Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Welcome everyone to Forward Thinking. My name is
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, and I am joined by my wonderful co
Speaker 1: hosts who are Lauren and Joe McCormick. And today we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk a bit about robotic pros theses and
Speaker 1: and sort of this idea of, uh, well, when we
Speaker 1: get to a really advanced state with prostheses, to the
Speaker 1: point where where a robotic arm is demonstrably better than
Speaker 1: a human arm, what happens then? But before we get there,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about some fairly
Speaker 1: recent news. Back in two thousand and eleven, a couple
Speaker 1: of different patients in Europe actually volunteered to have limbs
Speaker 1: amputated and replaced with a robotic pros thesis. And now
Speaker 1: these these weren't healthy limbs. They were injured in some
Speaker 1: critical way. Yes. In fact, one one of these gentlemen,
Speaker 1: his arm was injured in a accident where he received
Speaker 1: an incredible electric shock about say electric cution, but that
Speaker 1: actually means that you died. But he suffered an incredible
Speaker 1: electric shock which rendered one of his arms essentially useless.
Speaker 1: The other was in a terrible motorcycle accident and had
Speaker 1: suffered severe injury to his arm. Now this was a
Speaker 1: controversial matter that these these guys had decided to go
Speaker 1: and have uh elective amputation because the arm was still there.
Speaker 1: I mean it wasn't it was it was healthy. It
Speaker 1: wasn't healthy, yes, exactly, it just wasn't functional. Right. There
Speaker 1: was no way to for them to regain the functionality
Speaker 1: without perhaps having a series of incredibly complex surgeries performed
Speaker 1: on them, and even then there was no guarantee that
Speaker 1: they would receive anything like even resembling full mobility of
Speaker 1: their their limb. So they in in the eyes of
Speaker 1: the patient, the choices. Do I undergo this series of
Speaker 1: surgeries that has no guarantee of real success and it
Speaker 1: may be that what I end up with is not
Speaker 1: a lot better than what I have right now? Or
Speaker 1: do I elect to have this limb amputated and replaced
Speaker 1: with the robotic pros thesis, which has a demonstrable proof
Speaker 1: that it can work and at least give me some
Speaker 1: mobility back. Either way, I'm going to have to go
Speaker 1: through an intense rehabilitative process to be able to to learn.
Speaker 1: But with the robotic one. There's more of a guarantee
Speaker 1: that I'm going to have some results, right, And doctors
Speaker 1: were saying, you know, are are you sure because this
Speaker 1: is very permanent. Yes, there's no there's no going back,
Speaker 1: right and uh. And in fact, in a woman by
Speaker 1: the name Nicola Wilding suffered a terrible injury to one
Speaker 1: of her arms in a car accident, and she now
Speaker 1: is also looking at the possibility of having her arm
Speaker 1: and tated and replaced with a robotic Pross thesis. In fact,
Speaker 1: she has a Twitter account where she talks about being
Speaker 1: a potential bionic woman. Um, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: But this is already a controversy in the medical community.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of debate about is it ethical to
Speaker 1: allow someone to have an elective amputation if there's a chance,
Speaker 1: even if it's only a small one, that they could
Speaker 1: regain some use out of an injured limb through through
Speaker 1: future technology, you know, well through through through traditional surgeries, right,
Speaker 1: or even if even if current surgery. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think with with the with the Nicola, the issue is that,
Speaker 1: you know, doctors don't think that any time in her
Speaker 1: lifetime we're going to advance our understanding of how nerves
Speaker 1: work and reconnect in order to be able to help her. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if if she's if she's in a position where there
Speaker 1: is very little confidence on the part of doctors that
Speaker 1: they're going to advance medicine to the point where they
Speaker 1: can actually help her to a great extent, then is
Speaker 1: it wrong for her to go and seek out an amputation?
Speaker 1: And it's kind of interesting because it brings up this
Speaker 1: question of what is so special about our our our
Speaker 1: natural limbs that makes it an ethical question. I have
Speaker 1: to admit it's scary to me. Sure, I I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I haven't been in this position, but I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to imagine it. Imagine that I've had a serious
Speaker 1: injury to one of my arms that basically is not useful. Um,
Speaker 1: it can't do anything and seems unlikely that I could
Speaker 1: train it. Now, on one side of the coin, I
Speaker 1: can see how it would be h advantageous to get
Speaker 1: a a very functional prosthetic arm that could do more
Speaker 1: than my natural arm could. But it just seems so
Speaker 1: hard to say goodbye to this flesh that's attached to
Speaker 1: my body. Which is weird because what am I I know?
