How AI is Paving the Way to a Transhumanist Future

As AI transforms industries including healthcare and gains acceptance among those seeking to extend human lifespans, the concept of transhumanism is quickly moving from the sci-fi and dystopian futures of The Matrix and Cyberpunk 2077 to the reality of Elon Musk’s Neuralink implants, robotic limbs from Open Bionics, and companies like Longevity Medicine.

Transhumanism, popularized in 1957 by biologist Julian Huxley (brother of Brave New World author Aldous Huxley), is the provocative theory that the human condition can be transcended through the use of technology.

“It’s not that transhumanists don’t want to be human. We just want humanity to grow beyond what it has historically been,” said Ben Goertzel, founder and CEO of decentralized AI network SingularityNET. Decode In an interview, he said: “This leads to concrete possibilities such as conquering death, enhancing the body, and achieving superhuman intelligence where your mind is fused with a computer.”

Goertzel also serves as president of the transhumanist organization Humanity+It defines transhumanism as an intellectual and cultural movement dedicated to fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, particularly by developing and sharing technologies that eliminate aging and enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capabilities.

Transhumanism and AI

Although AI has exploded into the mainstream relatively recently, it has always been a central element in discussions of transhumanism. Now, as applications spread across industries such as science, medicine, and technology, Goertzel says AI aligns with the goals of transhumanism as a movement that relies on advanced technologies to create significant change.

“We have more data on different levels of the human body and different organisms than the human mind can comprehend, and biostatistics struggles, standard machine learning struggles,” Goertzel said. “So as AI gets more advanced, we’ll be able to better integrate all of that diverse biological data, and then use AI to generate hypotheses.”

Goertzel singled out nanotechnology as an area where AI could make greater advances than humans.

“AI is much better at designing things at the nanoscale or even the femtoscale than humans are,” he said. “We have a lot of practical know-how about how to hammer and nail things at scales where we intuitively understand the physics, but we don’t have good intuition about nanoscale or femtoscale physics, and AI can handle that just as well at the scales we’re at now.”

Transhumanism in action

“Look at brain-computer interfacing. How do you decode signals coming out of the brain? AI can be very useful in coding the basic coding language in different parts of the brain that are used to describe things,” Goertzel said, noting that AI is optimized for retail and manufacturing.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are technologies that allow direct communication between the brain and external devices, often allowing the control of computers or prosthetics via neural signals. Companies currently working in this area of ​​neuroscience and biotechnology include Neuralink, Emotiv, and Halo Neuroscience, all based in San Francisco.

“There are a lot of different applications that can be enhanced with AI,” he added. “Of course, once we get to AGI, AI will be able to adapt all of these different specific AI applications.”

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) refers to a type of AI that has the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge in the same way as humans.

Is Transhumanism Only for the Rich?

Critics of transhumanism say the movement is “playing God” or replacing religion, and that only the wealthy and elite will benefit from the merging of humans and technology. Of course, the costs of longevity and transhuman research are high.

Gortzel says this isn’t always the case, and more needs to be done to provide broader and more equal access.

“These little mobile supercomputers that we all carry around aren’t just for the rich,” Goertzel said, noting that his organization is working with software developers in Ethiopia.

“We have 50 software developers working at SingularityNET, and every single kid who codes for us has a smartphone. Even if you go to a rural village in sub-Saharan Africa, everyone has a feature phone. They use it to keep in touch with their families and to check city prices for various agricultural products that they sell.”

Goertzel also highlighted that blockchains and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the upcoming Artificial Intelligence Superintelligence Alliance (AIBA) ASI token are instrumental in lowering the cost and increasing accessibility of human enhancement technologies.

“In theory, the blockchain and cryptocurrency world could help solve these problems by creating a parallel economic system that is not tied to the existing economic system,” he said. “In practice, it’s difficult because many governments have made cryptocurrencies illegal.”

Another issue Goertzel highlights is the accumulation of cryptocurrencies by groups and entities.

“The cryptocurrency market itself is dominated by token whales, which are their own new elite,” he said. “So that’s something that’s important to worry about and to confront. But it’s not yet clear that transhumanist technologies will make this worse than it already is.”

Looking to the future

Goertzel advocates transhumanism and artificial intelligence, but acknowledges that research must have limits.

“I can’t say there are no limitations to research,” he said. “Obviously, as a society, there are limits to what we can do to slow down or not allow research to occur, as we try to keep all of our members from dying.”

Goertzel said laws are already being developed with these limitations in mind, and as AI and cybernetics become more advanced and pervasive, the best way to determine how these technologies can be applied for the public good is to do so.

“I don’t think trying to ban AI is going to help at all, because it provides too much useful value to too many people and too many businesses,” he said. “There’s not a lot of precedent for a free society banning something that’s useful to everyone. And I think that’s going to be the case with transhumanist technologies.”

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.