How Will Modern Day Advances in Technology Adversely Effect Our Lifestyles as Robotics Meet Android Systems?

NGM’S cover-issue Sept. 2020

In this month’s issue of National Geographic Magazine the featured article discusses the revolution in robotics as machines take over more of the duties long performed by humans. (1) As we become insatiable consumers of advances in technology we may be blindly allowing the violations by those in power over those with no power. The new age revolution isn’t fought with rifles anymore, it’s fought with electronics. I wasn’t even one minute into my read of this article before I came across the awareness of how robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) has intersected and crossed over into the proclivities of human sexual behavior. Thus, the new age of sexual deviance.

“Will smart machines make our lives better?”

Man has long sought the company of women. Prostitution has been with us since biblical times. The female escort is nothing new and it never will be. However, in today’s world, technology and sex have emerged in a new form. Where once we had sex phone numbers men could call to achieve sexual arousal, we now have a downloadable application called the Harmony app so men can talk directly to an Android sex worker via your smartphone using an AI platform. That’s right, interfacing with a computerized text-to-speech and speech-to-text android platform for sexual arousal. For a small monthly fee of $20.00 – $25.00, you simply download the app to your Android phone. You are then granted access to create a fully customized virtual female companion. (2) Sort of like Siri but with a sex drive to excite you in places you’ve never imagined.

Silicone and metal doll heads rest on hooks at Abyss Creations

Abyss Creations located in San Marcos, California has manufactures hyper-realistic silicone sex dolls for more than 20 years. It’s newest push involves bringing animatronics, sensor technology and artificial intelligence (AI) together so as to give these dolls programmable personalities. Let’s think about that for a moment. In order to fully operate your Android smartphone you need to keep your Google Play Services updated. Google Play Services, coincidentally shortens to GPS, grants permission to Android systems. You can’t operate your Android phone and utilize it to its maximum capacity without logging your device into an Android platform! Google Play Services also grants permission to Body Sensors, Calendar, Camera, Contacts, Microphone, Phone, SMS, and Storage. This is how the government can conduct surveillance over your smartphone, and for those receiving government subsidies cellular free service your privacy maybe more at risk than you think. But it is also important to note that you can unsuspectedly download a surveillance program to your phone via a rogue app. But back to the Android doll.

Are Sexbots here to stay?

Known as “RealDolls” these sex toys begin at $4,000 and the robotic talking head cost $10,000. You can purchase a silicone and metal frame body but if you want a talking head to go on to your “RealDoll” you will have to pay an additional $10,000 which brings the cost to around $14,000 for one fully loaded animatronic sex doll. And here in lies the difference between rich boys and poor boys. Rich boys purchase a fully loaded $14,000 talking sex doll and poor boys download the app.

Has anybody read the book or have seen the movie “Cloud Atlas”? Somni-451 may have just arrived. What will be our truth be behind the concept of “Exultation”? In the movie Exultation was a lie told to oblivious androids about ascendance in to a “better lifestyle.”

Back to “RealDolls” meet Android systems. Now, here is where it gets interesting. If your Android smartphone can interface with Abyss Creations Android computer platform via a downloadable application making it possible to “access” your “RealDoll” over your Android phone so as to make it possible for you to communicate to her, then the possibility exists for a consumer of one of these “RealDolls” to interface with her over his/her Android phone using an application. Likewise, the possibility also exists for similar implants to be placed into biological human tissue so as to access someone via Android platforms. The purpose and scope of this rogue Dark Side to human affairs would be to take control of the target person. If you gain access to him/her, you can get them to do all sorts of things you want them to do like becoming a human drone and taking control over the person’s body. Remember the Manchurian Candidate?

Brainstim head gear

In other news, a story that comes straight out of Total Recall, the Pentagon had started testing the application of running low level electrical currents through soldier’s brains as a replacement for coffee and energy drinks in 2014.

The currents which are targeted to specific areas of the brain, show great potential, although testing had been limited in 2014.

