What is the point of transhumanism? Part of it is to put up a notice that says “we deliberately want to work towards human enhancement, meet here if you’re interested”. That way a group can aggregate around that cause and start companies, non-profits, and think tanks to accelerate its realization.

Fortunately, billions of dollars in research funds are already being spent on technologies that are useful for human enhancement, such as regenerative medicine, gene therapy, RNA interference, genome sequencing, implants and prostheses, brain-computer interfacing, robotic exoskeletons, and more.

But explicit, self-declared “transhumanists” — a small group of roughly 10,000 people with a combined net worth under $3 billion — could never personally direct all human enhancement research (nor would we want to), but we can influence it in what we see as positive directions.

Transhumanists should be useful to humanity as a whole. I envision our role as interdisciplinary thinkers who stay up to date with as many scientific and technological developments as possible, consider trends and future directions, then offer suggestions on present-day choices in enhancement research and ethics.

In particular, long-term popular opinion of human enhancement may be determined by its first world-changing examples. Advocates of responsible enhancement have an interest in the “debut” and immediate impact of serious human enhancement.

We see nascent signs of popular response to human enhancement today, with augmented persons like Oscar Pistorius, the record-holding runner with two prosthetic legs. Pistorius is cleared to compete in the Olympics, a reversal of an earlier decision by the International Association of Athletics Federations banning the use of “any technical device that incorporates springs, wheels or any other element that provides a user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device”.

Although Pistorius’ experience is an interesting window into the way humanity deals with augmented persons, it is my opinion, and that of many other transhumanists, that a real transhuman is a transhuman mind, and anything else is a side issue (a paraphrase of a quote by Robert Heinlein). Say you are a person so heavily enhanced with cybernetics technology that you can lift a ton, run a mile a minute, and get energy directly from the Sun. Well, alright, that’s cool, but it will impact things that other people really care about, like your ability to interact with them, have creative insights, solve problems, or make people laugh? Not much.

To me personally, “transhumanism” is mainly about humanity’s effort to make a mind smarter than itself. It is sometimes difficult to define “intelligence”, so here I’ll define “smarter” as the ability to see things others don’t, generate valuable insights others don’t, create things others can’t, possess an expanded memory, improved ability to free associate between memories, fundamental improvements in the wetware used to formulate and process concepts, make probability assessments and updates that are mathematically sound and self-consistent, construct and manipulate more detailed mental models of other people and objects, possess hundreds of other traits we intuitively associate with intelligence, and thousands of additional traits that we haven’t discerned yet because we haven’t thought about the issue enough. As you can see, defining “intelligence” is not easy.

Obviously, enhancing or modifying a human mind is a huge challenge. Some, like the Singularity Institute and its supporters, advocate constructing a human-level artificial intelligence to trigger a feedback cascade in intelligence research. Others, like neuroscientist Anders Sandberg and economist Robin Hanson, wager that intelligence enhancement will be kickstarted by the scanning and “uploading” of human minds. The Innerspace Foundation is looking to neural prostheses, offering a reward to the first person who develops a cognitive prosthesis that expands human memory. Other approaches to intelligence enhancement are formulated and floated in numerous closed-door conversations.

Which will have a major impact first? AI, uploading, BCI, or some other approach? Because the advocates of intelligence enhancement are having trouble agreeing on which approach is best, we are not working towards this technology as quickly and smoothly as we should. Transhumanists need to agree on an approach to intelligence enhancement, and throw as much as our effort as possible behind it.

Although I personally advocate the AI approach, I encourage research into the other areas, though I am admittedly skeptical that uploading could be first. Keeping an open mind in appraising different fields of intelligence research is essential, as we don’t want to get bogged down in one approach if it starts failing.

Closely observing the way that nascent intelligence enhancement technologies are applied is helpful for considering their future impact. For instance, we see AIs being introduced to virtual worlds like SecondLife. Could these environments act as useful testing grounds for further AI development, and sandboxes to evaluate the way these AIs interact with humans, the environment, and other agents? Most certainly.

A large intelligence enhancement breakthrough could accelerate adjacent breakthroughs in other areas. Because intelligence underlies our ability to solve all problems, an improvement in that underlying capability could give us a greater return on investment than improvement of any other tool.

Another important question concerns whether enhanced intelligence will be put to beneficial ends once it is developed. If an elite group uses the technology, could they merely use it to consolidate and preserve their power? All of humanity has reason to avoid this outcome. Advance concern and the application of safeguards will be necessary, because once an elite group has the technology, it might be too late to take it away.

For one person’s estimate on timescales, see Nick Bostrom’s “How Long Until Superintelligence?”