Yes, it is going to be happen in near future. I am afraid of that era as that time it will going to very tough to keep Human superior than machines.

Also an Open Worm going in the same sense : http://www.openworm.org/science.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_nOddk01E

Who knows? Quite a few echnological replacements/enhancements for body parts already exist since some decades (think for example of cardiac pacemakers, cornea and cochlea implants, brain-controlled bionic prosthetics etc.) but I guess that the day they fully integrate into a man-machine organism is still rather far off. For all the progress in understanding what the brain does, how it does it, and how its functioning is interwoven with the rest of the organism, we still barely scratch the surface of it all. But as soon as someone comes up with a really good (i.e. non-destructive) way to correct myopia and astigmatism count me in.

I think with the progress we see in the past 2 decades in artificial intelligence and neural networks, it is not far away to have teacher assistants in schools and universities using artificial intelligence and or even artificial doctors which can perform physical examinations more accurate and even take the patient history and signs precisely and come to a result or make suggestions for the physician. It is because we can bring the experience of so many experts and experiments in a single neural network for every problem which need knowledge and experience both.

Robots' evolution is definitly going on ! I propose my point that consciousness can be computed (see attachment:Zhang Yinsheng. "The Mathematic Model of Consciousness"IEEE press,2008). By the way, I hereby issue an advertisement : if any orgnization needs to develop a human-machine action system by a natural language, I am willing to work for it.I hope being an academically visiting scholar in half or one year for this topic. [email protected]

Conference Paper The Mathematic Model of Consciousness

Yep! This is bad news for anyone who likes a lot of the world as it is right now (including me). But it will happen and we will no longer be human. If you eliminate death for example, you eliminate humanity as it knows itself. It sort of kills us as it saves us.

While computers are far more skilled at certain tasks than humans they do what we tell them to. People don't. If we are living in an indeterministic universe, and physics tells us we are, then there's room in human intelligence for our doing this OR that, as we've been doing for some years now, unlike the increasingly sophisticated robots coming down the production line.

The question put here was about """convergence between man and machine to combat disease and degeneration of humans?""" I don't know that the convergence will really combat the degeneration of humans. What am I really missing is a definition for this notion of degeneration of humans. By the way, I am not against any application of robotics. Artificial organs and members, artificial eyes and ears for example, can be very good tools. Memory extensions of the human brain can be also very useful as long as our brain remains the principal operating system - and in fact we already have such things from the very moment that writing has been invented. But any kind of evolution is a degeneration if it is seen from the point of view of an older accepted image of what are the humans and how do they work. On the other hand, if we speak about genetical degeneration, I think that we have no reason to be affraid of it. Our Genome is quite OK, despite this old fear which has been entertained by various extremist circles along the history. The globalization assures the possibility of genetical exchange and renovation between people born far away one from another. Thee is no more any degeneration risk as it was seen in populations living on isolated islands. We have still the possibility to try to enhance the human genome - but I think that it would be not well at all to try this...

This discussion can perhaps be summed in a nutshell by the comment put forth by Scott Russell above, though many of the other writers explore the problem to greater depth. Do these such paradoxical outcomes of science suggest that it is not worth going forward towards the convergence of Man and Machine? or what should the various new forms of new intelligences reasonably be?

POUR COURS MMi& THEORIES DE L'INFO-COMM

http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2013/10/11/les-sept-ambitions-d-anne-lauvergeon-pour-l-innovation-en-france_3494114_3234.html

Gopinadh Pulaparthi,

Can you please explain why it is easier in one direction than the other?

Biological systems operate through time-dependent adaptive dynamics whereas the architecture of technological systems is exclusively one of central control determining which components perform what functions according to predetermined criteria: the two are fundamentally distinct.

Notice also that genetics describes biological history of adapting to life experiences from a purely molecular-system static (snap-shot photo) perspective (DNA can best be viewed as the substrate by which the adaptive constituents of a biological system develop and, broadly, interact) and tell us nothing about the dynamics of living entities.

Ignore the nonsense coming from techno fan-boys advocating a so-called "critical point" of human-tech convergence; they're merely promoting themselves and, like Hollywood screen writers, ignore the crucial details constraining life (limited energy availability, for one).

Yes, that synchrony is often referred to as "self-organized behavior." Perhaps the best science begins with close observation while focusing in a condition of childlike naivete and not the 'rear-view mirror' perspective taken while in an accommodating armchair soaking up the airy notions of the most reputable thinkers in the grandest library..

For example, one might gain insight by immersing oneself in a pristine natural environment and simply observe events as they unfold across the many length scales, from the tiniest to those occurring across the entire landscape. Then compare your observations with the functioning of the complex technology of your choice.

Cognitive robots (electro-mechanically based) capable of fully  interacting with our environment will be a significantly different architecture from biological systems.  It is possible to have a biological solution and a mechanical/electronic system both of which may be, in some sense, viable (with respect to the environment) but which are mutually incompatible. And still we cannot say  that we will build a cybernetic solution within the next few decades. Convergence (if even possible) need not occur.

Why do I say this? Because the driving force of their development is not the environment but the minds of people applying modelling, determinism, discrete rules from a basis which is machine dominated. (ie we are trying to simulate living systems)