Bryan Bender, reporting for the Boston Globe, states: “Early experiments using “noninvasive” brain stimulation have been performed on several dozen volunteers at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. The results show the technique improves both alertness and acuity, researchers say.” (3)(8)

Those given electrical stimulation reported feeling refreshed at the end of the testing, despite obvious sleep deprivation. Overall, volunteers hooked up to the electrodes performed twice as well as those given nothing.

Surprisingly, volunteers who had been given caffeine performed the worst of all three groups. By the time the 30 hours had passed, the group had “tanked.”

As the U.S. military has become increasingly reliant on drone technology, finding ways to keep pilots alert has become an increasingly pressing matter. Soldiers now can spends hours scanning through uneventful data during a drone flight, leading to a very real possibility of critical slips in vigilance.

Bender notes that “monitoring intense streams of data can quickly become so repetitive — especially when there is no action — that attentiveness and recognition can deteriorate in as little as 20 minutes.”

Researchers acknowledge that there has been no real testing done to see the potential long-term effects of using electrical stimulation every day.

With advances like this, it may not be too far in the future that consumer electric shocks become the next big thing. After all, it’s not the first time people have turned to zapping themselves [and others].

Inspire, an implantable device that sends mild electrical impulses to an implant that stimulates the back of the throat to help relax the tongue so people can achieve a fuller night’s rest. But whose pushing the button?

Innovations in sensors implanted inside the body include the latest in sleep apnea treatment. Inspire is a new technology that is implanted inside the body to help with sleep apnea disorder. (4)(5) The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2019 approved the use of the first implantable continuous glucose blood monitor for Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. (6) Some continuous glucose blood monitors can interfaces with your Android smartphone to get blood sugar results and can also transmit your monthly blood sugar log to your primary care physician.

So, where are all these new technological innovations going to take us? All of these intersecting realms of human activity combining with Android systems? And what’s more, what’s the Dark Side? Because inevitably they’re is always a Dark Side.

Movie clip from the movie Cloud Atlas featuring “Fabricants” (SOMNI-451)

I’d like to leave you with some thoughts from some engineers in the medical field regarding transcranial direct stimulation. In an article entitled “The Unfinished Science Behind the New Wave of Electrical Brain Stimulation” published by Wired said:

“A stronger dose of caution came from Vincent Walsh, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London. Walsh did something I’d never seen in 12 years of attending scientific conferences as a journalist: He started his talk by pointing out the flaws in a study from his own lab, a 2010 study that suggested tDCS (transcranial direct-current stimulation) could improve mathematical learning. Walsh argued that other research studies have suffered from similar problems, ranging from inadequate control experiments, to guesswork about which parts of the brain were being excited and inhibited, to unanswered questions about whether the modest effects reported in most lab studies have any real-world relevance.”… Marom Bikson a biomedical engineer at the City College of New York said the field needs to mature and move toward bigger, more carefully controlled studies.”

Note: The views contained in this post represent the opinion of the blog’s administrator. The opinions and views stated here are concerned with unethical biomedical engineering, research studies that use and promote electrical stimulation to the body and brain. Questionable, unethical studies that aren’t controlled and serve no real practical application except to torture the patient because data isn’t accurately evaluated nor peer reviewed.

Sources:
(1) Berreby, David. “The_Robots_Are_Here.” National Geographic Magazine. September 2020. pg. 40-73.

