Human Enhancement Technologies: Future Outlook and Challenges

Abstract

Relations between the human and hi-tech worlds, even until recently considered the subject of science fiction, are taking a more real shape and becoming the focus of expert discussions. Some specialists suggest that in the future machines can become the principal creator of new technologies and race far ahead of humanity. However, emerging technologies for human enhancement offer new possibilities for humans to remain competitive against machines and to acquire more advanced physical and mental capacities. These techniques are interdisciplinary, drawing primarily on advances in medicine, pharmacology, nutrition, mobile communications, neuroscience and cognitive sciences.

This paper provides examples of such developments, analyzes their contribution to the expansion of human capabilities and, consequently, implications for the future working environment. It addresses ethical issues and risks associated with human enhancement technologies, in particular, the emergence of the new social divide — between the users of such technologies and people lacking access to them. Finally, it discusses some wild cards that may cause future surprises and shocks, i.e. machines that can control a human-excluded world, a virtual level of human life that dominates real life. The author notes that such conditions will require rethinking established views of personality, human responsibility and mutual obligations that will help the establishment of new behavioral patterns.