Belial, Behemoth, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Satanas, Lucifer
The central concept of transhumanism may be summarized in a method: it’s doable and fascinating to maneuver from a section of blind evolution to a aware one. Changing into a “homo faber,” as Anne Foerst says: taking management over an existence that for hundreds of thousands of years has been dictated by intrinsic components (organic, bodily, and cognitive limits) and extrinsic ones (cultural, non secular, and ethical limits) and liberating oneself from human and divine evolutionary constraints. The transhumanist, from this standpoint, is Luciferian, as he rebels in opposition to 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 changing into one of many names of the Satan as a consequence of Judaic-Christian cultural appropriation, was Phosphóros, “mild bringer” and a star whose brightness heralded the daybreak). But when God is lifeless and the Übermensch isn’t but born, will superintelligence (‘überAI) be our evolutionary aim (or finish)? Will we now have to start out coming to phrases with the inevitable, that’s, to outlive, our solely hope shall 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 may be considered as we have a look at the Amish or the Korowai as we speak, whereas enhanced people can have an abyssal benefit over their diminished counterparts. A superpower. Will they (we?) lastly be übermenschen? And maybe, this means 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 improve the power to mix in a inhabitants of lowered people, overcoming the dichotomy between enhanced and never. They stay, briefly. They usually stay amongst us. And if I’m alive, then you might be lifeless. Nobody as we speak 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 may improve 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 surface, 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 may even be hypothesized, with some margin of security, that in 20-30 years, this would be the solely doable discrimination.
AI and the issue of Techno-diversity
And to neologisms like “femicide” may very well 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, as we speak 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 will we tackle 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 synthetic, 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 change into a author instantly. A purposeful illiterate turns into Hemingway because of immediate engineering. After we are all equal, all enhanced, then the wrestle for uniqueness and competitors might need to be bioengineered in a superhuman society. It is a stance that opens dystopian situations, and it’s not SF to foretell that, within the coming many years, governments and insurance coverage firms will promote AI integration to create a society of robots. Will we have a look at Homo sapiens as we have a look at Neanderthals as we speak? It isn’t onerous to foretell that, in 10-15 years, we’d entry ChatGPT (or, within the case of a Neuralink BCI, extra possible, Grok/xAI) immediately 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’d deliver historic figures, artists, and writers again to life. Nevertheless, The query stays whether or not these lifeless conform to be woke up.
Dying 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 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 more firms are demonstrating, not less than embryonically and theoretically, that the know-how essential to fight the best taboo of our species – demise – may be only a few many years away. For us who work within the journey business, then, an extra income would additionally open up: when people start to divide between “bodily” and “uploaded,” we’d need to “open” digital motels (as within the Amazon Prime sequence Add, the place the protagonist, upon his demise, is “uploaded” into the luxurious Lakeview resort within the metaverse). Who will assume the function of mortiferous income supervisor? Positive, the problem of hospitality turns into frivolous within the face of even better questions that the defeat of demise would deliver. The primary amongst them is the non secular one. Think about the influence it may 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 your entire theological framework of perception would change 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” had been nothing greater than a prophecy for thoughts importing? “After they rise from the lifeless,” it’s written within the Gospel in response to Mark, “they are going to neither marry nor be given in marriage; they are going to be just like the angels in heaven.” We might be “angels” (ethereal and incorporeal beings, first clue) within the “heavens” product of clouds (cloud computing, second clue), the place bodily and tactile relationships can be inconceivable (digital actuality, metaverse, spatial computing).
Memento Mori
Once more, the matrimonial method “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 right, my three-year-old son will stay lengthy sufficient to flee the annoying inevitability of demise. Earlier than his bodily departure, we’d attain such know-how as to permit us to “select” whether or not to die and switch off our “important laptop” as soon as and for all or create a replica to “add” onto a unique medium. Good for him, however is not this too brief a time to resolve these bioethical and theological questions? In the mean time, the problem continues to be (though more and more much less so) relegated to the pure subject of hypothesis, however there are already firms 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.
