transhumanism
In plain wordsA movement holding that people should use technology, such as genetic engineering, brain implants or AI, to overcome human limits like aging, disease and death, and become more than human.
A philosophical and cultural movement holding that people may, and should, use technology to remake the human condition: to defeat aging, disease and involuntary death and to push minds and bodies far beyond today's limits, perhaps until humans become something more, posthumans. Technologies of interest include genetic engineering, life extension, cryonics, brain–computer interfaces, nanotechnology and mind uploadingmind uploading, n.: The idea of moving a person's mind out of their biological brain and into a computer, so that they could go on living as software.. Transhumanist networks of the 1990s and 2000s, including the extropians, incubated many of the ideas and people behind technological singularitytechnological singularity, n.: A moment some people expect in the future when technology, usually AI smarter than us, starts changing the world so fast and so deeply that we cannot see past it. theory, the rationalist communityrationalist community, n.: A loose online community that prizes careful reasoning and spotting one's own biases; gathered around the forum LessWrong, it was one of the first groups to take the dangers of advanced AI seriously. and early AI-safety research. Transhumanists disagree about AI: some welcome superintelligence as the next step in enhancement, while others see misaligned AI as the main threat to a posthuman future. Critics object to its implications for equality, its links to the history of eugenics and its utopianism.
Early AI-safety mailing lists grew out of transhumanist forums about life extension and uploading.
Origin
The earliest known use of the word is in a 1940 paper by the Canadian philosopher W. D. Lighthall. The biologist Julian Huxley, generally regarded as the movement's founder, popularized it in a 1957 essay, 'Transhumanism', proposing that humanity transcend itself through science. Max More's extropian movement (from 1988) and the World Transhumanist Association, founded in 1998 by Nick Bostrom and David Pearce and renamed Humanity+ in 2008, organized the modern movement.
Related
- TESCREALTESCREAL, abbr.: A critical label for a cluster of related belief systems, including transhumanism, effective altruism and longtermism, that its coiners say drive the push to build AGI and share roots with eugenics.
- mind uploadingmind uploading, n.: The idea of moving a person's mind out of their biological brain and into a computer, so that they could go on living as software.
- technological singularitytechnological singularity, n.: A moment some people expect in the future when technology, usually AI smarter than us, starts changing the world so fast and so deeply that we cannot see past it.
- longtermismlongtermism, n.: The belief that we should care a great deal about how things go for humanity thousands or millions of years from now, since far more people may live then than have ever lived.
- Nick BostromNick Bostrom, prop. n.: A Swedish philosopher whose 2014 book 'Superintelligence' argued that AI smarter than humans could be catastrophic unless its goals are carefully controlled, and helped make AI risk a mainstream concern.
- Ray KurzweilRay Kurzweil, prop. n.: An American inventor of reading machines and speech technology who became the best-known prophet of the 'singularity', predicting human-level AI by 2029.
Mentioned in
Ben GoertzelBen Goertzel, prop. n.: An American AI researcher who made 'artificial general intelligence' a widely used name and built a research community around the goal of human-like, broadly capable AI., mind uploadingmind uploading, n.: The idea of moving a person's mind out of their biological brain and into a computer, so that they could go on living as software., TESCREALTESCREAL, abbr.: A critical label for a cluster of related belief systems, including transhumanism, effective altruism and longtermism, that its coiners say drive the push to build AGI and share roots with eugenics.