As AI disrupts industries including healthcare and is embraced by those seeking to extend human life, the concept of transhumanism is rapidly moving from the realm of science fiction and the dystopian futures of The Matrix and Cyberpunk 2077 to the reality of companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink implants, Open Bionics’ robotic limbs, and longevity medicine.
Popularized in 1957 by biologist Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, transhumanism is the provocative theory that the human condition can be transcended through technology.
“It’s not that transhumanists don’t like being human; it’s just that we want humanity to grow bigger than it has historically meant,” said Ben Goertzel, founder and CEO of the decentralized AI network SingularityNET. Decrypt in an interview. “It opens up specific possibilities like conquering death, enhancing your body and merging your mind with a computer.”
Goertzel is also president of the transhumanist organization Humanity+which defines transhumanism as an intellectual and cultural movement dedicated to the fundamental improvement of the human condition through applied reason, including developing and sharing technologies to eliminate aging and enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
Transhumanism and AI
Although AI has only recently become mainstream, it has always been a key factor in the debate around transhumanism. As applications now proliferate in sectors like science, medicine, and technology, Goertzel argues that AI aligns with the goals of transhumanism because of the movement’s reliance on advanced technologies to create meaningful change.
“We have more data on different levels of the human body and different organisms than any human mind can possibly comprehend, and biostatistics, like standard machine learning, struggles to do that,” Goertzel said. “The more advanced your AI is, the more you can integrate all the diverse biological data together and then use AI to generate hypotheses.”
Goertzel pointed out that nanotechnology is an area where AI could make greater progress than humans.
“AI is much better than humans at designing things at the nanoscale, or even the femtoscale,” he said. “We have a lot of practical know-how for putting things together at the scale at which we intuitively understand the physics, but we don’t have a good intuition for the physics at the nanoscale or the femtoscale, and AI can handle that just as well as it can at the scale we’re at now.”
Transhumanism in action
“Look at the brain-computer interface: How do you decode the signals that come out of the brain? AI can be very useful in encoding 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.
A brain-computer interface (BCI) is a technology that allows direct communication between the brain and an external device, often allowing computers or prosthetics to be controlled through neural signals. Companies currently working in this area of neuroscience and biotechnology include Neuralink, Emotiv, and Halo Neuroscience, based in San Francisco.
“There are many different applications that can be enhanced by AI,” he added. “And then, of course, once you get to AGI, you can have AI coordinate all of these different particular AI applications.”
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) refers to a type of AI that has the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge in a similar way to a human.
Is Transhumanism Only for the Rich?
Critics of transhumanism claim that the movement is “pretending to be God” or replacing religion, and that the only ones who will benefit from the fusion of humanity and technology will be the wealthy and elite. It is true that the cost of longevity and transhuman research is high.
Goertzel said that won’t always be the case and said more efforts should be made to provide broader and more equal access.
“These little mobile supercomputers that we all carry around with us haven’t just benefited the rich,” Goertzel said, noting that his organization works with software developers in Ethiopia.
“We have 50 software developers working for SingularityNET, and every kid who codes for us has a smartphone. Even if you go to a rural village in sub-Saharan Africa, everyone has a regular phone. They use it to stay in touch with their families and to check prices in town for the different agricultural products they sell.”
Goertzel also highlighted the role of blockchain and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance’s upcoming ASI token in reducing costs and providing access to human-enhancing technologies.
“In theory, the blockchain and cryptocurrency worlds can help combat these problems by creating a parallel economic system that is not tied to traditional economic systems,” he said. “In practice, this is a challenge, because many governments then ban cryptocurrencies.”
Another problem Goertzel highlights is groups and entities hoarding cryptocurrencies.
“Cryptocurrency markets themselves are dominated by token whales, who are their own emerging elite,” he said. “So that’s a big problem to be concerned about and to be fought against. But it’s not clear that transhumanist technologies are making that worse than it is now.”
Looking to the future
Although Goertzel advocates for transhumanism and artificial intelligence, he acknowledges that there should be limits to the research that should be done.
“We can’t say there are no limits to research,” he said. “Clearly there is a limit beyond which, as a society concerned about not killing all of its members, there is research that we want to slow down or prohibit.”
Noting that laws are already being drafted with such limitations in mind, Goertzel said the best way forward is to figure out how to apply these technologies for the common good as AI and cybernetics become more advanced and commonplace.
“I don’t think attempts to ban AI are helpful because AI adds too much value to too many people and too many companies,” he said. “There’s not a lot of precedent for a free society banning things that are useful to everyone. And I think ultimately the same will be true for technologies that are oriented toward transhumanism.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
