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One day, a machine will outsmart its maker

IN ONE of William Gibson’s early mind-bending stories, the protagonist suddenly needs to fly a jump jet. In the cockpit, he finds his employer has thoughtfully stashed a biochip containing all the necessary piloting skills for him to plug into his own nervous system. While your correspondent applauded the idea at the time, he nevertheless dismissed it as pure science-fiction. Today, he’s not so sure.

The progress being made in neuroengineering—devising machines that mimic the way the brain and other bodily organs function—has been literally eye-opening. In the decade since Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics at Reading University in Britain, had a silicon chip implanted in his arm so he could learn how to build better prostheses for the disabled, we now have cochlear implants that allow the deaf to hear, and a host of other spare mechanical parts to replace defective organs. ...