from the superhero-cyborgs-need-a-special-suit,-too dept.
Why I'm turning my son into a cyborg (archive) (alt)
Imagine if everyone spoke a language you don't understand. People have been speaking it around you since the day you were born, but while everyone else picks it up immediately, for you it means nothing. Others become frustrated with you. Friendships and jobs are difficult. Just being "normal" becomes a battle.
For many with autism, this is the language of emotion. For those on the spectrum, fluency in facial expressions doesn't come for free as it does for "neurotypicals." To them, reading facial expressions seems like a superpower.
So when my son was diagnosed, I reacted not just as a mom. I reacted as a mad scientist and built him a superpower.
This isn't the first time I've played mad scientist with my son's biology. When he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I hacked his insulin pump and built an AI that learned to match his insulin to his emotions and activities. I've also explored neurotechnologies to augment human sight, hearing, memory, creativity, and emotions. Tiger moms might obsess over the "right" prep schools and extracurriculars for their child, but I say why leave their intellect up to chance?
I've chosen to turn my son into a cyborg and change the definition of what it means to be human. But do my son's engineered superpowers make him more human, or less?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @12:35PM (14 children)
Are the rates of autism and diabetes normal or elevated for some reason? It seems like there are far more news stories the last few years about these diseases than usual.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @12:39PM (4 children)
Autism rising: https://www.livescience.com/62415-autism-rate-rises.html [livescience.com]
Diabetes rising: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/278140.php [medicalnewstoday.com]
Drug poisoning rising: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/p0329-drug-overdose-deaths.html [cdc.gov]
Yea, how about our health "experts" first work on returning the population to a normal rates of autism, diabetes, and poisonings before any of this cyborg crap.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday July 19 2019, @02:17PM (2 children)
First, note this: "Earlier versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) ... listed autistic disorder, Asperger syndrome and [two other conditions] as separate diagnoses. In the latest edition of the DSM, however, experts combined these conditions into one group called autism spectrum disorder because they all appear to be varying degrees of the same disorder."
Unless one is very careful with the stats, that alone is going to skew them.
More importantly, people seem to want their kids to be diagnosed with something. Autism, Asperger's, ADD, ADHD, whatever - every kid who has the faintest signs of anything is going to get a diagnosis. In earlier decades, this was not true. Kids were kids, they have a range of behaviors, and only the most extreme cases were formally diagnosed. As this trend has increased, so has the percentage of kids carrying diagnoses around.
As an aside: I'm not sure this is helpful for the kids. Seems to me that it gives them an excuse to not fit in, to not along with others, to demand special treatment. Lacking a diagnosis, you just figure out how to make life work. Everybody has their challenges. FWIW, I figure I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum, but I've never been diagnosed, and I hardly see any reason to pursue it. Really, what difference would it make?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Mer on Friday July 19 2019, @04:53PM (1 child)
Whether or not it's helpful for the kid is up to what parents do with that information. As long as autism is mild enough that the kid is not language impaired, you can teach emotion reading explicitly instead of letting the kid pick it up on their own. Even neurotypicals sometimes have a quirk that needs to be corrected because body language skills are rarely perfect and they didn't learn it as they grew up.
Stuff like reminding yourself to blink a bit more than you need to during face to face conversations if you don't blink a lot. Most people even if they blink infrequently will automatically drift to the rythm of their interlocutor.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by Snospar on Friday July 19 2019, @05:23PM
Just wear hard contact lenses and you'll be blinking in no time! Now if only I could master the "I'm listening; I'm interested" facial expression to go with it
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Friday July 19 2019, @08:28PM
Rising autism rates, especially in the west, are at least partially a result of people having children later and later in life.
