Human Enhancement

Debate: Would you–or should you–undergo medical treatments to improve your body and mind and your chances of employment?

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The future of work is med­ical­ly enhanced ‘elite super-work­ers,’ report says (Lad­ders):

“In the future, we will be com­pet­ing against med­ical­ly-enhanced work­ers who can work longer and hard­er than us. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence will make it eas­i­er to mon­i­tor our every move in the office. This may sound like sci­ence fic­tion, but it’s a like­ly real­i­ty, accord­ing to a new report by pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices firm PricewaterhouseCoopers…Seventy per­cent of the work­ers sur­veyed said that they would under­go treat­ments to improve their body and mind if it would improve their chances of employ­ment. [Read more…] about Debate: Would you–or should you–undergo med­ical treat­ments to improve your body and mind and your chances of employment?

Harnessing neurotech for actual Human Enhancement — i.e., how to prevent ‘Frankenstein’ Brains

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The Neu­rotech Rev­o­lu­tion Could Lead To ‘Franken­stein’ Brains. Here’s How We Avoid It (Forbes):

“Year 2030, your col­lege-age daugh­ter, who has nor­mal hear­ing, has been pound­ing on you to get the lat­est hear­ing aid that allows one to can­cel out noise on demand, ampli­fy select­ed ambi­ent con­ver­sa­tions at will, and can eas­i­ly con­nect to the music store. Should you buy one for her? Maybe you should buy one not only for her, but also for you as you enter your 60s?

Would you still be inter­est­ed if this device had to be implant­ed in your cochlea via surgery? What if this device is now aug­ment­ed with some AI open­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty to eave-drop on remote con­ver­sa­tions or get auto­mat­ic trans­la­tion in any lan­guage of the world in real time?…

What are the risks over the ben­e­fits? To what extent are enhance­ments desir­able on a per­son­al and soci­etal lev­els? What if peo­ple that under­go such enhance­ment lose their abil­i­ty to relate to oth­er who have not? If a device can enhance deci­sion-mak­ing, how will the user know that’s it’s tru­ly their deci­sion, in their best inter­est, rather than being manip­u­lat­ed by the device design­ers? Keep read­ing arti­cle over at Forbes

Five reasons the future of brain enhancement is digital, pervasive and (hopefully) bright

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Elon Musk just detailed his ambi­tious plans for a new brain-com­put­er inter­face plat­form. Superath­lete Tom Brady revealed his “brain resilien­cy pro­gramme” to increase his ath­let­ic edge. Elite US mil­i­tary units are test­ing brain stim­u­la­tion head­sets to stim­u­late neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and boost men­tal and phys­i­cal performance.

And they are not the only ones inno­vat­ing at the fron­tier of brain and human enhance­ment. Keep read­ing arti­cle over at World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s Agenda.

Next: Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) meet brain scanning and human enhancement

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Face­book, Apple and the Com­ing Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty Land Grab (Vari­ety):

“Two new reports sug­gest that two of Sil­i­con Valley’s biggest com­pa­nies are secret­ly work­ing on aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) tech­nol­o­gy. It may take some time before Apple is going to reveal its efforts in the space, but Face­book may give us a glance at its AR research as ear­ly as next month [Read more…] about Next: Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty (AR) and Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty (VR) meet brain scan­ning and human enhancement

New Global Future Councils by the World Economic Forum: Shaping the present and future via cross-sector collaborations

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global_future_councilsGlob­al Future Coun­cils: A Knowl­edge Net­work for the Fourth Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion (press release):

“The World Eco­nom­ic Forum today con­venes the Net­work of Glob­al Future Coun­cils, a com­mu­ni­ty of world-lead­ing experts and inno­va­tors to pro­vide bold visions for solv­ing crit­i­cal glob­al, region­al and indus­try challenges…

The net­work will com­prise more than 800 inno­va­tors (Edi­tor’s Note: includ­ing our own Founder, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez) from acad­e­mia, gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, civ­il soci­ety, the arts and the media, and will sup­port the Forum’s work across 14 glob­al sys­tems as well as pre­pare gov­ern­ments, busi­ness­es and communities…

“The Glob­al Future Coun­cils will help address today’s com­plex and urgent chal­lenges by devel­op­ing bold visions of ways we can use tech­nol­o­gy, val­ues and pol­i­cy to achieve the inclu­sive and sus­tain­able out­comes our world needs,” said Jere­my Jur­gens, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, World Eco­nom­ic Forum.

To learn more:

Shaping the Future of Human Enhancement

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Dear Sharp­Brains community,

It is an hon­or to share that I’ve been asked to join the Coun­cil on the Future of Human Enhance­ment, orga­nized by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum, for its 2016–2018 term. It will be my plea­sure to [Read more…] about Shap­ing the Future of Human Enhancement