(2) Crist, Ry. “Dawn of the Sexbots.” Cnet.com. Published August 10, 2017. Accessed online August 25, 2020. https://www.cnet.com/news/abyss-creations-ai-sex-robots-headed-to-your-bed-and-heart/

(3) Bender, Bryan. “Air Force stimulates brain waves of drone operators.” The Virginia Pilot. Published February 19, 2014. Accessed online August 25, 2020. https://www.pilotonline.com/military/article_f9771f04-2d63-5984-9a2d-37adf549296a.html

(4) “New Implant Device A Breakthrough In Sleep Apnea Treatment.” Aired March 26, 2018. WCCO Channel 4. CBS News Minnesota.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1zkW7DSXaU

(5) Inspiresleep.com https://www.inspiresleep.com/

(6) Roan, Sherri. “First Implantable Continuous Glucose Monitor Receives FDA Approval for Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes.” Everyday Health. Published January 23, 2019. Accessed online August 25, 2020.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/type-2-diabetes/treatment/fda-approves-first-implantable-cgm-diabetics/

(7) MrHDmovieclips. YouTube.com. Retrieved Online August 25, 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvUpUU6owVc

(8) Miller, Greg. “The Unfinished Science Behind the New Wave of Electrical Brain Stimulation.” Wired. Published May 5, 2014. Retrieved Online August 25, 2020.
https://www.wired.com/2014/05/brain-stimulation-science/

Year Million and Androids with Human Delusional Fears

Summer is coming and it is approaching quickly. So I have been packing away this past year’s fall and winter clothing and washing my summer attire for “ready-to-wear” condition and while I was cleaning out my closet over the weekend I came across a weight loss program I purchased in 2013. Shaun T’s Hip Hop Abs. This paid for programming commercial dominated the airwaves early on Sunday mornings for weeks. So, I purchased the Shaun T’s Hip Hop Abs weight loss program.

What’s funnier than trying to watch a squirrel steal a nut? Watching a white Caucasian female trying to dance like she’s been born with soul? Did you ever see that Chris Rock movie where he dies and his spirit is sent back to earth and placed inside the body of an old wealthy white man? I think it was called “Down to Earth”. And as Chris Rock (cloaked in his new white body armor) tries out his new wheels, a Rolls Royce or Bentley I believe, he starts jiving to some black rap over the car’s stereo system and as he comes to a rolling stop at a stop light, the camera catches a glimpse of Chris in his new white body. A white Caucasian male trying to jive like he has rhythm and soul. Too funny. Much to my dismay, Shaun T’s program didn’t work for me. But why? What was it about Shaun T’s Hip Hop Abs program and my failure to achieve results from a very clearly delineated weight loss program? It wasn’t my lack of rhythm that was holding me back. I was still burning calories doing the moves, even if they were out of sync. Some people will say, “Why, will power. You silly girl!” But what if a person’s “will power” can be harnessed and re-directed via electro-magnetic frequency signals otherwise known as radio waves. It is possible as radio wave technologies have been used on the human body and in medicine for years.

Sound crazy? Sound scary and horrifying? I can tell you from personal experience, it is. Still other’s will tell me, “That’s impossible!” For all those who think it sounds crazy and impossible, my response to you is this, “Have you watched the new series airing on the NatGeo Channel entitle “Year Million” yet?” For those of you who are unaware of what it is, it is a six-part series on what our lives will look like in the future, once man has harnessed more control over the natural world and has advanced his knowledge further in science and technology. One episode deals with AI (artificial intelligence). The creators of the series claim that one day we may co-exist alongside androids who will act, look, and think like we do. What does this mean for the human race? The implications are as vast as are the theories about how intelligent we humans will decide to make these AI units.

“What’s even scarier, in this digital era, is how errors of fact proliferate instantly, and that so many people embrace the alternate realities. The trust gap between the public and experts, after widening for decades, is now a chasm. And as “certified” experts decline in stature, “self-declared” experts ascend. This is the bad news. But there is also good news…..producing journalism that is honest and fair, grounded in science and evidence, designed to educate and inform. Confidence in the integrity of our work enables us to defend it, civilly, to those with other beliefs. That seems like a good place to start if we’re ever going to agree, let alone act, on actual facts.”   ~Susan Goldberg, Editor in Chief of National Geographic Magazine, and her editorial comment on producing good journalism

One of my fears, in the production of AI units, is the capability of an AI unit itself to develop a delusional fear in his neural network. One that will cause him to act and become like us! If AI begins to learn and interpret on his own, like a human, then it becomes possible that a delusional fear can spark a state of paranoia. If this occurs, we may as well say good-bye to the only planet we’ve ever known. It will mean war and if we make these AI units too human, we might become the slave race. This proclivity to man’s existence is what has consistently brought empires, popes, kings, and kingdoms to their knees.

