Asimov, Isaac - Robot City 3 - Cyborg.pdf - Isaac Asimov - Planetar81

Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 3: Cyborg

ISAAC ASIMOV'S

ROBOT

CITY

BOOK 3: CYBORG

WILLIAM F. WU

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks for help in writing this novel are due to David M.

Harris, Michael P. Kube-McDowell, Rob Chilson, Alison Telure, my

parents, Dr. William Q. Wu and Cecile F. Wu, and Plus Five Computer

Services, Inc.

This novel is dedicated to

Laura J. Lehew

who always remains very special

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM

ISAAC ASIMOV

A robot is a robot and an organism is an organism.

An organism, as we all know, is built up of cells. From the molecular

standpoint, its key molecules are nucleic acids and proteins. These

float in a watery medium, and the whole has a bony support system. It

is useless to go on with the description, since we are all familiar with

organisms and since we are examples of them ourselves.

A robot, on the other hand, is (as usually pictured in science fiction)

an object, more or less resembling a human being, constructed out of

strong, rust-resistant metal. Science fiction writers are generally

chary of describing the robotic details too closely since they are not

usually essential to the story and the writers are generally at a loss

how to do so.

The impression one gets from the stories, however, is that a robot is

wired, so that it has wires through which electricity flows rather than

tubes through which blood flows. The ultimate source of power is

either unnamed, or is assumed to partake of the nature of nuclear

power.

What of the robotic brain?

When I wrote my first few robot stories in 1939 and 1940, I imagined

a “positronic brain” of a spongy type of platinum-iridium alloy. It was

platinum-iridium because that is a particularly inert metal and is

least likely to undergo chemical changes. It was spongy so that it

would offer an enormous surface on which electrical patterns could

be formed and un-formed. It was “positronic” because four years

before my first robot story, the positron had been discovered as a

reverse kind of electron, so that “positronic” in place of “electronic”

had a delightful science-fiction sound.

Nowadays, of course, my positronic platinum-iridium brain is

hopelessly archaic. Even ten years after its invention it became

outmoded. By the end of the 1940s, we came to realize that a robot's

brain must be a kind of computer. Indeed, if a robot were to be as

complex as the robots in my most recent novels, the robot brain-

computer must be every bit as complex as the human brain. It must be

made of tiny microchips no larger than, and as complex as, brain

cells.

But now let us try to imagine something that is neither organism nor

robot, but a combination of the two. Perhaps we can think of it as an

organism—robot or “orbot.” That would clearly be a poor name, for it

is only “robot” with the first two letters transposed. To say “orgabot”,

instead, is to be stuck with a rather ugly word.

We might call it a robot-organism, or a “robotanism”, which, again, is

ugly, or “roborg”. To my ears, “roborg” doesn't sound bad, but we

can't have that. Something else has arisen.

The science of computers was given the name “cybernetics” by

Norbert Weiner a generation ago, so that if we consider something

that is part robot and part organism and remember that a robot is

cybernetic in nature, we might think of the mixture as a “cybernetic

organism”, or a “cyborg”. In fact, that is the name that has stuck and

is used.

To see what a cyborg might be, let's try starting with a human

organism and moving toward a robot; and when we are quite done

with that, let's start with a robot and move toward a human being.

To move from a human organism toward a robot, we must begin

replacing portions of the human organism with robotic parts. We

already do that in some ways. For instance, a good percentage of the

original material of my teeth is now metallic, and metal is, of course,

the robotic substance par excellence .

The replacements don't have to be metallic, of course. Some parts of

my teeth are now ceramic in nature, and can't be told at a glance from

the natural dentine. Still, even though dentine is ceramic in

appearance and even, to an extent, in chemical structure, it was

originally laid down by living material and bears the marks of its

origin. The ceramic that has replaced the dentine shows no trace of

life, now or ever.

We can go further. My breastbone, which had to be split

longitudinally in an operation a few years back, was for a time held

together by metallic staples, which have remained in place ever since.

My sister-in-law has an artificial hip-joint replacement. There are

people who have artificial arms or legs and such non-living limbs are

being designed, as time passes on, to be ever more complex and

useful. There are people who have lived for days and even months

with artificial hearts, and many more people who live for years with

pacemakers.

We can imagine, little by little, this part and that part of the human

being replaced by inorganic materials and engineering devices. Is

there any part which we would find difficult to replace, even in

imagination?

I don't think anyone would hesitate there. Replace every part of the

human being but one—the limbs, the heart, the liver, the skeleton,

and so on—and the product would remain human. It would be a

human being with artificial parts, but it would be a human being.

But what about the brain?

Surely, if there is one thing that makes us human it is the brain. If

there is one thing that makes us a human individual, it is the intensely

complex makeup, the emotions, the learning, the memory content of

our particular brain. You can't simply replace a brain with a thinking

device off some factory shelf. You have to put in something that

incorporates all that a natural brain has learned, that possesses all its

memory, and that mimics its exact pattern of working.

An artificial limb might not work exactly like a natural one, but might

still serve the purpose. The same might be true of an artificial lung,

kidney, or liver. An artificial brain, however, must be the precise

replica of the brain it replaces, or the human being in question is no

longer the same human being.

It is the brain, then, that is the sticking point in going from human

organism to robot.

And the reverse?

In my story “The Bicentennial Man”, I described the passage of my

robot-hero, Andrew Martin, from robot to man. Little by little, he had

himself changed, till his every visible part was human in appearance.

