The Profile Dossier: Peter Scott-Morgan, the Human Cyborg
“People wanted me to prepare to die. I respectfully declined.”
Peter Scott-Morgan is almost completely locked inside his body.
He can’t move his legs, arms, or body, and yet, he, Peter Scott-Morgan, is still in there. He’s not dead. He’s very much alive.
In 2017, Scott-Morgan realized he was about to lose everything he loves — his husband, his family, his friends, and his ability to travel the world. He had been diagnosed with ALS, the same degenerative disease that afflicted physicist Stephen Hawking.
Doctors told him he had two years to live. But so far, it’s been four because Scott-Morgan refuses to die. He’s determined to find a solution to this terminal condition.
As he saw it, he had two options: Give up or fight back. But how do you fight back against a disease with no cure? "It's like trying to build a lifeboat after the ship has already started sinking,” he says. In other words, time is running out.
Scott-Morgan can only move his eyes, which is how he’s able to communicate with the outside world. So he decided to become a cyborg.
How does someone become a cyborg? Scott-Morgan merged his humanity with artificial intelligence and robotics to create a lifelike avatar of his former self.
“Cyborg is just a fancy word for part-human, part-machine,” he told Input Magazine. “Contrary to the torturous scare stories about how it feels to be trapped in your own living corpse, the brain moves on. It grieves a bit, and then, if you give it a chance, most of the time, it forgets. Days pass when I never once remember that I could walk, move, or absurdly, even that I could talk in the past.”
Using his experience as a robotics scientist, he got to work. He reached out to several companies that would help create a synthetic voice that sounded like his own, an animated 3D avatar, and an eye-tracking system that would allow him to communicate.
Scott-Morgan says he’s willing to be a human guinea pig so that scientists and researchers can better understand how they can use technology and artificial intelligence to improve the quality of life of people facing extreme disabilities.
This part-human, part-machine version is what he calls, “Peter 2.0.”
“My avatar and my voice are significantly better than they were a year ago,” he says. “They'll keep improving so that eventually the avatar will be indistinguishable from the original me just before [ALS] began turning me into Skeletor. My Peter 2.0 persona will never age.”
When life brings you to your knees, Scott-Morgan believes you have a responsibility to rebel against fate, rise with purpose, and take charge of your own destiny.
“My diagnosis with [ALS] has confirmed to me that joy in life, contentment, happiness, and fun are far less the result of circumstances than many assume,” he says. “They are an act of will.”
READ.
On becoming the world’s most advanced cyborg: Scott-Morgan believes “paralysis is an engineering problem.” One solution? Becoming a cyborg. “And when I say ‘cyborg,’ I don’t just mean any old cyborg, you understand, but by far the most advanced human cybernetic organism ever created in 13.8 billion years,” he says. He now uses technologies like GPT-2, OpenAI’s generative deep-learning model for text, pushing the boundaries of what it means to be human. This one is a must-read.
On breaking barriers: Scott-Morgan and his husband Francis have been together since 1979, and they became the first gay couple whose marriage was legally recognized in Britain. “When we were younger,” Francis says, “we were bullied by the police, the boys at school, by Margaret Thatcher and her government. Society as a whole didn’t value us. We learned from experience that you stand up to bullies; you don’t let them see you’re hurting.” In their eyes, ALS is the biggest bully they’ve encountered so far. “We used to be told we could never live normal lives as gay people,” Scott-Morgan says. “People assume a life being totally paralyzed is one not worth living. People thought the same of our sexuality in the past.”
On rewriting his future: In his memoir, Scott-Morgan recounts his astonishing story of refusing to succumb to a terminal disease. When faced with death, he decided that there had to be another way. And if there wasn’t, he would create one. This is his account of surviving and thriving in the face of unimaginable adversity.
LISTEN.
On the making of a cyborg: What does it mean to be human? Scott-Morgan has been fighting for years to define what it means to be a human. In this podcast mini-series, through his story, we reflect on what makes us us. Is it your voice? Your face? Your personality. Here’s how Scott-Morgan designed his new “self” to preserve everything he would lose in his physical body. This is a must-listen.
WATCH.
On using AI to push the limits of what’s possible: In this interview, Scott-Morgan’s avatar explains how the most important parts of him are controlled by artificial intelligence. “That all potentially gets a bit weird,” he says. He plans to use AI for everything from speaking to controlling things to moving about. Here’s how he’s pushing science forward by making his work and life open to the public.
POLINA’S TAKEAWAYS.
Remember Scott-Morgan’s rules for dealing with a crisis: Scott-Morgan has four rules that he recommends to anyone who’s unexpectedly facing a crisis. 1) “Nothing and nobody can stress you. You can only do that yourself.” 2) “Accept bad luck. ‘It’s not fair’ only applies to human behavior — never situations. Move on.” 3) “Don’t panic, think. Animals panic, but humans can think their way to calmness.” and 4) “Never give up. Life offers hope. Hope breeds energy, energy creates resolve, and resolve re-writes the future.”
Learn to think rather than react: Upon receiving his diagnosis, Scott-Morgan’s initial reaction was that of crippling fear. It wasn’t until he began to use his rational brain that he realized he did have options even in the face of an incurable disease. When fear struck in the middle of the night, Scott-Morgan told himself: “Take a deep breath. Calm down. Think your way through this.” That’s when he acknowledged that he was scared, but he had been scared before, and this was just another obstacle he had to tackle. So remember, don’t assume your first reaction is the ultimate truth. Your first reaction is likely just an avalanche of emotions and nothing else. Breathe. Calm down. Think.
Re-frame challenges as adventures: Scott-Morgan’s mindset saved his life. He was able to re-frame his diagnosis into something positive. Rather than a death sentence, he saw it as an opportunity to change his future and possibly the future of others in his situation. “This isn’t just about me,” he says. “This is about using cutting-edge technology to solve other forms of extreme disability, caused by disease, or accident or old age. This is about everyone who’s ever felt themselves to be a free-thinking intelligence trapped in an inadequate physical body.” In other words, Scott-Morgan found purpose in a seemingly hopeless situation. When you run into little bits of adversity, try to re-frame it as an opportunity to train for a bigger challenge down the road. If you are able to start thinking of adversity as adventure, you might just change the world.
Don’t live like you’re dying: There’s a subtle but important difference, Scott-Morgan says, between living and staying alive. Living means thriving, while ‘staying alive’ is simply slogging through the days and marching to your death. “I have love. I have dreams. I have purpose. Oh, and I’m still alive. I mean really alive. Not just one of the living dead. Not just surviving. I’m thriving,” he says. Keep this in mind when you’re deciding whether to leave a job that makes you miserable or a relationship that doesn’t fulfill you. As Robin S. Sharma said, “Don't live the same year 75 times and call it a life.”
QUOTES TO REMEMBER.
“Bravery isn’t about not feeling scared, it’s feeling scared but going on regardless.”
“I am a prime candidate for the fast track to death, but I will pass on the offer. I am frankly far too busy having fun.”
“People wanted me to prepare to die. I respectfully declined.”
Amazing. Incredible. What an incredible life!