How To Grow A Human
6 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago -Philip Ball has two brains… In 1818 Mary Shelley wrote the seminal work ‘Frankenstein’, an exploration of the consequences of rivalling God by building a human being using parts stolen from dead bodies. 101 years later, Philip Ball explored in his book ‘How to Grow A Human’ how science is moving us closer to a different possibility, unguessed in Shelley’s novel: not of building but of growing a human artificially. The book arose from Philip’s experience of having a "second brain" grown from his own cells in a lab in London. As a visiting scholar at Harvard, he takes us to Boston to speak to the foremost leaders in the fields of biotechnology, genetics and AI about whether it’s now possible, and desirable, to consider treading the path of Victor Frankenstein in creating our own artificial human.
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Episodes
Living With Our Creation
October 26, 2021 19:34 - 37 minutes - 34.1 MBPart Six. The final episode in this series looks forward into the future. If we are able to reach the point where we can create advanced AI ‘beings’, will we be able to live alongside them – especially if they are in some ways more intelligent than us, or hold our lives in their hands? Phil puts this question to Iyad Rahwan, a social psychologist formerly of MIT’s Media Lab, who is working on the ramifications of human-machine interactions. Thanks to Philip Ball for original music and www....
Artificial Intelligence
October 26, 2021 19:13 - 34 minutes - 32 MBPart Five. IBM is one of the world’s biggest makers of “thinking machines” – computers. So what better place to find out about the prospects for machine alternatives to the human brain? Would a cyborg be more successful, for example, than a being made entirely from human parts? Can a machine be considered to truly ‘think’? Phil speaks to David Cox of IBM, an expert in the intersection between machine intelligence and neuroscience, to find out what current and future artificial intelligence m...
Helping It Learn
October 26, 2021 18:53 - 38 minutes - 35.4 MBPart Four. Phil goes to Harvard University to speak to eminent psychologist Tomer Ullman about how humans think and to ask if (and how) we could teach an artificial mind to learn what it needs to become ‘sentient’ and behave like a human. Thanks to Philip Ball for original music and www.Freesound.org for supplying sound effects under creative commons Attribution 3.0 license created by the following artists; Decembered The licence can be read here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Giving It Life
October 26, 2021 18:31 - 31 minutes - 28.9 MBPart Three. The essence of humanity is often considered to lie in the human mind. If we could grow a brain to put into an artificial being, would that make it human? Will it have a mind at all? Phil talks to Alan Jasanoff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) about the difficulties of understanding what the brain – and the mind – actually are. Thanks to Philip Ball for original music and www.Freesound.org for supplying sound effects under creative commons Attribution 3.0 licen...
Finding The Parts
October 26, 2021 18:11 - 23 minutes - 21.9 MBPart Two. Stealing organs, as Victor Frankenstein did, is one way of going about things, but perhaps it’s safer and more legal to grow them instead… Phil’s quest takes him to speak to Robert Langer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) about the advances in human organ growth and asks him about the generation and regeneration of our body’s tissues and parts. Thanks to Philip Ball for original music and www.Freesound.org for supplying sound effects under creative commons Attrib...
Playing God
October 01, 2021 16:00 - 33 minutes - 30.9 MBPart One. So how to start building an artificial human? Maybe by thinking about what some regard as the instructions: the human genome. Phil goes to Harvard Medical School to track down George Church, an expert in genome editing, and finds out about how this technology could be opening up ways of creating not only humans but superhumans. Thanks to Philip Ball for original music and www.Freesound.org for supplying sound effects under creative commons Attribution 3.0 license created by the f...