He displayed an intelligence that was increasingly equivalent (or even

superior) to that of a man. He was an artist, a historian, a scientist,

an administrator. He forced the passage of laws guaranteeing robotic

rights, and achieved respect and admiration in the fullest degree.

Yet at no point could he make himself accepted as a man. The sticking

point, here, too, was his robotic brain. He found that he had to deal

with that before the final hurdle could be overcome.

Therefore, we come down to the dichotomy, body and brain. The

ultimate cyborgs are those in which the body and brain don't match.

That means we can have two classes of complete cyborgs:

a) a robotic brain in a human body, or

b) a human brain in a robotic body.

We can take it for granted that in estimating the worth of a human

being (or a robot, for that matter) we judge first by superficial

appearance.

I can very easily imagine a man seeing a woman of superlative beauty

and gazing in awe and wonder at the sight. “What a beautiful

woman,” he will say, or think, and he could easily imagine himself in

love with her on the spot. In romances, I believe that happens as a

matter of routine. And, of course, a woman seeing a man of

superlative beauty is surely likely to react in precisely the same way.

If you fall in love with a striking beauty, you are scarcely likely to

spend much time asking if she (or he, of course) has any brains, or

possesses a good character, or has good judgment or kindness or

warmth. If you find out eventually that good looks are the person's

only redeeming quality, you are liable to make excuses and continue

to be guided, for a time at least, by the conditioned reflex of erotic

response. Eventually, of course, you will tire of good looks without

content, but who knows how long that will take?

On the other hand, a person with a large number of good qualities

who happened to be distinctly plain might not be likely to entangle

you in the first place unless you were intelligent enough to see those

good qualities so that you might settle down to a lifetime of happiness.

What I am saying, then, is that a cyborg with a robotic brain in a

human body is going to be accepted by most, if not all, people as a

human being; while a cyborg with a human brain in a robotic body is

going to be accepted by most, if not all, people as a robot. You are,

after all—at least to most people—what you seem to be.

These two diametrically opposed cyborgs will not, however, pose a

problem to human beings to the same degree.

Consider the robotic brain in the human body and ask why the

transfer should be made. A robotic brain is better off in a robotic body

since a human body is far the more fragile of the two. You might have

a young and stalwart human body in which the brain has been

damaged by trauma and disease, and you might think, “Why waste

that magnificent human body? Let's put a robotic brain in it so that it

can live out its life.”

If you were to do that, the human being that resulted would not be the

original. It would be a different individual human being. You would

not be conserving an individual but merely a specific mindless body.

And a human body, however fine, is (without the brain that goes with

it) a cheap thing. Every day, half a million new bodies come into

being. There is no need to save anyone of them if the brain is done.

On the other hand, what about a human brain in a robotic body? A

human brain doesn't last forever, but it can last up to ninety years

without falling into total uselessness. It is not at all unknown to have a

ninety-year-old who is still sharp, and capable of rational and

worthwhile thought. And yet we also know that many a superlative

mind has vanished after twenty or thirty years because the body that

housed it (and was worthless in the absence of the mind) had become

uninhabitable through trauma or disease. There would be a strong

impulse then to transfer a perfectly good (even superior) brain into a

robotic body to give it additional decades of useful life.

Thus, when we say “cyborg” we are very likely to think, just about

exclusively, of a human brain in a robotic body—and we are going to

think of that as a robot.

We might argue that a human mind is a human mind, and that it is the

mind that counts and not the surrounding support mechanism, and

we would be right. I'm sure that any rational court would decide that

a human-brain cyborg would have all the legal rights of a man. He

could vote, he could be enslaved, and so on.

And yet suppose a cyborg were challenged: “Prove that you have a

human brain and not a robotic brain, before I let you have human

rights.”

The easiest way for a cyborg to offer the proof is for him to

demonstrate that he is not bound by the Three Laws of Robotics.

Since the Three Laws enforce socially acceptable behavior, this

means he must demonstrate that he is capable of human (i.e. nasty)

behavior. The simplest and most unanswerable argument is simply to

knock the challenger down, breaking his jaw in the process, since no

robot could do that. (In fact, in my story “Evidence”, which appeared

in 1947, I use this as a way of proving someone is not a robot—but in

that case there was a catch.)

But if a cyborg must continually offer violence in order to prove he

has a human brain, that will not necessarily win him friends.

For that matter, even if he is accepted as human and allowed to vote

and to rent hotel rooms and do all the other things human beings can

do, there must nevertheless be some regulations that distinguish

between him and complete human beings. The cyborg would be

stronger than a man, and his metallic fists could be viewed as lethal

weapons. He might still be forbidden to strike a human being, even in

self-defense. He couldn't engage in various sports on an equal basis

with human beings, and so on.

Ah, but need a human brain be housed in a metallic robotic body?

What about housing it in a body made of ceramic and plastic and fiber

so that it looks and feels like a human body—and has a human brain

besides?

But you know, I suspect that the cyborg will still have his troubles.

He'll be different. No matter how small the difference is, people will

seize upon it.

We know that people who have human brains and full human bodies

sometimes hate each other because of a slight difference in skin

pigmentation, or a slight variation in the shape of the nose, eyes, lips,

or hair.

We know that people who show no difference in any of the physical

characteristics that have come to represent a cause for hatred, may

yet be at daggers-drawn over matters that are not physical at all, but

cultural-differences in religion, or in political outlook, or in place of

Asimov, Isaac - Robot City 3 - Cyborg.pdf

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