Belial, Behemoth, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Satanas, Lucifer
The central thought of transhumanism could be summarized in a system: it’s attainable and fascinating to maneuver from a part 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 releasing oneself from human and divine evolutionary constraints. The transhumanist, from this standpoint, is Luciferian, as he rebels in opposition to creation, but additionally as a result of he brings data and progress (to keep away from misunderstandings, it must be remembered that Lucifer, earlier than changing into one of many names of the Satan resulting from Judaic-Christian cultural appropriation, was Phosphóros, “gentle bringer” and a star whose brightness heralded the daybreak). But when God is useless and the Übermensch is just not but born, will superintelligence (‘überAI) be our evolutionary objective (or finish)? Will we’ve to start out coming to phrases with the inevitable, that’s, to outlive, our solely hope can 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 is likely to be considered as we take a look at the Amish or the Korowai at present, 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 decreased 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 at present would complain that those that put on glasses have an unfair benefit over those that don’t. However what if this benefit have 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 equivalent from the skin, however the former would work with superhuman accuracy. This might result in discrimination now not based mostly 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 attainable discrimination.
AI and the issue of Techno-diversity
And to neologisms like “femicide” might 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, at present reserved for the gypsies, the LGBTIQA+ neighborhood, the political refugees? Accepting this chance will indicate dividing the human world into two classes, the place inevitably, one will take a place of predominance. And the way will we handle the problem of the disappearance of variety, a excessive value to pay within the title of homogenization (albeit enhanced)? In a world the place all people are merged with the substitute, the richness of human variety could 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 into a author instantly. A useful illiterate turns into Hemingway because of immediate engineering. Once we are all equal, all enhanced, then the battle for uniqueness and competitors may 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 a long time, governments and insurance coverage firms 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 at present? It is not exhausting to foretell that, in 10-15 years, we would entry ChatGPT (or, within the case of a Neuralink BCI, extra probably, Grok/xAI) instantly from our brains and even deliver again to life the brains of the deceased. As we will 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 deliver historic figures, artists, and writers again to life. Nonetheless, The query stays whether or not these useless comply with be woke up.
Demise or deliberate obsolescence?
This anti-death idea already exists beneath the title of morphological freedom, that’s, now not being restricted by the pre-established boundaries of our physique, however having the ability to determine if and the place to switch our consciousness: into the cloud, onto a USB stick, into an exoskeleton, and so forth. Increasingly more firms are demonstrating, at the very least embryonically and theoretically, that the know-how essential to fight the best taboo of our species – demise – is likely to be only a few a long time away. For us who work within the journey trade, then, a further income would additionally open up: when people start to divide between “bodily” and “uploaded,” we would should “open” digital inns (as within the Amazon Prime sequence Add, the place the protagonist, upon his demise, is “uploaded” into the luxurious Lakeview lodge within the metaverse). Who will assume the position of mortiferous income supervisor? Certain, the problem of hospitality turns into frivolous within the face of even larger questions that the defeat of demise would deliver. The primary amongst them is the spiritual one. Think about the influence it might have on religions like Hinduism, which foresees a number of cycles of reincarnation earlier than reaching Nirvana. Christian religion, then, facilities its total theoretical corpus across the existence of an afterlife and the soul’s resurrection. But when man turned immortal, then the whole theological framework of perception would turn into out of date. And what if the second coming of Christ himself weren’t, in reality, the approaching of a TechnoChrist? If that “resurrection of the flesh” have been nothing greater than a prophecy for thoughts importing? “After they rise from the useless,” it’s written within the Gospel in keeping 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” manufactured from clouds (cloud computing, second clue), the place bodily and tactile relationships could be unimaginable (digital actuality, metaverse, spatial computing).
Memento Mori
Once more, the matrimonial system “until demise do us half” would lose all that means. What demise 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 appropriate, my three-year-old son will reside lengthy sufficient to flee the annoying inevitability of demise. Earlier than his bodily departure, we would attain such know-how 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 replica to “add” onto a distinct medium. Good for him, however is not this too quick a time to resolve these bioethical and theological questions? In the mean time, the problem remains to be (though more and more much less so) relegated to the pure discipline of hypothesis, however there are already firms that, albeit to a lesser extent, assure digital immortality or at the very least 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.
