Fireside Chat, Interview, Conference Presentation
Hugh Herr: Co-Director of MIT Center for Extreme Bionics
- Humanity aims to end disability within this century by advancing technology to solve it rather than accepting current limitations.
- High-fidelity input and output to the human nervous system is predicted to occur within 50 years, accompanied by sophisticated artificial intelligence or potential machine consciousness.
- Future morphological and dynamic changes to humans are expected to be so profound that they will be unrecognizable from today's forms within 100 years.
- Risks include AI agents controlling human systems and the lack of robust policy potentially leading to threats regarding mood and delusion control via individual brain cell manipulation.
- Bionic bodies are expected to eventually surpass innate human capabilities in the Paralympics, with bionic athletes competitive for gold medals appearing very soon.
- Spectator trends predict largely empty Olympic seats while Paralympic attendance fills, driven by the rise of bionic athletes and the emergence of new sports categories such as bionic climbing, running, and swimming.
- The future of sport will expand to include numerous new disciplines based on human-machine interaction, analogous to how the bicycle led to cycling.
- Creativity, invention, and innovation can be taught to children if approached as an emotional phenomenon.