Person(s) of interest: Extending the boundaries of personhood at the Yale Beyond the Human conference December 2013

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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

4. Property – Personhood Dichotomy in Law
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• 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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Robot Revolution?
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/
futurescape-host-james-woods-future-
657380

10. Bionic & Enhanced beings
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• 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)

12. Posthumans & non-humans
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• 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…

15. Coming soon – a 3D dynamic network
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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?