***I apologize in advance if the language used in this article is hurtful to those using or affiliated with those using any sort of implants or prosthetics, or those with any sort of disability. My intention is solely to pose a thought-provoking question. These are just my thoughts, after all. Reader discretion is advised***

We’ve heard many times – one way or another – that human life is at risk. We’ve seen it in movies and we’ve seen some of the greatest minds in the world express how Artificial Intelligence needs to be handled with care, or it WILL pose a risk to mankind.

but that’s not what this write-up is in reference to.

This is about a question I couldn’t help ponder. Just a couple days ago (08/28/20), Elon Musk debuted a demonstration of the Neuralink brain implant. Long-story-short, he demonstrated his experiment on a pig, but the underlying idea is that a coin sized chip implanted into a brain can govern your state of mental wellness. That’s HUGE! But that’s when it got me thinking. This isn’t the first case of using software or robotics, albeit an insanely advanced one, to improve human life. There are numerous other examples. We have witnessed the use of prosthetics and orthotics to replace and reinstate the function(s) of human organs and limbs. This has not only resulted in improved mobility and quality of life for humans, but has also significantly improved human longevity.

But wait, That’s cheating..

This is when my mind started to wander. The advancement of technology from prosthetics to brain implanted chips could one day mean humans would be invulnerable to most types of disabilities and medical or mental health issues which are awfully common today. But this is inhumane. Humans, by nature, as mammals, as animals are meant to be part of a natural life cycle. We are born, we grow, we live, we diminish and we die. As part of our gift of being humans, we can innovate and build technology to improve these stages of life.

But, once we instead cross the line and start using technology to alter or prolong our stages of life artificially, we aren’t humans anymore. We’re Cyborgs.

The underlying question.

This begs the question: If chip implantation (and I’m not just talking about as-needed brain implants, I am talking about mandated chip implants at birth) and prosthetics become widely adopted, which I have a strong feeling they will, and nearly the entire world population at that point has one form or another of technology implanted in them, does that era mark the end of man-kind, and in turn propel us into a Cyborg society?