Women under 24 appear to have the lowest chances of having autistic children as per https://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20100208/autism-risk-rises-with-mothers-age#1 [webmd.com]
The article linked appears to discount the idea that this is the case, though the mean age of first-time mothers is already at 26 and climbing https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/01/14/462816458/average-age-of-first-time-moms-keeps-climbing-in-the-u-s [npr.org], in which the rate of autistic children per thousand births is 2.3 per 1000 vs 1.6 per 1000 when 2 years younger.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by epitaxial on Friday July 19 2019, @12:50PM (5 children)
Some say the diagnosis for autism traits has changed over the years. I say it's because children are glued to screens wherever they go. They don't interact with people they just follow their parents around with peripheral vision. Take the screen away and watch the tantrum and crocodile tears flow. If they have trouble "reading" people then maybe they need more practice?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @01:08PM (1 child)
Health of mom's gut a key contributor to autism risk, study suggests. [sciencedaily.com] Since countries with the highest consumption of highly-processed foods are seeing the most impact from autism, there is at least a correlation. Possibly the dietary changes are impacting oxytocin, which is also strongly linked to autism. [nih.gov]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @01:54PM
I say its the sheer number of parents and children on prescription medication. I saw a commercial the other day where they made it seem normal to be filling 5 prescriptions for yourself and 4 for your five year old child.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mer on Friday July 19 2019, @01:59PM (2 children)
Autism is underlying regardless of practice. Practice does make the difference between functioning autists and non-functioning ones.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday July 19 2019, @03:57PM (1 child)
You oversimplify. There are degrees of autism. For mild degrees of autism you are probably correct, for severe autism practice doesn't suffice, and as it gets worse, becomes essentially impossible.
N.B.: I may also be oversimplifying. It's quite possible that autism is a syndrome rather than a single disease, and different forms respond differently to treatments. This doesn't exactly invalidate what I said, but it may imply that for certain forms of mild autism, practice wouldn't help.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Mer on Friday July 19 2019, @04:40PM
Right, I was oversimplifying. I just wanted to point out that practice wouldn't change anything about autism prevalence.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday July 19 2019, @02:09PM
There is a major question about autism and whether rates have risen or if it has just become more important to notice autism and increased screening tools are finding more cases. Bear in mind that autism is a spectrum disorder - high functioning or mild symptomology might not have been recognized as such.
Diabetes does seem to be on the rise. Sugar is relatively cheap (relatively!) and so are fats. So if you don't have enough resources you are going to load yourself down with foods that actually produce obesity and help a person develop diabetes. If you have too much resources you might also buy more food, also causing obesity. So it's a double-edged sword - the poor and the rich both engage in behaviors which cause it.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @03:45PM (1 child)
In the old days, autistic children were beaten to death.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @09:33PM
That was due to the lack of vaccines and fluoridated H20.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fadrian on Friday July 19 2019, @01:35PM (13 children)
But do my son's engineered superpowers make him more human, or less?
It has nothing to do with humanity, but it does make him more complex and dependent on technology only the author knows. I don't know what that will do with the kid's chance of survival, but I think hacking your kid is a bit of a bad idea, unless you make sure that others have documentation.
That is all.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday July 19 2019, @03:27PM (11 children)
Hacking your kid is also a stupid idea unless you are qualified to do so. It places an undue level of faith in her judgment of making changes to code that could kill her son. Of the many reasons that medical stuff is expensive are notions of testing and an awareness that great harm can result from a coding screwup causing a greater than normal level of diligence. If someone could enlighten me about her qualifications to be messing with that (I've "reached my limit of free articles" and damned if I'll register to RTFA right now) I'd be very interested.
Right now it has the flavor to me of, "I'm a pilot, so of course I can make the changes to my plane's 737-Max software on the fly to get me better economy and get it in the air again!"
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @03:46PM
I understand there's a portion of the open source movement set to do this, and the things the process does are automate a portion of the calculation and data entry, plus add logging that's not normally accessible. More like "Because I'm a pilot, I can set a better 3d gps course than altitude/heading hold including logging fuel usage. Because I'm trained as a navigator, I can create a position log that GPS isn't actually tracking" than "get me better economy and get it in the air again!".
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday July 19 2019, @04:17PM (3 children)
I am a pilot and off course I have a right to modify my experimental airplane any way I am pleased. Passenger's lives? I have a required place-card displayed warning them.
What you imply should affect only commercial use and only a large one at that.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday July 19 2019, @07:21PM (2 children)
Gee, your experimental airplane is a 737-Max? Maybe there was a reason I used that specific example?
