples/b0fec1b0-fe9c-4847-b900-7de6f4fc3d46/
70 Howard Berkes (2017) “NPR Continues To Find Hundreds Of Cases Of Advanced Black Lung” NPR, July 1, 2017. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/01/535082619/npr-continues-to-find-hundreds-of-cases-of-advanced-black-lung
71 More information on workplace fatalities in the US. can be found in the NIOSH Worker Health Charts, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention https://wwwn.cdc.gov/Niosh-whc
72 Takala, J., et al. (2014). “Global Estimates of the Burden of Injury and Illness at Work in 2012.” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene 11(5): 326-337.
73 Despite nearly two decades of research on the potential health and environmental risks of some engineered nanomaterials, some companies continue to use these as if they are, by default safe. This was brought home afresh to me in 2016 in the wake of seeming ambivalence over the potential health risks of using carbon nanotubes—a material that may, under some circumstances, behave like asbestos if inhaled. Andrew Maynard (2016) “We don’t talk much about nanotechnology risks anymore, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone.” The Conversation, March 29 2016. https://theconversation.com/we-dont-talk-much-about-nanotechnology-risks-anymore-but-that-doesnt-mean-theyre-gone-56889
74 One example of innovative and socially responsible corporate leadership here is the B Corp initiative, where for-profit companies are assessed by an independent organization to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.
75 For more details of this extensive poll on attitudes toward automation, see the article by Aaron Smith and Monica Anderson: “Automation in Everyday Life.” Pew Research Center, October 4 2017. http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/10/04/automation-in-everyday-life/
76 I wrote about this in 2016. Andrew
Maynard (2016) “Will driving your own car become the socially unacceptable public health risk smoking is today?” Published in The Conversation, September 26 2016. https://theconversation.com/will-driving-your-own-car-become-the-socially-unacceptable-public-health-risk-smoking-is-today-65891
77 Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee. “The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies” W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.
78 Rachel Hallett and Rosamund Hutt (2016) “10 jobs that didn’t exist 10 years ago.” World Economic Forum https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/10-jobs-that-didn-t-exist-10-years-ago/
79 Under the leadership of its current president, Michael Crow, Arizona State University is embarking on an ambitious plan to redefine the role of the public research university into one where higher education serves the needs of a changing world, and is as accessible, impactful, and socially relevant as possible. Part of this involves fully utilizing online teaching platforms to make educational resources accessible to a growing number of people, including those often excluded by more conventional educational models. But more than this, the ASU model is striving to ensure that how we think about and deliver education keeps up with the needs and ambitions of the technological future we’re creating. It’s why I work here.
80 In 2012, I launched the YouTube channel Risk Bites as a platform for helping people make sense of risk, including the potential risks and benefits of emerging and converging technologies. http://youtube.com/riskbites
81 As long as they are in a country that doesn’t block the website.
82 @elonmusk, on Twitter, posted June 4, 2016 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/739006012749799424
83 Rolfe Winkler (2017) “Elon Musk Launches Neuralink to Connect Brains With Computers.” The Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2017. https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-launches-neuralink-to-connect-brains-with-computers-1490642652
84 https://www.neuralink.com/ This was posted on the Neuralink home page as of October 9, 2017.
85 “Fog computing” or “edge computing” uses a growing network of internet-connected devices to push data processing out of the cloud, and to the devices that are collecting and using information on everything from our personal habits to the environment around us. It’s the next iteration in distributed computing architectures that combines a vast array of relatively low-power devices with more centralized data processing to massively expand how large amounts of data are utilized.
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