Speaker 1: That's a crazy question. You're a writer for forward thinking,
Speaker 1: But what am I? When I think of myself? I
Speaker 1: think of my arm as part of me. But is
Speaker 1: it really any more part of me than the fingernails
Speaker 1: that I clip off once a week. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: proteins that have been made by my d n A.
Speaker 1: But is it really who I am? Do I have
Speaker 1: some kind of loyalty to this particular clump of flesh?
Speaker 1: And wouldn't wouldn't a prosthetic if it was truly working
Speaker 1: with you and for you, wouldn't that be equally part
Speaker 1: of you? Yeah? Wouldn't. Would the robotic prosthetic end up
Speaker 1: not just replacing the utility of your arm, but actually
Speaker 1: that identity in that prosthesis? Sorry, thank you Lauren, thank
Speaker 1: you prosthesis. Well, I'm just saying that despite all that's
Speaker 1: rational to me, I mean, it makes sense that I
Speaker 1: could probably do more with the prosthesis, but I something internally,
Speaker 1: emotionally kind of recoils at that. I Uh, not that
Speaker 1: I think it would be wrong for a person to
Speaker 1: do at all, It just seems so scary. I have
Speaker 1: a centuries old riddle for you, then, Joe, you have
Speaker 1: a ship and over time parts of the ship need
Speaker 1: to be replaced, and you replace the parts of the
Speaker 1: ship as time goes on. Uh, let's say you name
Speaker 1: the ship the heidy Ho. Would there ever come a
Speaker 1: time after you've been replacing this piece by piece, never
Speaker 1: huge pieces, just little pieces. Would there ever come a
Speaker 1: time where you would no longer call it the heidy
Speaker 1: Hoe because you realize that every single piece on that ship,
Speaker 1: at some point or another, had been replaced. There's no
Speaker 1: original part of the ship left. Or does that new
Speaker 1: ship that's in that same shape. You know, you haven't
Speaker 1: changed the design of the ship at all, You've just
Speaker 1: changed the individual pieces out is the spirit? Is the
Speaker 1: soul is still hidy Ho? Right? Well, that points out
Speaker 1: that our idea of identity has something more to do
Speaker 1: than just the material constituents, because our bodies do the
Speaker 1: same thing, right like you, technically once every seven years,
Speaker 1: completely reinvent ourselves. Right is that the some of us?
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga does it on like a weekly basis. So
Speaker 1: I've heard that seven years. I don't know if it's true,
Speaker 1: but it's but it's definitely true that you know, our
Speaker 1: body is in constant flux of the cells are being
Speaker 1: replaced you're not made of the exact same stuff you
Speaker 1: were ten years ago, right, But I understand entirely that
Speaker 1: there is I mean, there is something about the idea
Speaker 1: of of saying goodbye to part of yourself, even if
Speaker 1: you're getting something new that would give you new, uh
Speaker 1: higher quality of life. For example. So the question is,
Speaker 1: is the arm really more a part of yourself than
Speaker 1: the fingernails? Yeah? And I think, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: most of us would say yes. I mean, like yes,
Speaker 1: that is. I can't tell you why, but it is. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: the question I have is that right now, pros theses
Speaker 1: are all about the medical world and giving people more
Speaker 1: uh mobility, giving them more self reliance, giving them a
Speaker 1: higher quality of life. And all of that is so
Speaker 1: that you can replace something that's either been lost or
Speaker 1: damage beyond repairs catching up. You're trying to get back
Speaker 1: to normal. But let's say that you get to a
Speaker 1: point where the robotic pros theses are demonstrably better than
Speaker 1: a human limb. So you you've created a robotic arm,
Speaker 1: for example, So instead of catching up, you're pulling ahead
Speaker 1: ahead your head. Yes, the technology has has progressed to
Speaker 1: a point where the robotic arm has more capability than
Speaker 1: a human arm, so maybe it has more points of articulation.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can rotate your wrist three sixty degrees, which
Speaker 1: means you can just hold the light bulb and spin
Speaker 1: your wrist around until it's screwed into place instead of
Speaker 1: having to do that wonky you know, screw turn screw
Speaker 1: turns or as we imagined in the in the video episode.
