“Young people today can expect to live forever, but AI will run the world.” At least, that is the dream of a group of people promoting the philosophy of transhumanism.
What would you say to Dave who says that he looks forward to living for 200 years because medical science will be able to replace his organs and slow the ageing of his brain? It costs a lot, but Dave can afford it. And, after all, he says, we all have a right to do what we like with our bodies.
What would you say to Carol who plans, with her husband Roger, to have a baby boy called Ocean for Christmas next year? Next month, they are going create 20 test-tube embryos. Then they will do preimplantation genetic screening on the male embryos to select the one that is likely to be the most intelligent. Then, in March next year Ocean will be implanted in Carol.
Further into the realms of science fiction are transhumanist hopes that one day we will be able to map and download all the information stored in a human brain. As you age and your limbs get creaky, how would you feel about all your brain being downloaded to the hard drive of an android: a robot body with your brain running the show? Proponents argue that if the essence of a human being is the information contained in the brain, and if the body can be separated from that information, then the information that makes you you could be downloaded to a hard drive. And then, surely, it could be uploaded to the iCloud. So, you would be there, stored somewhere in cyberspace.
For the transhumanist, as well as being faster, stronger, sexier, more intelligent, the holy grail is the dream of everlasting life.
These are the dreams of techno-optimists who think that biology has brought us so far, but it is time we hurried the process using the best of science and technology. In a move that takes us from therapy to enhancement, they say that we don’t just want to be well; we want to be better than well.
To quote one of the transhumanist gurus, “We’re going to get more neocortex, we’re going to be funnier, we’re going to be better at music. We’re going to be sexier. We’re really going to exemplify all the things that we value in humans to a greater degree.”
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