Belial, Behemoth, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Satanas, Lucifer
The central concept of transhumanism will be summarized in a components: it’s potential and fascinating to maneuver from a section of blind evolution to a acutely aware one. Turning into a “homo faber,” as Anne Foerst says: taking management over an existence that for tens of millions of years has been dictated by intrinsic components (organic, bodily, and cognitive limits) and extrinsic ones (cultural, spiritual, and ethical limits) and liberating oneself from human and divine evolutionary constraints. The transhumanist, from this standpoint, is Luciferian, as he rebels towards creation, but in addition as a result of he brings information and progress (to keep away from misunderstandings, it ought to be remembered that Lucifer, earlier than turning into one of many names of the Satan because of Judaic-Christian cultural appropriation, was Phosphóros, “mild bringer” and a star whose brightness heralded the daybreak). But when God is useless and the Übermensch will not be but born, will superintelligence (‘überAI) be our evolutionary purpose (or finish)? Will we’ve to start out coming to phrases with the inevitable, that’s, to outlive, our solely hope will likely be merging with AI?
Organic is the New N-word
Within the not-too-distant future, those that select to not merge with synthetic intelligence could be seen as we take a look at the Amish or the Korowai right this moment, whereas enhanced people could have an abyssal benefit over their diminished counterparts. A superpower. Will they (we?) lastly be übermenschen? And maybe, this technique of hybridization has already begun. Silent however inexorable. Is there a distinction between utilizing ChatGPT to assist us throughout work or having a brain-computer interface (BCI) that transforms our mind inputs into outputs? Some argue there’s a distinction, as an implant would enhance the flexibility to mix in a inhabitants of lowered people, overcoming the dichotomy between enhanced and never. They reside, in brief. They usually reside amongst us. And if I’m alive, then you’re useless. Nobody right this moment would complain that those that put on glasses have an unfair benefit over those that don’t. However what if this benefit had been hidden in an implant? The human eye has a decision of about 7 Megapixels, however what if we might enhance it to 70? 700? 7,000? Consider a job that requires distinctive imaginative and prescient: an enhanced watchmaker and a diminished one would look similar from the skin, however the former would work with superhuman accuracy. This might result in discrimination now not primarily based on ethnicity, gender, or faith however purely on the “organic versus synthetic” dichotomy. It might even be hypothesized, with some margin of security, that in 20-30 years, this would be the solely potential discrimination.
AI and the issue of Techno-diversity
And to neologisms like “femicide” could possibly be added others like “diminished-cide”: “a type of violence systematically exercised not on ladies, however on diminished human beings within the title of an ideological superstructure now not patriarchal, however synthetic.” Will those that select to not merge with AI take their place within the ideological leper colony of tomorrow? In that national-populist leper colony, right this moment reserved for the gypsies, the LGBTIQA+ neighborhood, the political refugees? Accepting this chance will suggest dividing the human world into two classes, the place inevitably, one will take a place of predominance. And the way can we tackle the difficulty of the disappearance of variety, a excessive worth to pay within the title of homogenization (albeit enhanced)? In a world the place all people are merged with the unreal, the richness of human variety can be misplaced. We already see it with OpenAI. If everybody writes with ChatGPT (virtually 200 million customers as I work on this paragraph), everybody can turn out to be a author instantly. A purposeful illiterate turns into Hemingway because of immediate engineering. Once we are all equal, all enhanced, then the battle for uniqueness and competitors might need to be bioengineered in a superhuman society. It is a stance that opens dystopian eventualities, and it isn’t SF to foretell that, within the coming many years, governments and insurance coverage corporations will promote AI integration to create a society of robots. Will we take a look at Homo sapiens as we take a look at Neanderthals right this moment? It is not onerous to foretell that, in 10-15 years, we would entry ChatGPT (or, within the case of a Neuralink BCI, extra possible, Grok/xAI) immediately from our brains and even convey again to life the brains of the deceased. As we are able to already take pleasure in an artificial meat burger from extinct animals (Australian meals firm Vow, for instance, managed to create a mammoth meatball), we would convey historic figures, artists, and writers again to life. Nevertheless, The query stays whether or not these useless conform to be woke up.
Dying or deliberate obsolescence?
This anti-death idea already exists underneath the title of morphological freedom, that’s, now not being restricted by the pre-established boundaries of our physique, however with the ability to resolve if and the place to switch our consciousness: into the cloud, onto a USB stick, into an exoskeleton, and so forth. Increasingly corporations are demonstrating, not less than embryonically and theoretically, that the expertise essential to fight the best taboo of our species – dying – could be only a few many years away. For us who work within the journey trade, then, an extra income would additionally open up: when people start to divide between “bodily” and “uploaded,” we would should “open” digital resorts (as within the Amazon Prime collection Add, the place the protagonist, upon his dying, is “uploaded” into the luxurious Lakeview resort within the metaverse). Who will assume the position of mortiferous income supervisor? Certain, the difficulty of hospitality turns into frivolous within the face of even higher questions that the defeat of dying would convey. The primary amongst them is the spiritual one. Think about the affect it might have on religions like Hinduism, which foresees a number of cycles of reincarnation earlier than reaching Nirvana. Christian religion, then, facilities its complete theoretical corpus across the existence of an afterlife and the soul’s resurrection. But when man grew to become immortal, then your entire theological framework of perception would turn out to be out of date. And what if the second coming of Christ himself weren’t, in fact, the approaching of a TechnoChrist? If that “resurrection of the flesh” had been nothing greater than a prophecy for thoughts importing? “After they rise from the useless,” it’s written within the Gospel in accordance with Mark, “they may neither marry nor be given in marriage; they are going to be just like the angels in heaven.” We’d be “angels” (ethereal and incorporeal beings, first clue) within the “heavens” fabricated from clouds (cloud computing, second clue), the place bodily and tactile relationships can be not possible (digital actuality, metaverse, spatial computing).
Memento Mori
Once more, the matrimonial components “until dying do us half” would lose all which means. What dying would separate {couples}? The bodily one? Digital suicide? Would marriage nonetheless have worth as soon as one’s consciousness is uploaded into the cloud? If my predictions are right, my three-year-old son will reside lengthy sufficient to flee the annoying inevitability of dying. Earlier than his bodily departure, we would attain such expertise as to permit us to “select” whether or not to die and switch off our “very important laptop” as soon as and for all or create a duplicate to “add” onto a special medium. Good for him, however is not this too quick a time to unravel these bioethical and theological questions? In the intervening time, the difficulty continues to be (though more and more much less so) relegated to the pure area of hypothesis, however there are already corporations that, albeit to a lesser extent, assure digital immortality or not less than the creation of digital twins, like Replika, a platform on which for years I’ve been making a twin of my father. Memento mori? Maybe. Or maybe solely till we overlook. Neglect to die.
