Accelerating Future Transhumanism, AI, nanotech, the Singularity, and extinction risk.

Martin Rees on the Posthuman Era

On Edge.org, when asked "what have you changed your mind about?", British Astronomer Royal (and winner of the Lifeboat Foundation's 2004 Guardian Award) Martin Rees responded "We Should Take the ‘Posthuman’ Era Seriously":

"Human-induced changes are occurring with runaway speed. It’s hard to predict a mere century from now, because what will happen depends on us - this is the first century where humans can collectively transform, or even ravage, the entire biosphere. Humanity will soon itself be malleable, to an extent that’s qualitatively new in the history of our species. New drugs (and perhaps even implants into our brains) could change human character; the cyberworld has potential that is both exhilarating and frightening. We can’t confidently guess lifestyles, attitudes, social structures, or population sizes a century hence.

Indeed, it’s not even clear for how long our descendants would remain distinctively ‘human’. Darwin himself noted that “not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity”. Our own species will surely change and diversify faster than any predecessor—via human-induced modifications (whether intelligently-controlled or unintended), not by natural selection alone. Just how fast this could happen is disputed by experts, but the post-human era may be only centuries away.

These thoughts might seem irrelevant to practical discussions - and best left to speculative academics and cosmologists. I used to think this. But humans are now, individually and collectively, so greatly empowered by rapidly changing technology that we can, by design, or as unintended consequences - engender global changes that resonate for centuries. And, sometimes at least, policy-makers indeed think far ahead.

The global warming induced by fossil fuels burnt in the next fifty years could trigger gradual sea level rises that continue for a millennium or more. And in assessing sites for radioactive waste disposal, governments impose the requirements that they be secure for ten thousand years.

It’s real political progress that these long-term challenges are higher on the international agenda, and that planners seriously worry about what might happen more than a century hence.

But in such planning, we need to be mindful that it may not be people like us who confront the consequences of our actions today. We are custodians of a ‘posthuman’ future - here on Earth and perhaps beyond - that can’t just be left to writers of science fiction."

Astrophysicist, existential risk activist, transhumanism-aware thinker... what isn't there to like about this guy?

List of Prominent Transhumanist-Receptive Thinkers, 2008

Here is a list of prominent people who take transhumanist ideas seriously enough to either discuss them or (more rarely) fear them. For those new to this blog, "transhumanism" is briefly defined in this post. By extension, people on this list have also been exposed to the idea of abrupt or accelerating technological change, though not necessarily technological change that "transcends stakeholder politics". The object of this list is to show that transhumanist topics have become acceptable for mainstream discussion in recent years.

1. Bill Clinton, former US President, who recommended The Age of Spiritual Machines to the audience at a talk at the Brainstorm 2001 conference. He called the book a "compelling view of the future" and lamented political leaders "out of touch" with the acceleration of technology.

2. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, who called Ray Kurzweil "the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence". Gates' writings on robotics indicate he expects massive technological change in the near future.

3. Richard A. Clarke, top US counter-terrorism adviser turned science fiction author. His 2007 novel Breakpoint takes a pro-transhumanist stance and mentions the movement by name.

4. Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who expresses apprehension of transhumanist technologies in his landmark WIRED article, Why the future doesn't need us.

5. Marvin Minsky, co-founder of MIT's AI laboratory, who Isaac Asimov called one of the smart people he ever met. Minsky frequently discusses cryonics and human-level artificial intelligence.

6. Leon Kass, former chair of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2002–2005, whose seriousness and opposition towards transhumanism is outlined in the report Beyond Therapy, among other writings.

7. Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist, who advocates genetic engineering of humans to prevent AIs from "taking over the world". In Scientific American, Hawking wrote an article promoting a transhumanist vision of the future.

8. David D. Friedman, anarcho-capitalist and law professor at Santa Clara University. His recent book Future Perfect deals with transhumanist themes, and he has been writing on the topics for over two decades.

9. Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and early investor in Facebook. Thiel financed SIAI's Singularity Summit and has offered $3.5 million in matching funds to the Methuselah Foundation.

10. Steve Jurvetson, a leading Silicon Valley venture capitalist as Managing Director of Draper Fischer Jurvetson. Jurvetson's blog, the J-Curve, discusses accelerating change, superintelligence, synthetic life, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and other transhumanist themes.

There are many others, but ten should be enough for now. The point is: don't be afraid to bring up transhumanist topics with fellow intellectuals, at work or at home. The folks above probably all have a lot to lose, but they mention the issues with candor. By the same token, their high esteem may make others tolerant of quirky inclinations they may have, but the general response to these discussions has been positive, not dismissive.