Cyborgs are organism-machine hybrids. In science fiction, as in reality, cyborgs are the product of the merging of carbon and silicon, flesh and electronic circuitry, organic and inorganic, and even the physical and the virtual. As such, they can be biological organisms (such as humans) augmented with machinery, machines (such as humanoid robots) made to look like natural organisms, or fanciful creatures that fuse the realms of the physical and the digital in extraordinary ways. In all these shapes, the image of a cyborg appeals to our techno-utopian dreams, while challenging our deepest human sensibilities at the same time. The image is indeed an “an ironic dream of a common language” (Haraway 1991: 149).

This multiple crossbreeding has given rise to a whole family of cyborgs that are proliferating rapidly, turning our globe literally into a cyborg planet. The casual observer might find it increasingly onerous to tell science from science fiction, real from imaginary, physical from virtual, as the borders between these realms are becoming more and more permeable. This might lead to a certain degree of confusion about what is possible and what is impossible. My goal in this chapter is to shed some light on these distinctions, especially as they relate to debates in AI.