Speaker 1: You know that maybe it even coordinates with other pross
Speaker 1: theses in your body to be a more accurate athletic
Speaker 1: uh tol. Yeah, sure, so you can shoot baskets better
Speaker 1: than your normal arms as you get into sensory perception
Speaker 1: of pross theses for those as well. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: when Whenever was watching Star Trek Next Generation growing up,
Speaker 1: I always wondered. I always wondering about Jordie's visor because
Speaker 1: because it allowed him to see most of the electromagnetic spectrum, yes,
Speaker 1: much much further out than the visible spectrum that all
Speaker 1: of us are from. At a certain point, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: doesn't everyone want that? I can't want the ability to
Speaker 1: suddenly see an infrared or ultraviolet or even radio waves.
Speaker 1: Or he could look at gamma radiation, things like that
Speaker 1: probably not so useful here on the surface of the Earth.
Speaker 1: Magnetospheres will horrifying. You go to the doctor's office to
Speaker 1: get an X ray and you can see the rays
Speaker 1: coming at you. Well, I mean for you, that might
Speaker 1: be horrifying. But again, this could be This could be
Speaker 1: something that if we're talking about a prosthesis. If we're
Speaker 1: talking about prosthesis, a prosthetic I have some sort then
Speaker 1: presumably you would be able to engage different modes so
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to look at everything all the time.
Speaker 1: I mean first of all, first of all, you would
Speaker 1: have to train your brain how to process that information. Right,
Speaker 1: we would have to have some way of being able
Speaker 1: to bring that in. Now, if we did it the
Speaker 1: way that infrared cameras and ultra violet detectors do, then
Speaker 1: that would just mean that we would have some sort
Speaker 1: of processor reinterpret that light into something that we could see,
Speaker 1: so we wouldn't really be seeing outside the visible spectrum.
Speaker 1: We would be pulling the information. Because how do you
Speaker 1: teach the brain to do something like that? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. Yeah, that that This is also
Speaker 1: this is why we don't have journey s Wiser yet.
Speaker 1: That do you, I mean, yeah, would you see multiple
Speaker 1: things at once? Would you toggle? Would you have predator vision?
Speaker 1: You would have predator vision, yes, and then you would
Speaker 1: also it would also laugh just before exploding. But now
Speaker 1: getting back into the whole idea about the superior arm,
Speaker 1: you know something that something that has that ability. Uh,
Speaker 1: can you imagine a future where athletes or really anyone
Speaker 1: volunteers to lose a perfectly healthy limb in order to
Speaker 1: gain this superior technology and use that instead. So the
Speaker 1: goal is really pulling ahead. There's yes, it's fully fully
Speaker 1: functional hand that you go like, yeah, I could get
Speaker 1: a better one. Let's switch it out. Yeah, Like like
Speaker 1: to the point where the again, the robotic limb is
Speaker 1: beyond all doubts, superior to the human limb. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine that being a world where people go in for
Speaker 1: an elective surgery to have a robotic one put in place. Well,
Speaker 1: I think we've acknowledged that that. I think all three
Speaker 1: of us agree that. You know, it may be more
Speaker 1: rational to prefer a superior prosthetic to whatever is attached
Speaker 1: to you, but you have some kind of strange emotional
Speaker 1: connection to the flesh that your DNA has generated. Um,
Speaker 1: what would it take you to get there? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's a there's a basic mammalion. I am alive.