But since you opened the door..... Sure. You can modify your experimental plane. It's experimental. Right up to the moment you obtain your type II special airworthiness certificate and where your modifications touch upon what would be constituted as a major change. Then you have to amend your Special Airworthiness Certificate and re-flight test your aircraft, no? Put another way, unless your certificate is different from the norm, you hack up your plane and then crash it and the FAA determines it was your hacking that caused the accident then you can pretty well expect it will have been retroactively determined to have been a major change and you should have amended. So you'd better not make any modification that can result in a death without amending your certificate, right?
No, it doesn't just apply to commercial use. You are not allowed to hack anything on a type-certified (non-special) aircraft unless you hold an A&P and are thus certified to do so, unless.... Want to hack your Cessna 172? Better apply for a experimental / special use certificates. Then you again have an experimental airplane.
By the way... why do they not allow you to fly over populated airspace during your Type I flight testing except for takeoffs and landings?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday July 19 2019, @11:54PM (1 child)
The reason you used 737 example was because you wanted to scary people who are not her kids. The bottom line, it is not your lawn; newer was, never will be.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:20AM
No, the reason I used the 737 example was it was rather clear cut that there was someone who had an ethical obligation to take care of someone else (a pilot and passengers), which limits what freedoms the pilot can do. We don't even have to go into whether you should have an ethical or moral obligation to ensure your plane is safe for flight before taking others up in it, no matter how it is licensed or what your operating class is.
Same way with parents. You can point out the parents has the right to determine medical treatments for her kids and be correct. But the minute a parent starts acting like a physician or a regulated medical device manufacturer it IS the right of society to intervene. So it IS our lawn.
I'll just assume you're conceding that I'm right that your experimental plane isn't yours to do absolutely anything you choose to without having to have it reinspected / retested for safety if you intend to continue to fly it, and that you are aware that while you're testing it you can't fly it over concentrated population so that if you kill yourself the odds are it is only yourself you take down and not an innocent. Thanks.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 19 2019, @10:38PM (5 children)
She can code and she has an interest in not killing the kid. Out of curiosity who do you think has the qualifications to decide what qualifications are necessary for such activities?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:22AM (4 children)
The FDA? [fda.gov]
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:37AM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @07:28PM (2 children)
Same old khallow, shitty arguments instead of acknowledging someone might have a point.
I feel like we just had a conversation about this
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 21 2019, @03:22AM
Accusing someone is not a conversation.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday July 23 2019, @03:17PM
Meh, I made my point, Khallow made Khallow's point.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snow on Friday July 19 2019, @04:19PM
AI sometimes does unpredictable things.... I sure wouldn't hook up my kid to an AI controlled insulin pump that I created. The chances that something will screw up and deliver a lethal dose is too high for me to stomach. Unless, maybe that is the ultimate plan. Have an AI accidentally kill her son so she doesn't get the blame?
Alpha testing with your kid's life. Seems pretty fucked up to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @01:39PM (1 child)
But then I read the article and it didn't explain it either. I'm sure she's doing something interesting for her son, but this article is a very long and disorganized ramble.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday July 19 2019, @02:09PM
TFA did explain it, granted it wasn't very clear: "our system could recognize the expression of a face and write the emotion on Glass’s little heads-up screen" I assume she gave a system like this to her son, for him to try out. If I understood it correctly, this is based on Google Glass, together with a computer in a backpack. So, not yet very practical, but good as a proof-of-concept.
Me, I'm pretty lousy at faces, and even worse with names. I would love to have a face-recognition overlay on reality.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by goodie on Friday July 19 2019, @01:57PM (2 children)
There's a lot of "I did, I did I did..." in this article (I actually RTFA). It reads like the ruminations of someone who is arguably very good at what she does but I don't think it's that innovative to be honest... I mean augmented intelligence and other concepts are fairly close to what she describes. As far as hacking an insulin pump, I have 3 thoughts on that.
