Part 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 might achieve. Could it ever become more intelligent than us? Thanks to Philip Ball for original music and <a href= "http://www.freesound.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl= "https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.Freesound.org&source=gmail&ust=1636110111099000&usg=AFQjCNFqDfyT1JtYSow7k51YKQ3TCMXjAw">www.Freesound.org</a> for supplying sound effects under creative commons Attribution 3.0 license created by the following artists; Decembered The licence can be read here: <a href= "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode</a>

Living With Our Creation

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.