The world's first 'cyborg' is declared dead! Goodbye Peter 2.0

In 2020, Dr. Peter Scott-Morgan became popular all over the Internet.

The hot search title is: Peter - the first cyborg. However, even with the power of technology, his life still stopped on June 15, 2022, after fighting "ALS" for five full years.

Peter's family announced the news of his death on Twitter on Tuesday.

tweeted, "Peter has always had many staunch supporters and fans. But it is with great sadness that I have to tell all my friends that Peter has just passed away. . He passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family and those closest to him. I want to say that Peter is very grateful to all of you for your continued support. He is also very proud to be able to serve the disabled. Strength."

Change destiny against the will of heaven, mechanical ascension

In 2017, Dr. Peter was sentenced by fate , the hospital informed him that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as "ALS", a disease whose cause is not yet clear and which cannot be cured. If you don’t feel anything when you hear the name of this disease, you will definitely be familiar with Hawking who is paralyzed in a wheelchair. As the motor neurons that control skeletal muscles in the central nervous system degenerate and die, patients gradually lose their muscles and then lose the ability to move their arms, legs, and body, and become unable to speak, walk, breathe, or swallow. The most terrifying thing about ALS is that the patient will maintain clear thinking, personality and intelligence, as well as memories before the onset of the disease, until he eventually dies of respiratory failure.

# However, as if he knew his destiny, this boy who grew up in Wimbledon, England, believed at the age of 16 that human beings The brain will be integrated with the electronic brain. Afterwards, he wrote in "The Robot Revolution" published in 1984: "If we follow the path of strengthening humans, it will be possible for humans and robots to remain on the same evolutionary branch... In this way, humans will will one day be able to replace their too-frail bodies with more durable mechanisms and use supercomputers as intelligence amplifiers." In addition to his obsession with using technology to extend human life, he also holds the UK's first-ever academic achievement at Imperial College London A Ph.D. in Robotics. Obviously, facing the last two years of life predicted by doctors, Peter was not afraid: "Paralysis is an engineering problem." By this time he already had a solution in mind - become a robot.

For his transformation, he first envisioned a "triple ostomy": gastrostomy, colostomy and bladder Ostomy. That means tubes were inserted directly into his stomach, colon and bladder respectively. In this way, Peter can not only consume more nutrients, but also live with more dignity. However, this plan was too radical, and to further complicate the situation, general anesthesia would prevent the patient from breathing, and the surgery itself could worsen the condition.

However, with Peter’s strong persistence, the operation was finally completed on July 10, 2018. The whole process took 3 hours and 40 days. minute.

What’s even more surprising is that Peter only spent one day in the intensive care unit before being transferred to the general surgery ward, and then sent home 15 days after surgery. Peter, who has always been optimistic, is also proud to say that the medical paper on this operation was selected as the 2019 Oxford Medical Case Report of the Year.

Peter 2.0​

However, Peter soon encountered another big problem. Because he had no control over his throat, he was always at risk of being choked by his own saliva, resulting in lack of oxygen and suffocation. In order to live longer, Peter decided to have a total laryngectomy. This is not an easy thing to do. Not to mention, after he cuts his own throat, he will never be able to make his own voice again. Later, Peter's anesthesiologist, Wright, helped him find surgeon Dr. Philip Reece to do it. He is a local ENT surgeon in Devon.

Reece agreed with Wright that Scott-Morgan should be able to live life to the fullest possible extent. Before the surgery could begin, Peter needed to solve another problem: how to create a synthetic voice that sounded like him. Because, Peter learned that for a person with ALS, losing the ability to express himself or herself is the most painful thing. He started preparing for it in 2018, while he was still able to speak. He contacted a world authority on speech technology R&D, Dr. Matthew Aylett, chief scientific officer of CereProc, a company that creates text and delivers speech solutions.

CereProc is based in Edinburgh, Scotland and they are also home to film critic Roger Ebert's reconstruction after surgery for throat cancer sound company. Peter's "Leave a Voice Plan" lasted about a year. He often spent all day long in the recording studio and recorded more than 15 hours of audio and more than 1,000 phrases. There are even differences in emotions among the recorded texts.

With this information, AI can conduct unified learning and imitation. When Dr. Aylett finally handed the finished product over to Peter, Peter had some difficulty speaking. It is precisely because Peter prepared for this event in advance that we can hear his voice again. Because, just 3 months after the finished product came out, Peter completed his total laryngectomy surgery in 2019.

Later, Peter heard a song synthesized with his own voice - Pure Imagination, and couldn't help but shed tears. After all, he will never be able to make a sound, but with the power of technology, he can still hear. After mastering his own synthetic voice, Peter has gone further and further on the road to "cyberization". He began to look for other ways to improve his image. He first scanned his face and generated a 3D virtual animated portrait. When he needs to speak publicly, he displays this image on a screen on his chest.

#At the same time, he also uses Open AI’s text-generated model GPT-2 and other technologies to make himself more and more “cyber”. Here we have to mention the question of how Peter should output his thoughts through text. Like Hawking, he could no longer move his fingers. At first, he tried brain-computer interface technology, but he found that the output efficiency was too low. He turned his attention to eye-tracking technology. Fortunately, Peter met Lama Nachman, director of Intel's Anticipatory Computing Lab. Nachman can be unusual, she has experience in doing this - a few years ago, she upgraded the speech synthesis system for Hawking and developed a context-assisted awareness toolkit called ACAT.

Before ACAT, Hawking could only control typing by twitching his cheek muscles, but this was extremely slow, one minute. Only one word can be typed. After using ACAT, Hawking's typing speed doubled. The principle of ACAT is also very simple. As the name suggests, AI can learn Hawking's presentation habits and predict what he will input next through context awareness. Obviously, Peter could also use this technology directly.

Of course, he cannot accomplish all this by himself. He collaborated with technical experts, designers, and doctors from all over the world to complete his "cyberization" journey. He has cooperated with many large companies, such as Intel, CereProx, DXC, Lenovo, etc. These companies, together with top technical talents, provide Peter with hardware, software support, system integration, and AI technology. They have all made great efforts to help disabled people overcome serious illnesses. Not long before Peter's death, he tweeted that he could not close his eyes due to the disease, which caused his eyes to be very dry and he could no longer use eye tracking technology to type and communicate.

After death

Like Hawking, Dr. Peter became a hero in the eyes of many ALS patients and their relatives. He did not compromise his fate, he stood up, used technology as a weapon, determination as a creed, and fought endlessly against death. What he did opened a door that many ALS patients cannot cross. In the foreseeable future, ALS patients will no longer directly choose to give up at the moment of judgment of fate. Instead, like Peter, they will use various means to Means, stay. The Scott Morgan Fund established by Peter will continue to shine and bring hope to patients with ALS. His book, which tells the story of his journey to becoming a cyborg, will also serve as a beacon of light to fellow ALS sufferers.

Peter Scott-Morgan made a promise and spent the last few years of his life keeping it unreservedly. "My smile will be the last thing to disappear."

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