Speaker 1: I need to preserve myself kind of kind of really intrinsic,
Speaker 1: you know, drive there. But and that's why, you know,
Speaker 1: reading about this research is wonderful and terrific, but it
Speaker 1: also really swicks me out. I find myself extremely disturbed
Speaker 1: reading about the interesting Okay, Joe, you know, let me
Speaker 1: tell you this. If I could have a robot arm
Speaker 1: right now that could allow me to fire NERF missiles
Speaker 1: at the two of you, I would do it in
Speaker 1: a heartbeat. Wow, really do you think about No? I
Speaker 1: just want to ask you all about the actual your
Speaker 1: your real trade off. What how good would the robotic
Speaker 1: arm have to be or the bionic arm? We should say,
Speaker 1: how good would it have to be? How many advantages
Speaker 1: would it have to offer before you would actually say yes,
Speaker 1: I will voluntarily lose the arm that belongs to me
Speaker 1: and replace it. Does it have to be just a
Speaker 1: little bit better or does it have to be a
Speaker 1: lot better? I mean it would need to it would
Speaker 1: It would be a lot better for me personally, because,
Speaker 1: like like I said, I'm kind of squeaked by the
Speaker 1: entire idea. Can you actually imagine it? Though? I can't absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I can I can. I can imagine people who
Speaker 1: are perhaps more competitive than I am, jumping on board
Speaker 1: pretty early, I think early adopters. Yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's mine mine would need to like make calls and
Speaker 1: coffee for me and stuff like that, Like it would
Speaker 1: need to wake up before I do, go crawl around
Speaker 1: and do some stuff for me and come back and
Speaker 1: reattach like that's that. That is the kind of level
Speaker 1: of of you know, so you wouldn't go for say
Speaker 1: what if your arm could be replaced with one that
Speaker 1: they promise you that you will not be able to
Speaker 1: tell the difference. It communicates directly with your brain, You
Speaker 1: get good sensory feedback from it, You can control it
Speaker 1: exactly the same, and you can't tell the difference except
Speaker 1: it can't get skin infections. Say yeah, and until until
Speaker 1: I started getting really really unpardonable rashes on my hands,
Speaker 1: I don't think that I would turn over. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I don't know. It's it's a good it's a
Speaker 1: good question. Yeah, I think it would have to The
Speaker 1: arm would need to have some significant advantages. The NERF
Speaker 1: missile thing is a deal breaker for me. Oh, I
Speaker 1: see what you're saying. Like it has the nerve the
Speaker 1: missiles they strayed out of it, like the Mega Man
Speaker 1: like like like like like like like there's a little
Speaker 1: section in the forearm pops up and their nerve missiles
Speaker 1: loaded in there. Just by the way, Nerve has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with this podcast. Yeah, we're not sponsor. It's
Speaker 1: just just I just really want that. Okay. So you're
Speaker 1: saying I understand that you want to Mega Man arm, Yeah,
Speaker 1: more or less. Okay, So I think I want a
Speaker 1: combination of the NERF Missile arm and a Nintendo Power glove.
Speaker 1: But it's just built into my arm. Okay, no, think
Speaker 1: about it. Like, I like this idea of being able
Speaker 1: to Now, granted, if we were able to bypass this
Speaker 1: and not need the cyborg arm at all, the bionic
Speaker 1: arm in order to do this, then obviously that's the
Speaker 1: way I would go. But if if if we had
Speaker 1: it where my robotic arm is capable of controlling things
Speaker 1: like the various electronics in my home or that again,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Lauren about being able to receive
Speaker 1: or make calls, I mean, you know, that's stuff that
Speaker 1: I would really want. Now, Grant, I'm just talking about
Speaker 1: my right arm. Lefty stays with me because I'm a
Speaker 1: left hander and I cherish that. So you were joking
Speaker 1: about the NERF gun, but you seriously would actually you
Speaker 1: think trade for a somewhat capable what would you call it,
Speaker 1: like an executive control electronic. I would definitely it would
Speaker 1: definitely need to be able to not only do everything
Speaker 1: that my current arm can do, but do it better.
Speaker 1: It would have to, because otherwise I'd just be like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not going to lose my arm just
Speaker 1: for some convenience. I would. I would need it to
Speaker 1: be able to perform better, and I would need it
Speaker 1: also to have those extra bells and whistles. Well, just
Speaker 1: one thing I was going to say is that I need.
Speaker 1: I think one thing I would need is the ability
Speaker 1: to upgrade. Now, sure, imagine that they offer me an
Speaker 1: arm that's exactly the same as my arm now, but
Speaker 1: it can't get skin infections, but not like I get
Speaker 1: a lot of skin infections on my arm, but but
Speaker 1: just some kind of basic advantage that's not very huge.
