Prosthetic Gods

Episode 51 - Uploading Yourself to the Cloud

This week on Prosthetic Gods, Nir and J discuss the transhumanist concept of brain uploading, exploring everything from cutting-edge connectomics and artificial intelligence to ancient philosophical views on personal identity. We debate the metaphysics of “substrate independence,” “computational functionalism,” and religious views of the soul to weigh the prospects of preserving consciousness. They also examine the practical and ethical implications of creating digital simulacra, including duplication problems, machine suffering, and moral responsibility.

Show Notes:

Connectome 2.0 Project: A National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiative utilizing an advanced MRI scanner to map brain connections down to a single micron level. 

Eon Systems Fly Cyborg: A simulated fruit fly connectome connected to a virtual body to simulate behaviors like walking and grooming. 

Carboncopies Foundation - research and development toward whole brain emulation.  

Blue Brain Project - a Swiss project to model the brain that concluded work in 2024. 

Virtually Human: The Promise and the Peril of Digital Immortality by Martine Rothblatt  

State of Brain Emulation 2025: A comprehensive report featuring contributions from 45 authors and the Allen Institute that outlines the roadmap for animal and human brain emulations. 

“The Soul of Trans-humanism” by Ted Peters, reflecting on the various interpretations of the soul in Christianity, and their compatibility with uploading  

San Junipero - Black Mirror episode on uploading 

Duncan Bell on transhumanism on David Runciman’s Past, Present and Future podcast 

As always, listeners can contact us at prostheticgods@gmail.com with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics.

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Credits:

Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits
Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 50 - Animal Testing

This week on Prosthetic Gods, Nir and J. dissect the rapid dismantling of the animal-testing paradigm. We explore the legal and political shifts sweeping the EU and the United States—including the surprising federal momentum under the current HHS framework. From the utilitarian calculus of sentient consciousness down to the moral weight of insect neurology, we interrogate whether high-tech alternatives like organoids and AI models can and should finally render mammalian sacrifice obsolete.

Show Notes:

“The global push to reduce animal testing in drug development” Drug Target Review

“HHS Accelerates Shift to Human-Based Research, Reduces Reliance on Animal Testing” US Department of Health and Human Services

“The FDA Finalizes Rule Recognizing Non-Animal Testing Methods, Building on Year-Long Reduction Push” PharmTech 

“The future of science without animal testing” Humane World for Animals

“A Kantian Case for Animal Rights” Christine Korsgaard

Animal Liberation Now: The Definitive Classic Renewed  Peter Singer and Yuval Noah Harari

Lanterns on HBO

Piers Morgan interview with AI actress derailed by Cantonese

 

As always, listeners can contact us at prostheticgods@gmail.com with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics.

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Credits:

Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits
Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 49 - Targeting at Machine Speed

This week on Prosthetic Gods, Nir and J speak with Major Michael Brodka, a U.S. Army military intelligence officer and author of the July 2026 Military Review article “By Algorithm or Order.” Major Brodka argues that the U.S. Army's human-paced targeting doctrine is dangerously misaligned with the rapid emergence of machine-speed, AI-enabled warfare being pursued by adversaries like China and Russia. It asserts that to close this critical "velocity gap," the military must reform its doctrines, organizations, and training to integrate lethal autonomous weapon systems under lawful human-on-the-loop control.

Show Notes:

“By Algorithm or Order” Michael Brodka

DoD Directive 3000.09: Autonomy in Weapon Systems

Department of Defense Law of War Manual

Field Manual (FM) 3-60:Army Targeting

2023 DoD Data, Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence Adoption Strategy

Michael A. Santoro, “Designing Lethal Decisions: AI, Accountability, and the Future of Military Judgment,” Modern War Institute (16 Apr 2026)

Jesse R. Crifasi, “Targeting at Machine Speed: The Capabilities—and Limits—of Artificial Intelligence,” Modern War Institute (17 Jul 2025)

 

As always, listeners can contact us at prostheticgods@gmail.com with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics.

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Credits:

Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits
Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 48 - Black Mirror

Nir and J discuss the show Black Mirror, the now archetypal tech dystopian cultural phenomenon. In almost every episode, technology is the villain. What rarely appears is a legislature, a regulator, or anyone organizing with anybody else. Technology simply arrives, and the only available moral is individual failure. Dystopian narratives are popular, but what work do they do? Do they spur us to action or disempower us? What would a tech realist version look like?

Show Notes:

 

Be Right Back - s2e1 - What if we could record and replay every experience?  

Metalhead- s4e5 - What if Terminator apocalypse with robot dogs?   

San Junipero - s3e4 - What if we could upload our minds to virtual heaven?  

Common People - s7e1 - What if capitalism enshittified brain-computer interfaces?  

Years and Years 

 

As always, listeners can contact us at prostheticgods@gmail.com with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics.

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Credits:

Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits
Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 47 - Are Chatbots Conscious? A Conversation with Henry Shevlin

Henry Shevlin, DeepMind's first in-house philosopher and associate director of Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, joins the show to sort through the hardest question in AI: are these systems conscious, and would we even know? Drawing on his background in animal cognition, Shevlin argues that the consciousness debate has never been settled by a single decisive test, in animals or in machines, but by the slow accumulation of behavioral and mechanistic evidence. 

