Gods of Transhumanism

Purpose of the article is to identify the religious factor in the teaching of transhumanism, to determine its role in the ideology of this flow of thought and to identify the possible limits of technology interference in human nature. Theoretical basis. The methodological basis of the article is the idea of transhumanism. Originality. In the foreseeable future, robots will be able to pass the Turing test, become “electronic personalities” and gain political rights, although the question of the possibility of machine consciousness and self-awareness remains open. In the face of robots, people create their assistants, evolutionary competition with which they will almost certainly lose with the initial data. For successful competition with robots, people will have to change, ceasing to be people in the classical sense. Changing the nature of man will require the emergence of a new – posthuman – anthropology. Conclusions. Against the background of scientific discoveries, technical breakthroughs and everyday improvements of the last decades, an anthropological revolution has taken shape, which made it possible to set the task of creating inhumanly intelligent creatures, as well as changing human nature, up to discussing options for artificial immortality. The history of man ends and the history of the posthuman begins. We can no longer turn off this path, however, in our power to preserve our human qualities in the posthuman future. The theme of the soul again reminded of itself, but from a different perspective – as the theme of consciousness and self-awareness. It became again relevant in connection with the development of computer and cloud technologies, artificial intelligence technologies, etc. If a machine ever becomes a "man", then can a man become a "machine"? However, even if such a hypothetical probability would turn into reality, we cannot talk about any form of individual immortality or about the continuation of existence in a different physical form. A digital copy of the soul will still remain a copy, and I see no fundamental possibility of isolating a substrate-independent mind from the human body. Immortality itself is necessary not so much for stopping someone’s fears or encouraging someone’s hopes, but for the final solution of a religious issue. However, the gods hold the keys to heaven hard and are unlikely to admit our modified descendants there

Life Expansion: Toward an Artistic, Design-Based Theory of the Transhuman / Posthuman

The thesis’ study of life expansion proposes a framework for artistic, design-based approaches concerned with prolonging human life and sustaining personal identity. To delineate the topic: life expansion means increasing the length of time a person is alive and diversifying the matter in which a person exists. For human life, the length of time is bounded by a single century and its matter is tied to biology. Life expansion is located in the domain of human enhancement, distinctly linked to technological interfaces with biology. The thesis identifies human-computer interaction and the potential of emerging and speculative technologies as seeding the promulgation of human enhancement that approach life expansion. In doing so, the thesis constructs an inquiry into historical and current attempts to append human physiology and intervene with its mortality. By encountering emerging and speculative technologies for prolonging life and sustaining personal identity as possible media for artistic, design-based approaches to human enhancement, a new axis is sought that identifies the transhuman and posthuman as conceptual paradigms for life expansion. The thesis asks: What are the required conditions that enable artistic, design-based approaches to human enhancement that explicitly pursue extending human life? This question centers on the potential of the study’s proposed enhancement technologies in their relationship to life, death, and the human condition. Notably, the thesis investigates artistic approaches, as distinct from those of the natural sciences, and the borders that need to be mediated between them. The study navigates between the domains of life extension, art and design, technology, and philosophy in forming the framework for a theory of life expansion. The critical approach seeks to uncover invisible borders between these interconnecting forces by bringing to light issues of sustaining life and personal identity, ethical concerns, including morphological freedom and extinction risk. Such issues relate to the thesis’ interest in life expansion and the use emerging and speculative technologies. 4 The study takes on a triad approach in its investigation: qualitative interviews with experts of the emerging and speculative technologies; field studies encountering research centers of such technologies; and an artistic, autopoietic process that explores the heuristics of life expansion. This investigation forms an integrative view of the human use of technology and its melioristic aim. The outcome of the research is a theoretical framework for further research in artistic approaches to life expansion

Reality Hackers: The Next Wave of Media Revolutionaries

Just as the printing press gave rise to the nation-state, emerging technologies are reshaping collective identities and challenging our understanding of what it means to be human. Should citizens have the right to be truly anonymous on-line? Should we be concerned about the fact that so many people are choosing to migrate to virtual worlds? Are injectible microscopic radio-frequency ID chips a blessing or a curse? Is the use of cognitive enhancing nootropics a human right or an unforgivable transgression? Should genomic data about human beings be hidden away with commercial patents or open-sourced like software? Should hobbyists known as biohackers be allowed to experiment with genetic engineering in their home laboratories? The time-frame for acting on such questions is relatively short, and these decisions are too important to be left up to a small handful of scientists and policymakers. If democracy is to continue as a viable alternative to technocracy, the average citizen must become more involved in these debates. To borrow a line from the computer visionary Ted Nelson, all of us can -- and must -- understand technology now. Challenging the popular stereotype of hackers as ciminal sociopaths, reality hackers uphold the basic tenets of what Steven Levy (1984) terms the hacker ethic. These core principles include a commitment to: sharing, openness, decentralization, public access to information, and the use of new technologies to make the world a better place.https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/mono/1000/thumbnail.jp

Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a digital technology that will be of major importance for the development of humanity in the near future. AI has raised fundamental questions about what we should do with such systems, what the systems themselves should do, what risks they involve and how we can control these. - After the background to the field (1), this article introduces the main debates (2), first on ethical issues that arise with AI systems as objects, i.e. tools made and used by humans; here, the main sections are privacy (2.1), manipulation (2.2), opacity (2.3), bias (2.4), autonomy & responsibility (2.6) and the singularity (2.7). Then we look at AI systems as subjects, i.e. when ethics is for the AI systems themselves in machine ethics (2.8.) and artificial moral agency (2.9). Finally we look at future developments and the concept of AI (3). For each section within these themes, we provide a general explanation of the ethical issues, we outline existing positions and arguments, then we analyse how this plays out with current technologies and finally what policy conse-quences may be drawn

ROBOTIC INTELLIGENCE

Despite a very strong synergy between Robotics and AI at their early beginning, the two fields progressed widely apart in the following decades. However, we are witnessing a revival of interest in the fertile domain of embodied machine intelligence, which is due in particular to the dissemination of more mature techniques from both areas and more accessible robot platforms with advanced sensory motor capabilities, and to a better understanding of the scientific challenges of the AI–Robotics intersection. The ambition of this paper is to contribute to this revival. It proposes an overview of problems and approaches to autonomous deliberate action in robotics. The paper advocates for a broad understanding of deliberation functions. It presents a synthetic perspective on planning, acting, perceiving, monitoring, goal reasoning and their integrative architectures, which is illustrated through several contributions that addressed deliberation from the AI–Robotics point of view

Time of the End? More-Than-Human Humanism and Artificial Intelligence

The first part (“Is there a future?”), discusses the idea of the future in the context of Carl Schmitt’s vision for the spatial revolutions of modernity, and then the idea of Anthropocene, as a synonym for an environmental crisis endangering the very survival of humankind. From this point of view, the conquest of space and the colonization of Mars at the center of futuristic and technocratic visions appear to be an attempt to escape from human responsibilities on Earth. The second part (“AI and other hyperobjects”) discusses the extent of intellectual hubris expressed in computation, AI (Garvin Minsky e Ray Kurzweil), and the philosophy of computing and information (Eric Fredkin), involved in the elaboration of new theoretical assessments on the ultimate nature of reality. Their vision is then contrasted and made to interact with that of philosopher Timothy Morton. He has taken the perspective of global warming and the possibility of ecological catastrophe seriously, avoiding all the futuristic enthusiasms and instead emphasizing the radical nature of the transformations that humans experience in the present. In this perspective, AI becomes one of the “hyperobjects,” like the Internet or climate change, in which humans are immersed. Morton’s hyperobjects delineate an uncanny view of the future; this uncanniness is not related to the supernatural but to the environment. The third section (“More-than-human-humanism”) further reflects on the “uncanniness” that human perceive in the encounters with the manifestations of hyperobjects. It also seeks to understand the human position in the face of the radical technological transformations induced by cybernetics and AI. This section discusses Anti-humanism, Transhumanism, and Posthumanism within the broader category of more-than-human thought, which seems to be a more appropriate term to clarify the possible misunderstandings induced by the word “posthuman” and “transhuman.” The central question is not to empower (Transhumanism) or disempower (Posthumanism) humans, but to see them in relation to what is not human, including other animals, the environment, and the machine. The analysis considers the works of Cary Wolfe, Jane Bennet, Bryant Levi, among others, and introduces ethical debates on cyborgs, robots, and Autonomous weapons systems (AWS). The fourth section (“Ethical Perspectives”) continues this inquiry, concentrating on the non-standard ethical theories of Luciano Floridi (Computer and Information Ethics) and David Gunkel (The question of the Machine). It examines the opportunity and feasibility of including in the discussion on the ethics of our time - characterized by the pervasiveness of AI - the notions of consciousness as theorized by Emmanuel Levinas’s Humanism of the Other and Paul Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another. Finally, the last section (“The time of the end?”) reflects on how the hyperobject, Anthropocene, re-establishes a sense of limits in human history and confirms the special responsibility of human beings, and supports the need for a more-than-human-humanism. The latter, in other words, means intertwining ourselves with a unique ecosystem which cannot be overlooked and which restores meaning to our relationship with the past, present, and future. The awareness of the current challenges of technology can and must express itself in different forms of resistance to the adverse effects of AI in our lives. The ethical approach based on the persisting role of human consciousness is essential, but it must be coupled with human decision-making and political action

