Many articles and commentators recently have expressed concern about the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to disrupt human life. Some have even gone apocalyptic in their visions of AI run amok. Certainly there is cause for concern and we should pay attention to the evolution of AI. However, few people are paying attention to the equally disruptive potential of the artificial body (AB).
AB has a variety of current applications and uses, some of which are beneficial. For example, advances in exoskeleton technologies are enabling the disabled to walk and do other things. But with every positive advance in technology, there are potential dangers and disruptions.
For example, there is high potential for AB to disrupt sports as we know them today. The purity and appeal of sport is centered in large part on the comparative talents of individual athletes. We marvel at Steph Curry and LeBron James because their physical talents and work habits set them apart from their peers. Fans measure, analyze, and count athletic achievements using myriad variables and statistics. They even compare contemporary athletes to historical figures and argue endlessly about who is superior. These comparisons are valid and interesting in part because we believe them to be reflective of an underlying sameness—the sameness of the human body.
People celebrate the achievements of athletes who will themselves to performances seemingly beyond human capacity. As we celebrate the successes of the few who rise to the top, we revile those who “cheat” through use of “unnatural” performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) or other performance aids. In fact, an entire industry has arisen to keep competitive sport pure by detecting and exposing athletes who use PEDs.
Most of us want competitive sports to be engaged in by athletes who remain true to the spirit of “natural” competition. However, in recent years, the line between natural and unnatural has been blurred by innovations in AB. For example, two performance-enhancing innovations that do not require ingestion of banned PEDs are being explored by entrepreneurial startups and : tDCS technology and nanotechnology.
Halo Neuroscience is a startup that proposes to bring transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) to the sports market. tDCS technology has been demonstrated to increase strength and force generation in healthy people. One study involving cross-fit athletes indicated a 5% increase in strength and a 12% gain in explosiveness for those who used a tDCS regime compared with those who did not. Halo’s first product, the Halo Sport, is a headset that an athlete wears during training. The neurostimulation that the product induces decreases the training time required to hone particular skills and enhances natural strength and explosiveness.
A host of other startups, as well as established companies, are experimenting with AB apparel based on nanotechnology. NanoGripTech, for example, boasts that it has developed “gecko-inspired adhesives” to support a variety of sport applications. The company’s high-grip gloves, for example, are designed to facilitate better gripping and catching in football. We’ve already seen seemingly impossible catches by football players. Imagine new gloves that enable them to catch and grip nearly any ball thrown their way. How many of us would celebrate a great catch if the chances of not catching are reduced to near zero?
American football is already beleaguered by studies demonstrating the pernicious long-term effects of repetitive cranial impact. Imagine a future of AB-enhanced athletes who are bigger, stronger, and faster than modern players. Repetitive impacts likely will be more severe, and the long-term consequences on player safety and health are likely to be worse.
How is sport, and society generally, going to assimilate the use of AB advances? On the surface, using tDCS doesn’t appear to be any different from athletes psyching themselves up by listening to pre-game music on headphones. But its ability to change the sport is far-reaching and potentially dangerous. What about performance enhancing AB apparel? It will be nearly impossible for sport to ban and then police the use of AB apparel. The money to be made in sport means that there will always be AB innovations that aren’t covered by current rules. An AB arms race may very well be emerging in sports of all type.
Clearly, AB can have a disruptive impact on sport. It could also have an impact in other domains of human activity in which physical prowess is a differentiator among participants. AB may very well disrupt the lives and potentially the livelihoods of people as diverse as world-class musicians and blue-collar dockworkers. It seems that we must be as concerned about AB as we are about AI.