Delusional fears reek havoc in our daily lives and sometimes on such a subtle level we don’t even recognize that a fear has controlled us. The Salem Witch Trials, as was Anne Hutchinson expulsion from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, were historical examples of a pronounced delusional fear. Women are notorious for carrying out delusional fears among themselves based from their own lack of confidence and self awareness when it comes to dress size, weight, shape, age, intelligence, and ability. Which is the whole reason for my post and I can now connect the dots between weight loss and delusional fear.

Sometimes when we achieve a goal, others may find it hard to sincerely feel happy for us. Why? Because they themselves don’t understand their own power, their own gifts, and their own talents. This may cause them to act in ways that are counter-intuitive to sustained happiness because they are suffering from a delusion of their own, that another woman may steal their thunder, their resources, their man, their job, their status. These notions are operating on faulty logic. No one can steal these things from you unless you act in a way that will promote the loss of those things. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do, are in harmony.” This is also called synchronicity. When we think, speak, and do what is right, we create our synchronicity and what will flow out of our lives will produce positive things. We create a positive atmosphere in our lives and we may begin to enjoy the by-products of this positive energy.

The most horrifying thing to experience, is to know that we have come under the control of an outside force that is evil. This outside force isn’t preternatural. It isn’t supernatural or sent from “god”. It is a malevolent psychopath who has harnessed the control over another through acquired power. (If you need an example of this, please refer to the Holocaust of World War II.) What this implies for our future with AI could mean fall subject to a “technology power”. This is a very frightening thought to entertain and causes me to wonder what kinds of crime an AI future will create for us? Should men be dabbling in the sciences as they are doing right now? We haven’t been given the gift to see into the future. We don’t know what these new advancements will mean for us. Will some of these AI units become psychopathic or manipulated by psychopaths? What will future crime, perpetrated by AI units, look and feel like?

Exploring Science & Innovation

The smooth and flexible robot modeled after an octopus has microfluidic logic circuits that glow under black lighting. It took only two years to perfect and only a few dollars’ worth of materials to produce.

Banish your preconceptions of robots as stiff, herky-jerky metal machines. An “octobot” less than three inches wide is changing the robotics landscape. The Octobot is the world’s first completely soft, autonomous, and untethered robot. It is free of wires, batteries, and any hard material. Like its namesake, the octopus, it is free of an internal skeleton.

A Harvard University research team led by engineering professors Robert Wood and Jennifer Lewis tried more than 300 designs before they came up with one that worked. And now the Octobot could revolutionize the use of robots. Traditional robots are fantastic for what they do in terms of automation, but they’re not geared toward human interaction. Wood says, “Soft robots provide a safer solution: If they run into something, it’d be like bumping into a basketball. It won’t hurt you.”

Before the Octobot, soft robots were either hybrids with pliable exteriors with hard guts of batteries and wires or soft models tethered to an external cord. The octobot eliminates these restrictions. It moves by pneumatic power. An internal circuit triggers chemical reactions, turning its liquid hydrogen peroxide fuel into a gas, which inflates the robot’s limbs and allows them to move. The whole assembly is created from silicone using a 3-D printer.

The Octobot is currently a prototype, but its writhing arms prove that the technology works. The goal , says Wood, is to find viable applications, such as in health care. Soft robots could be made from biocompatible and biodegradable materials and might even be formed into capsules to be swallowed for more effective and less invasive endoscopies.

Another use might be in braces or clothing worn by professional athletes. The robot would detect an incoming injury, say a fall or a tackle, and deploy quickly enough to prevent injury from the occurring to different body parts.