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Kevin Warwick

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Kevin Warwick is a cybernetics professor at the University of Reading, England. He is probably best known for his studies on direct interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, although he has also done much research in the field of robotics.

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Project Cyborg

Probably the most famous piece of research undertaken by Professor Warwick (aka Captain Cyborg) is the set of experiments known as Project Cyborg, in which he had a chip implanted into his arm, with the aim of "becoming a cyborg".

The first stage of this research, which began on August 24, 1998, involved a simple RFID transmitter being implanted beneath Professor Warwick's skin, and used to control doors, lights, heaters, and other computer-controlled devices based on his proximity. The main purpose of this experiment was to test the limits of what the body would accept, and how easy it would be to receive a meaningful signal from the chip.

The second stage involved a far more complex chip which was implanted on March 14, 2002, and which interfaced directly into Professor Warwick's nervous system. The electrode array inserted contained around 100 electrodes, of which 25 could be accessed at any one time, whereas the median nerve which it monitored carries many times that number of signals. The experiment proved successful, and the signal produced was detailed enough that a robot arm developed by Warwick's colleague, Dr Peter Kyberd, was able to mimic the actions of Professor Warwick's own arm.

A highly publicised extension to the experiment, in which a simpler array was implanted into Professor Warwick's wife—with the aim of creating some form of telepathy or empathy using the Internet to communicate the signal from afar—was also moderately successful, although the implant seems to have been less successful at stimulating signals than at measuring them. Finally, the effect of the implant on Professor Warwick's hand function was measured using the Southampton Hand Assessment Procedure (SHAP). It was feared that directly interfacing with the nervous system might cause some form of damage or interference, but no measurable effect was found.

Implications and criticisms

Professor Warwick and his colleagues claim that the Project Cyborg research could lead to new medical tools for treating patients with damage to the nervous system, as well opening the way for the more ambitious enhancements Professor Warwick advocates. Critics, however, suggest that the experiment was little more than a publicity stunt. Warwick himself asserts that his controversial work is important because it directly tests the boundaries of what is known about the human ability to integrate with computerised systems.

An additional controversy arose in August 2002, shortly after the Soham murders, when Professor Warwick reportedly offered to implant a tracking device into an 11-year-old girl as an anti-abduction measure. The plan produced a mixed reaction, including ethical concerns from a number of children's societies, with support from many concerned parents. As a result, the idea did not go ahead, and it is not clear to what extent it was hype, speculation, or a genuine proposal.

Anti-theft RFID chips are common in jewelry or clothing in some Latin American countries due to a high abduction rate,[link] and the company Verichip announced plans in 2001 to expand its line of currently available medical information implants,[link], to be GPS trackable when combined with a separate GPS device.[link][link] [link] [link]

Personal opinions

Professor Warwick is known for taking every opportunity to publicise his work, and often appears on radio and TV interviews. He also has very outspoken views on the future, particularly with respect to artificial intelligence and its impact on the human species: he is a proponent of the strong AI view that machines will eventually become at least as intelligent as human beings, and argues that we will need to use technology to enhance ourselves in order to avoid being overtaken. He also points out that there are many limits, such as our sensorimotor abilities, that we can overcome with machines, and is on record as saying that he wants to gain these abilities: "There is no way I want to stay a mere human."

His tendency to court the media has led Warwick's critics to view his ideas with extreme skepticism, often dismissing them out of hand and accusing him of concentrating on publicity at the cost of serious research. Some refer to him as Captain Cyborg - a name probably created by The Register, who have published particularly personal criticisms of his work - and there was at one time an entire website, called Kevin Warwick Watch, devoted to recording and criticising his activities. His supporters assert that the publicity he deliberately courts around his research is also important as it generates interest in his work and helps to show the public as well as sceptical academics that his theories are more than just wishful science fictional speculation.

Other activities

As well as the Project Cyborg work, Professor Warwick has been involved in several of the major robotics developments within the Cybernetics Department at Reading. These include the "seven dwarves", a version of which was given away in kit form as Cybot on the cover of Real Robots Magazine.

He also presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2000 on the theme of robots, using examples from research at Reading and at other British universities. His selection reportedly sparked letters of complaint to the head of the Royal Institution, Susan Greenfield, from other prominent AI researchers.

Warwick's claims that robots that can program themselves to avoid each other while operating in a group raises the issue of self-organization, and such might be the major impetus in following developments in this area. In particular, the works of Fransisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, once in the province of pure speculation now have become immediately relevant with respect to synthetic intelligence. Cyborg-type systems not only are homeostatic (self-preserving) but adaptive, if they are to survive. Testing the claims of Varela and Maturana via synthetic devices is the larger and more serious concern in the discussion about Warwick and those involved in similar research. "Pulling the plug" on independent devices cannot be as simple as it appears, for if the device displays sufficient intelligence and assumes a diagnostic and prognostic stature, we may ultimately one day be forced to decide between what it could be telling us as counterintuitive (but correct) and our impulse to disconnect because of our limited and "intuitive" perceptions. Warwick's robots seemed to have exhibited behavior not anticipated by the research, one such robot "committing suicide" because it could not cope with its environment. In a more complex setting, it may be asked whether a "natural selection" may be possible, neural networks being the major operative. 

Thinking about the implications of Warwick's research is not confined to device implantation or automatons.  Researching websites on the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD) development of a simulated international battlespace (see links embedded in http://www.dmso.mil) will yield developments having potentially devastating implications, starting with "Foundation Initiative 2010" and "Vision 2020".  (See also http://www.disa.mil/ and http://jitc.fhu.disa.mil/.)  It is no secret that the DoD foresees the day when not only all military systems are interoperable, but can be coordinated globally in a real-time war.  Ultimately, simulations not only are to be used for assessing alternative outcomes in wargaming settings but also are to be used as diagnostic "tools" interactive with a real time battlefield situation.  If this happens, we must consider self-organization in these synthetic systems operating in critical environments.  That is, if allowed to operate with minimal or no human intervention, what of the character of the system, itself and its evolution?  Hence, Warwick should be a starting point for a more serious discussion than the popular media seems to be capable of maintaining.  In the worst case scenario, Warwick is deemed a proponent of science fiction, but it may be said that it is great science fiction, as it is based upon the plausible, rather than the impossible.  In the best case scenario, Warwick, indeed has given us ample notice to humanity to concern itself with the choice of thinking about ourselves and our place in the universe or abnegate in favor of another consciousness.  A return to Aristotle and Plato is in order.



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[Edit]
 General subfields and scientists in Cybernetics


 K1
 Polycontexturality, Second-order cybernetics


 K2
 Catastrophe theory, Connectionism, Control theory, Decision theory, Information theory, Semiotics, Synergetics, Sociosynergetics, Systems theory


 K3
 Biological cybernetics, Biomedical cybernetics, Biorobotics, Computational neuroscience, Homeostasis, Medical cybernetics, Neuro cybernetics, Sociocybernetics


 Cyberneticians
 William Ross Ashby, Claude Bernard, Valentin Braitenberg, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, George S. Chandy, Joseph J. DiStefano III, Heinz von Foerster, Charles François, Jay Forrester, Buckminster Fuller, Ernst von Glasersfeld, Francis Heylighen, Erich von Holst, Stuart Kauffman, Sergei P. Kurdyumov, Niklas Luhmann, Warren McCulloch, Humberto Maturana, Horst Mittelstaedt, Talcott Parsons, Gordon Pask, Walter Pitts, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, Robert Trappl, Valentin Turchin, Francisco Varela, Frederic Vester, John N. Warfield, Kevin Warwick, Norbert Wiener

















 





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