- First, good on her because it may show manufacturers that they have to get their crap together and innovate instead of relying on selling dated stuff to people and sit on their fat asses ("look, it's a smart pump because it sends the reading over bluetooth to your phone where you can see a bar chart!").
- Second, great. Now what happens when/if the pump malfunctions?
- I have great discomfort when people use their own offspring as the subject of their scientific experiments.
(Score: 2) by EEMac on Friday July 19 2019, @07:11PM
The person in the article:
1. Saw problems
2. Did something about them
That's good behavior.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday July 20 2019, @07:04AM
>I have great discomfort when people use their own offspring as the subject of their scientific experiments.
We are all Mother Nature's science experiment. Like mother, like child.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 19 2019, @02:52PM (1 child)
Many other parents wish they had had human children.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hartree on Friday July 19 2019, @03:20PM
I can tell you that being a parent to a kid with ASD can be a real trial and end up with the parent being pretty desperate for something to help. (I was the kid, not the parent)
Though, my mild suspicion is the kid may come by it honestly as trying to hack your kid to tweak their behavior is just the sort of thing I'd expect from someone either on the spectrum or a borderline case. Chip off the old block and all that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hartree on Friday July 19 2019, @03:14PM
I read a web comic called Last Resort and one of the characters in it wears an "autie lens". It's the same idea of an emotion reading ai that then signals the user what emotions are being presented and suggests possible responses to the wearer.
This is interesting to me, as when I was a young kid I could have been diagnosed as ASD under current guidelines. I was one of the lucky percentage (15% or so) that the neural development happens, just at a later time, so I became much less so as I grew up. I can well remember how people's emotions and behavior were a mystery to me. Over time, I learned how to tell what they were feeling and how to respond. How much of that was just learning, and how much it was that as I grew up, I was pruning/making neural connections in a more normal manner I don't know.
I often daydreamed/fantasized as a kid that I was an alien probe sent to figure out and mimic human emotions.
My only concern is that this could act as a crutch that in some cases could hold back actual learning of emotional cues in the borderline cases. If you just depend on the machine telling you what people's expressions mean, you may not learn to do it yourself.
In a similar thing, I never memorized the multiplication tables until 5th grade. I just carried a table on an index card in my back pocket. I became so dependent on it and resistant to actually learning them that my dad (a high school teacher) resorted to flash cards with an immediate reward for right answers and (very mild) punishment for wrong ones (hilarity ensued when I answered, got my hand slapped and both me and my older brother who was listening in spoke up that I had given the right answer. :) ). The actual point is that in some ASD kids, the addiction to a coping mechanism can be extremely strong and hard to change.
In the case of someone who is more severely impacted, that wouldn't apply, and just like someone missing a leg, a crutch would be quite appropriate.
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Friday July 19 2019, @04:25PM (5 children)
I do not understand how non consented tampering with the medical device of another person is legal. The father can be a genius but the procedures to approve an insulin pump exist because a bug could cause death or disability (amputation, blindness more?).
Just because a child is under his responsibility does not mean that he can gamble with the life of another. On the contrary, given that a child did not yet law recognizable free will and responsibilty, the father should not be able to do this modifications to his child. Seriously, hacking the insulin pump of a child? What an idiot! Why not help his child be normal.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Friday July 19 2019, @04:47PM (4 children)
The parent is the owner of the pump. They can modify or even destroy it as they wish.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aiwarrior on Friday July 19 2019, @05:37PM
Indeed, use it modified on a person which cannot legally consent to it is another matter though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:58PM (1 child)
Are you autistic or just dense? If the parent modifies their child's pump then that child dies from incorrect insulin dosing, that is manslaughter vs murder.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Friday July 19 2019, @07:03PM
No it isn't. Murder means there was intent. But now you're going purely by conjecture on events that did not occur.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday July 19 2019, @07:54PM
Not really. The device was prescribed by a physician to be used according to the directions of that physician. The pump was certified by the FDA. Tampering with the device constitutes violates both the FDA certification and the orders of the physician ordering the prescription.
Let's put it another way, and make it a pain pump instead of an insulin pump. Person modifies the device to drop the opioid flow twice as fast. Still OK with that? (You might be. The FDA nor the prescribing physician will be).