From there, the conversation ranges across Ted Chiang's recent essay dismissing machine consciousness, the "just an X-ism" fallacy, what spiders can teach us about the difference between perceiving the world and caring about it, Anthropic's constitutional AI project, and the uncomfortable historical parallels raised by building minds engineered to serve us. Along the way: reward hacking, the "anthropomimetic turn" in AI design, and why philosophy is suddenly a growth industry at the frontier labs.

Show Notes:

“No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious” Ted Chiang

"Behaviourism's Revenge" Shevlin

"The House Elf Problem" Shevlin

"Contra Chiang" Shevlin 

Henry Shevlin’s website

 

As always, listeners can contact us at prostheticgods@gmail.com with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics.

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Credits:

Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits
Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 46 - Killer Robots

This week Nir and J discuss the evolving ethical, political, and strategic landscape of autonomous weapons systems, contrasting historical methods of remote warfare (such as landmines and guided missiles) with modern AI-driven autonomy. They debate the necessity of keeping a "human in the loop," weighing consequentialist arguments—such as sparing soldiers' lives, acting faster than human cognition, and potentially reducing collateral damage—against risks like cognitive deskilling, unpredictable AI behavior (illustrated by recent LLM security breaches), and complex accountability gaps. The conversation highlights how the geopolitical arms race, particularly with China, severely limits the practicality of international regulations or unilateral restraint. Ultimately, they question whether human moral judgment can or should be replicated by artificial consciences, concluding that technological determinism and military pressures will likely drive the adoption of fully autonomous systems regardless of ethical hesitations.

Iain M. Banks' Culture Series: The discussion concludes with a recommendation of Banks' sci-fi novels, which explore a post-scarcity, utopian society governed by hyper-intelligent, benevolent AIs—a fitting, if idealized, backdrop to modern debates on AI alignment, control, and human irrelevance.

Show Notes:

NYT on autonomous weapons

The Culture Series by Iain M. Banks 

“Defining Autonomy: Why Software, Not Drones, Will Decide the Next War” by Kateryna Bondar and Matt Mande  

“The Futility of Banning Killer Robots” by Rob Enderle 

“The Vulnerability of Autonomous Warfare Systems” by Burak Oktenli 

“By Algorithm or Order: Integrating Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems into Targeting” by Maj. Michael J. Brodka   

“Autonomous Ukraine: We Are in a New Era of Warfare” with Michael C. Horowitz and Erin D. Dumbacher 

“A legal perspective:  Autonomous weapon systems under international humanitarian law” by Neil Davison  

“The End of American Military Dominance? A Conversation” with Paul Scharre   

 

As always, listeners can contact us at prostheticgods@gmail.com with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics.

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Credits:

Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits
Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 45 - Right to Try

This week on Prosthetic Gods, Nir and J discuss patient autonomy and the "right to try". The debate surrounding medical autonomy is intensifying as desperate patients use federal "Right-to-Try" laws and amateur biohackers bypass traditional regulations to create and access unapproved treatments. A booming gray market has emerged for unproven, compounded peptide shots, and RFK’s FDA wants to protect that access. These trends highlight a profound ethical tension between a patient's fundamental right to medical self-determination and the state's paternalistic duty to protect the clinical trial regime - which gives us the data necessary for informed consent - and to guard citizens from harm. Ultimately, regulators and bioethicists argue that without rigorous oversight, vulnerable individuals may fall victim to "snake oil" because true informed consent is impossible when a treatment's risks and efficacy remain largely unknown

Show Notes:

“No Evidence for Trump’s Right to Try Claim” Eugene Kiely

“Right–to-Try Does Not Undermine Clinical Trials” Niklas Anzinger

“Survey: Americans Overwhelmingly Back the Right to Try for Individualized Treatments” Goldwater Institute

“Final wish denied as Colorado ALS patient's access to experimental drug stalls”  Brian Maass, Colin McIntyre

“Peptides, Patient Autonomy, and the Limits of Medical Freedom” Chuck Dinerstein

“Survey Shows Peptide Misinformation, Misuse Rising in US” Ashish Rana

“What's behind the push to make peptide therapies more readily available” Will Stone

 

As always, listeners can contact us at prostheticgods@gmail.com with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics.

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Credits:

Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits
Music & Production by Jake Burley

Episode 44 - Magnificent Humanity

This week, J and Nir talk to Father Michael Baggot about Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, which outlines Catholic positions on AI and other emerging technologies. Father Michael Baggot is an Associate Professor of Bioethics at the Vatican’s Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome, a member of the Scholarly Advisory Board for Magisterium AI, and the chief editor of Enhancement Fit for Humanity: Perspectives on Emerging Technologies.

Show Notes:

MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS 

“Pope Leo’s First Encyclical Is a Game Changer,” The Nation 

“Pope Leo XIV Against the Market’s Techno-Dehumanization,” Jacobin 

“Pope Leo Isn’t Standing Athwart the Singularity” New York Times 

 

 

As always, listeners can contact us at prostheticgods@gmail.com with questions, comments, and suggestions for future topics.

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Credits:

Hosted by James Hughes and Nir Eisikovits
Music & Production by Jake Burley