Transhumanist Bling

Transhumanists are a funny bunch. Their basic outlook is that one day in the not too distant future, probably within our lifetime, humans will cast off our physical bodies and unite ourselves in digital-only form with our AI counterparts, creating a new form of immortal 'transhuman' that exists entirely on computers. No-one will ever die and those of us 'natural' intelligences and the other artificial ones will be entirely indistinguishable. This concept is known as the Singularity or often jokingly referred to as the "geek rapture".

Now, this all sounds a bit sci-fi to most of us, but the possibilities of this are taken very seriously by a lot of notable scientists, perhaps the most famous of which is Ray Kurzweil. Over the years, Kurzweil has had a lot to say about our future and even in the mid-90's correctly predicted much about the digital, internet-based world we currently enjoy - wirelessly accessing a worldwide internet using tiny handheld personal computers anyone? My school didn't even get the internet until 1998; that was only 13 years ago...

In his 2005 book The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil has predicted that by 2018 you'll be able to buy a computer with the same memory space as the human brain for about $1,000 (that's 10 to the power 13 bits, apparently) and by 2020 it will be just as clever as you too. By 2029 he thinks that the first computer will pass the Turing Test, basically proving it to be "sentient" and in the mid-2030's we'll all be uploading ourselves to computers willy-nilly. After that it all gets a bit crazy, but ultimately he's hedging on the Singularity happening in around 2045, so keep that year free in your diaries.

So far, so sci-fi though in my opinion; scientists and geeks are very easy to excite when they start talking about this stuff, so I think they miss out on some of the more basic questions when they start pulling out the geek rapture story.

Firstly, while it's easy to say that we're just organic computers, I think there's a bit more to it than that. Our brains might be a mega-complex computer like series of neural connections but it's also subject to the whims of the rest of our bodies, hormones 'n all. An obvious example is, if you're uploaded to a computer, do you still get randy? You won't have the appropriate parts any more, so that's going to be difficult to deal with. What about the bit of you that enjoys going for a poo, does that bit get copied over too? My point is, that even though our brains might do the thinking, there's a bit more to us that just that.

Another issue is that it might seem like a great idea to keep everyone around forever, it turns out a lot of people aren't really that great. Osama bin Laden forever anyone? Didn't think so.

Humanity has evolved socially over hundreds of years, slowly, you might argue, advancing our morality, leaving old prejudices behind and overall becoming fairer and more egalitarian. While that's a rose-tinted view, the principle stands and my point is that death is very much a part of that process. Old ideas die with the people who have them, making way for new people to have new ideas of their own. If no-one dies, then are we pretty much stuck with the opinions that we have today? Alright if you're a geek and live in a bit of a bubble, but I think the rest of us would agree that we've still got a long way to go before we can draw a line under our society and say "yep, that'll do".

To be fair though, I recently went to a talk on the future of humanity at the British Library, as I've mentioned in previous posts, part of their Out of this World series and exhibition, and was hugely surprised by their transhumanist panelist, Anders Sandberg.

Sandberg, a Research Fellow at The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, had a lot to say about exactly the kind if thing I've mentioned above and helped assure me that not all of those who believe in the Singularity are necessarily only thinking about a giant magic World of Warcraft future.

Just to give an example, when one of the audience asked the panel about cryogenics and whether we should be freezing ourselves when we die so that we can be reanimated once everyone else has worked out how to do it. Sandberg's response was to reach inside his academic's tweed jacket, pull out a small silver medallion and say:

"my answer is yes; this medallion signifies my insurance policy that means should I die i'll be frozen. It cost quite a lot but I'm hedging my bets that one day someone will be able to both bring me back to life and repair whatever needs repairing.

My main concern being that when they wake me up they'll all be laughing at some of the ridiculous predictions that I've made, but hopefully it'll be better to be embarrassed and alive than not; this medallion, I call it my Transhumanist bling".