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday July 19 2019, @04:26PM (3 children)
Assuming technology continues to develop exponentially, what will definitely happen... the difference between any humans will be exponential. Let me translate it.
Every superhuman will be alone. The rest of the population will either be super super humans as compared to her or total idiots.
P.S. This is similar to wealth accumulation. Rich who leave among rich are miserable because their neighbors exponentially richer (or poorer) so they don't "play" with them.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:45PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday July 20 2019, @11:10PM (1 child)
I don't think that a human who already bothered to become a super-human would stop her development at some point just to chat with loosers while there are super-super-humans around she could potentially catch up with.
As per the thechnology not being inherently exponential, yes, it very well may be. I suspect though that it will not be in a foreseable future. For some time we'll have super-humen tearing other super-humen's throats any chance they get.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 21 2019, @03:25AM
Depends how lonely they get, right? You mentioned a trade off - so it shouldn't be weird to you that the trade off means that someone doesn't optimize all the way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:53PM (6 children)
The author is deluded. I realize it is not popular to say such a thing, but it is a fact. Far from creating a "superman", she's merely making it possible for him to function more closely to normal. Yes, I said it. Normal. I'm what she would call "neurotypical" (what is that, some sort of insult?). Give me the same set of tools and I would still be emotionally superior to her barely-functioning son. This does not mean that he's not lovable or wonderful or any of those things she feels about him. But she is deluded if she thinks that she is creating some sort of "superman". He is, and always will be, a person who will have trouble functioning without excessive care and advanced technological resources. Better to be like Temple Grandin and understand your limitations, and learn how to live with them, while building on your better qualities, than to fool yourself into thinking that you are a superior being.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @08:08PM
Fire him from Atlassian!
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday July 19 2019, @08:31PM
"Neurotypical" (aka "NT") is short for "neurologically typical" -- someone who has typical neurology. The term was invented to mirror the term "neurologically atypical" which has been used to describe autistics for decades, not as an insult.
"Normal" is just a mathematical description: being neurotypical is normal, and so is being straight or right-handed. It doesn't mean that the person is in some way superior to those who are atypical, gay, or left-handed, just as the converse isn't true; otherwise we'd be figuring that Einstein (whose childhood points squarely to autism) was inferior to a random janitor.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Friday July 19 2019, @08:53PM (2 children)
I agree, you shouldn't be able to call yourself a cyborg until you can turn invisible or shoot energy beams from your hands.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @09:14PM (1 child)
I think it would just be significant* integrated electronics.
* I needed a weasle word to get past pace-makers. Or are people with pace makers cyborgs?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 19 2019, @11:16PM
Dick Cheney was a cyborg, but he recovered his humanity through a "harvesting" procedure.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @09:53PM
> Give me the same set of tools and I would still be emotionally superior to her barely-functioning son
Right, then you too would be superhuman, with glasses that revealed emotion like x-ray specs.
Driving a car? Also reaches superhuman speed and momentum, etc.
Like making art, just because you could do it too, doesn't diminish the original.
And Temple G.'s hugbox, built to compensate for emotional challenges in a different way (internal feelings instead of external input processing), is probably not something you'd diss. Why diss this tech?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @08:10AM
Is this like that guy from Warwick, who put a USB port into his arm, connected, basicly, to nothing, and claimed to be a "cyborg"? I hear he wandered about campus, saying, "Exterminate! Exterminate!", until students and faculty realized he could not climb stairs, and so they all retreated to upper stories and were saved. Or am I mixing up Kevin [kevinwarwick.com] with an actual university? Or a particular Dr. Who episode? I could be mixing them up, AI tends to do that.
(Score: 1) by r_a_trip on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:17PM
The author claims that humanity values difference. I'd say that is delusion right there. Yes, everyone wants to feel like they are better than everyone else, but when it comes to difference, we all shun it the best way we can. Different is dangerous. Different is unpredictable. That is why humans form cliques the moment we are dropped into larger group settings. Our "clone" friends make us feel safe and understood in a large alien and dangerous world.