Why I’m turning my son into a cyborg

illustration of a child as a cyborg Imagine if everyone spoke a language you don’t understand. People have been speaking it around you since the day you were born, but while everyone else picks it up immediately, for you it means nothing. Others become frustrated with you. Friendships and jobs are difficult. Just being “normal” becomes a battle. For many with autism, this is the language of emotion. For those on the spectrum, fluency in facial expressions doesn’t come for free as it does for “neurotypicals.” To them, reading facial expressions seems like a superpower. So when my son was diagnosed, I reacted not just as a mom. I reacted as a mad scientist and built him a superpower. This isn’t the first time I’ve played mad scientist with my son’s biology. When he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I hacked his insulin pump and built an AI that learned to match his insulin to his emotions and activities. I’ve also explored neurotechnologies to augment human sight, hearing, memory, creativity, and emotions. Tiger moms might obsess over the “right” prep schools and extracurriculars for their child, but I say why leave their intellect up to chance? I’ve chosen to turn my son into a cyborg and change the definition of what it means to be human. But do my son’s engineered superpowers make him more human, or less? How the CIA taught me to smile Life gave me an amazing and exhausting little boy. It also gave me unique tools to help him overcome his challenges. The first came in the form of a crazy CIA scheme to create an AI to catch liars. Years ago, on my very first machine-learning project as an undergrad, I helped build a real-time lie-detection system that could work off raw video. […]

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