Posthumanist perspectives on transhumanist marketing: More than human genes, more than market promotion

Transhumanism advocates enhancement of current human capacities with new technologies, in pursuit of human improvement and perfection, and thereby creates lucrative marketing opportunities. We use the broader concept of posthumanism, which includes this, but also all the other ways in which humans are enhanced by non-humans. However, our study is not about posthumanism, but about how a posthumanist critique can enhance our analyses and diagnoses. We consider not just technology, but also other species such as our microbiome, in an effort to critically examine transhumanist marketing, and develop analytic tools to better understand it. The limitations are highlighted with an extended example of the marketing of health information in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Transhumanist marketing is distinguished between “ends”, promoting products, and “means”, as ways to facilitate marketing. We offer a typology of motivations for consumption of transhumanist goods and services.  Il transumanismo sostiene l’incremento delle attuali capacità umane attraverso le nuove tecnologie, alla ricerca del miglioramento e del perfezionamento umani, quindi crea opportunità di marketing redditizie. In questo saggio facciamo ricoroso al concetto più ampio di postumanismo, che include il transumanismo ma anche tutti gli altri modi in cui gli umani possono essere perfezionati dai non umani. Tuttavia, il saggio non riguarda il postumanismo in sé, ma il modo in cui una critica postumanista può far avanzare le nostre analisi e diagnosi. Consideriamo non solo la tecnologia, ma anche altre specie come il nostro microbioma, nel tentativo di esaminare criticamente il marketing transumanista e sviluppare strumenti analitici per comprenderlo meglio. I suoi limiti sono evidenziati attraverso l’esempio del marketing delle informazioni sanitarie in risposta alla pandemia da Covid-19. Il marketing transumanista può essere distinto tra "fini" – vale a dire la promozione di prodotti – e "mezzi", intesi come modi per facilitare il marketing. Il saggio propone una tipologia delle motivazioni che inducono al consumo di beni e servizi transumanisti.Il transumanismo sostiene l’incremento delle attuali capacità umane attraverso le nuove tecnologie, alla ricerca del miglioramento e del perfezionamento umani, quindi crea opportunità di marketing redditizie. In questo saggio facciamo ricoroso al concetto più ampio di postumanismo, che include il transumanismo ma anche tutti gli altri modi in cui gli umani possono essere perfezionati dai non umani. Tuttavia, il saggio non riguarda il postumanismo in sé, ma il modo in cui una critica postumanista può far avanzare le nostre analisi e diagnosi. Consideriamo non solo la tecnologia, ma anche altre specie come il nostro microbioma, nel tentativo di esaminare criticamente il marketing transumanista e sviluppare strumenti analitici per comprenderlo meglio. I suoi limiti sono evidenziati attraverso l’esempio del marketing delle informazioni sanitarie in risposta alla pandemia da Covid-19. Il marketing transumanista può essere distinto tra "fini" – vale a dire la promozione di prodotti – e "mezzi", intesi come modi per facilitare il marketing. Il saggio propone una tipologia delle motivazioni che inducono al consumo di beni e servizi transumanisti.Il transumanismo sostiene l’incremento delle attuali capacità umane attraverso le nuove tecnologie, alla ricerca del miglioramento e del perfezionamento umani, quindi crea opportunità di marketing redditizie. In questo saggio facciamo ricoroso al concetto più ampio di postumanismo, che include il transumanismo ma anche tutti gli altri modi in cui gli umani possono essere perfezionati dai non umani. Tuttavia, il saggio non riguarda il postumanismo in sé, ma il modo in cui una critica postumanista può far avanzare le nostre analisi e diagnosi. Consideriamo non solo la tecnologia, ma anche altre specie come il nostro microbioma, nel tentativo di esaminare criticamente il marketing transumanista e sviluppare strumenti analitici per comprenderlo meglio. I suoi limiti sono evidenziati attraverso l’esempio del marketing delle informazioni sanitarie in risposta alla pandemia da Covid-19. Il marketing transumanista può essere distinto tra “fini” – vale a dire la promozione di prodotti – e “mezzi”, intesi come modi per facilitare il marketing. Il saggio propone una tipologia delle motivazioni che inducono al consumo di beni e servizi transumanisti.  Il transumanismo sostiene l’incremento delle attuali capacità umane attraverso le nuove tecnologie, alla ricerca del miglioramento e del perfezionamento umani, quindi crea opportunità di marketing redditizie. In questo saggio facciamo ricoroso al concetto più ampio di postumanismo, che include il transumanismo ma anche tutti gli altri modi in cui gli umani possono essere perfezionati dai non umani. Tuttavia, il saggio non riguarda il postumanismo in sé, ma il modo in cui una critica postumanista può far avanzare le nostre analisi e diagnosi. Consideriamo non solo la tecnologia, ma anche altre specie come il nostro microbioma, nel tentativo di esaminare criticamente il marketing transumanista e sviluppare strumenti analitici per comprenderlo meglio. I suoi limiti sono evidenziati attraverso l’esempio del marketing delle informazioni sanitarie in risposta alla pandemia da Covid-19. Il marketing transumanista può essere distinto tra "fini" – vale a dire la promozione di prodotti – e "mezzi", intesi come modi per facilitare il marketing. Il saggio propone una tipologia delle motivazioni che inducono al consumo di beni e servizi transumanisti

