The Fourth Industrial revolution (4IR)

• The First Industrial Revolution-1750-1850- Steam Power to mechanize production.

• The Second Industrial Revolution-1850-1950-Electric Power and Assembly-line Production.

• The Third Industrial Revolution- 1950-1980-Electronics and the Internet to revolutionise Communication
and Flatten the World.

• The Fourth Industrial Revolution-1980 and ongoing- NBIC-leading to exponential change in every field of
human existence
 The Age of Transhumanism

The Ethics of Human Enhancement

 What is Human Enhancement
• Making something better than it was before by the technological,
genetic, or chemical improvements to the ‘species-specific’ normal of
healthy human beings. Enhancement is therefore distinct from
therapy, which would involve making some “abnormality” more
“normal”.

• The enhancement options being discussed include radical extension of human health-span,
eradication of disease, elimination of unnecessary suffering, and augmentation of human
intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities
 What Are The Human Enhancements So Far?
Brain–Computer Interfaces
• The Bionic Man-Jesse Sullivan
• Braingate--allows a person to manipulate objects in the world using only the mind
• Cochlear Implants and Night Vision and Silent Talk
• Affective BCIs: Electrocorticography (ECoG) and Electroencephalography (EEG)
• Exoskeletons and Flexible Battlesuits-MIT’s Soldier Nanotechnologies
• Reciprocyte-an artificial nano-red blood vessel
• Pharmacological Enhancements. Stimulant drugs-Ritalin and Adderall, used by
many college students to boost concentration and ward off sleep; Provigil, used
to improve working memory and brighten mood; Anabolic steroids ; Viagra;
Aricept-improves verbal and visual memory; Resvestrol– life extender.
What Are The Human Enhancements So Far?
• Hans Moravec, former director of robotics at Carnegie-Mellon University and
developer of advanced robots for both NASA and the military, popularized the
idea of living perpetually via a digital substrate.

• He envisioned a procedure in which the entirety of the information encoded

within the neurons of a human brain could be read, copied, and uploaded to a
computer
• Immortality through software existence.

• Embodied Cognition is the opposite of brain emulation. That the body is an

extension of the mind and helps the mind to think and recognize and decide.
What is Human Enhancement
 The Ethics of Human Enhancement
• Ethical Issues of Affective Brain–Computer Interfaces: a system that uses
neurophysiological signals to extract features that are related to affective states (e.g.
emotions and moods). Data protection and informed consent, neurohacking,
marketing and political manipulation, inauthentic\fake emotions
• Exacerbated Social Inequality
• Exacerbated Corporate Inequality at all Managerial Levels
• The Ethics of Autonomy , Choice and Social Life of the first Transhumans
• The Ethics of the Emaciated Family
• The Ethics of the Imbalanced Transhuman
• The Geo-Ethics of the Aryan Race
• Decease-free longevity for the privileged
• Superintelligence for the enhanced