Speaker 1: But they say software is upgradeable so you know, I
Speaker 1: would want to can download apps that make the arm
Speaker 1: even better. I would definitely want both software and hardware
Speaker 1: to be upgradeable, because as someone who owns a smartphone,
Speaker 1: there's some thing that's really frustrating about taking home the
Speaker 1: smartphonement and then like the next week, a better smartphone
Speaker 1: comes out. Can you imagine if a better arm came
Speaker 1: out the week after you've got or even just I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, what if what if your arm gets viruses?
Speaker 1: What if your arm gets computer viruses? Or what if
Speaker 1: someone get viruses? Now what if someone can I well,
Speaker 1: then is it really an improvement over your current arm
Speaker 1: um or you know, if if if? What if? What
Speaker 1: if a virus gets into your arm and it goes bad?
Speaker 1: And so now we're going to an idle hands scenario, right,
Speaker 1: you know what if someone hacks your hand and that's terrible.
Speaker 1: How many episodes are we going to have where something
Speaker 1: becomes a robot and then it gets virus eventually they
Speaker 1: hack it and then it's dangerous. I think everything is
Speaker 1: potentially hackable. Oh no, they hacked my coffee cup, Lauren. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think I think if someone wants to do you harm,
Speaker 1: they are easier ways of going about it than hacking
Speaker 1: into your cyborg. I don't know, but that one has
Speaker 1: style I would, I would, Okay, Yeah, Well it's good
Speaker 1: to know that Lauren would pick that. So if we
Speaker 1: see Lauren with how to hack robotic arms for dummies
Speaker 1: that are desk, we all know not to go with that.
Speaker 1: Elective surgery. Well, you know, this is interesting hypothetical conversation
Speaker 1: in a way, or conversation. It's not, it's a real conversation.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting conversation about a hypothetical topic. Um, it'll
Speaker 1: be interesting to see if we ever do reach a
Speaker 1: time in our lifetimes where such a consideration would need
Speaker 1: to be made for realities. I mean, we've seen people
Speaker 1: elect to have their arms, their injured arms amputated. I
Speaker 1: don't know that we're ever going to get to a
Speaker 1: point within our lifetime where a healthy limb would be
Speaker 1: amputated by choice. If that does happen, it'll be huge news,
Speaker 1: and I imagine there will also be an enormous backlash
Speaker 1: in the medical community and in a real debate about
Speaker 1: the ethics of such a thing, like who performs such
Speaker 1: a surgery and is that ethical or not? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: there's a there's a condition under which people feel like
Speaker 1: limbs that they have that are healthy are not their
Speaker 1: own and they want them off. Yeah. Yeah, no, I've
Speaker 1: I've heard of such a thing as well, and that
Speaker 1: that raises questions like if you were to open this up, Uh,
Speaker 1: is that ethical if people who might have um something
Speaker 1: that that other folks would identify as a disorder, Whether
Speaker 1: you want to call it that or not, I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are many people who would say that is a disorder, right,
Speaker 1: that's fair enough to say. Would it be fair to
Speaker 1: open up the doors for those people to go in
Speaker 1: and have these elective amputations? Or would that be unethical
Speaker 1: if the medical community said no, this needs to be
Speaker 1: treated as a form of psychological disorder. You know that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of there are a lot of
Speaker 1: tricky questions, and we don't have the answers for it,
Speaker 1: mostly because we're our technology is not there yet. But
Speaker 1: the reason why we have these conversations is that technology
Speaker 1: is going to continue to advance and we will one
Speaker 1: day be at that point. So having the conversation early
Speaker 1: is a lot better than having it after the fact. Definitely. Ways, So, guys,
Speaker 1: this is a good time to remind you. If you
Speaker 1: are interested in these sort of topics, please go to
Speaker 1: our website f w Thinking dot com and let us know.
Speaker 1: You can check out the video series. There, you can
Speaker 1: read our blog posts and really take part in this
Speaker 1: conversation and let us know what you are excited about
Speaker 1: as far as the future is concerned, and that way
Speaker 1: we can concentrate on these topics and really have a
Speaker 1: great conversation about We look forward to hearing from you
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you again really soon. For
Speaker 1: more on this topic in the future of technology, visit
Speaker 1: forward thinking dot Com brought to you by Toyota. Let's
Speaker 1: Go Places,