Moral psychology of nursing robots : Exploring the role of robots in dilemmas of patient autonomy

Artificial intelligences (AIs) are widely used in tasks ranging from transportation to healthcare and military, but it is not yet known how people prefer them to act in ethically difficult situations. In five studies (an anthropological field study, n = 30, and four experiments, total n = 2150), we presented people with vignettes where a human or an advanced robot nurse is ordered by a doctor to forcefully medicate an unwilling patient. Participants were more accepting of a human nurse's than a robot nurse's forceful medication of the patient, and more accepting of (human or robot) nurses who respected patient autonomy rather than those that followed the orders to forcefully medicate (Study 2). The findings were robust against the perceived competence of the robot (Study 3), moral luck (whether the patient lived or died afterwards; Study 4), and command chain effects (Study 5; fully automated supervision or not). Thus, people prefer robots capable of disobeying orders in favour of abstract moral principles like valuing personal autonomy. Our studies fit in a new era in research, where moral psychological phenomena no longer reflect only interactions between people, but between people and autonomous AIs.Peer reviewe

Superhuman, Transhuman, Post/Human: Mapping the Production and Reception of the Posthuman Body

The figure of the cyborg, or more latterly, the posthuman body has been an increasingly familiar presence in a number of academic disciplines. The majority of such studies have focused on popular culture, particularly the depiction of the posthuman in science-fiction, fantasy and horror. To date however, few studies have focused on the posthuman and the comic book superhero, despite their evident corporeality, and none have questioned comics’ readers about their responses to the posthuman body. This thesis presents a cultural history of the posthuman body in superhero comics along with the findings from twenty-five, two-hour interviews with readers. By way of literature reviews this thesis first provides a new typography of the posthuman, presenting it not as a stable bounded subject but as what Deleuze and Guattari (1987) describe as a ‘rhizome’. Within the rhizome of the posthuman body are several discursive plateaus that this thesis names Superhumanism (the representation of posthuman bodies in popular culture), Post/Humanism (a critical-theoretical stance that questions the assumptions of Humanism) and Transhumanism (the philosophy and practice of human enhancement with technology). With these categories in mind the thesis explores the development of the posthuman in body in the Superhuman realm of comic books. Exploring the body-types most prominent during the Golden (1938-1945), Silver (1958-1974) and contemporary Ages of superheroes it presents three explorations of what I term the Perfect Body, Cosmic Body and Military-Industrial Body respectively. These body types are presented as ‘assemblages’ (Delueze and Guattari, 1987) that display rhizomatic connections to the other discursive realms of the Post/Human and Transhuman. This investigation reveals how the depiction of the Superhuman body developed and diverged from, and sometimes back into, these realms as each attempted to territorialise the meaning and function of the posthuman body. Ultimately it describes how, in spite of attempts by nationalistic or economic interests to control Transhuman enhancement in real-world practices, the realms of Post/Humanism and Superhumanism share a more critical approach. The final section builds upon this cultural history of the posthuman body by addressing reader’s relationship with these images. This begins by refuting some of the common assumptions in comics studies about superheroes and bodily representations. Readers stated that they viewed such imagery as iconographic rather than representational, whether it was the depiction of bodies or technology. Moreover, regular or committed readers of superhero comics were generally suspicious of the notion of human enhancement, displaying a belief in the same binary categories -artificial/natural, human/non-human - that critical Post/Humanism seeks to problematize. The thesis concludes that while superhero comics remain ultimately too human to be truly Post/Humanist texts, it is never the less possible to conceptualise the relationship between reader, text, producer and so on in Post/Humanist terms as reading-assemblage, and that such a cyborgian fusing of human and comic book allow both bodies to ‘become other’, to move in new directions and form new assemblages not otherwise possible when considered separately