Transhumanism: The Final Frontier? – Evening Standard

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ts a sunny September afternoon in present day London and Im talking to a woman who thinks Im an ape-brained meatsack. To be fair, Dr Elise Bohan, 32, who is really very nice, believes everyone herself included is an ape-brained meatsack. A senior research scholar at Oxfords vaunted Future of Humanity Institute, she has spent half her life thinking about the promise and perils of artificial intelligence, the limits of human wetware (your brains, bodies and all the mushy bits in between), and how we avoid getting steamrollered by the smarter-than-human machines lurking at the edge of tomorrow. As the author of Future Superhuman: Our Transhuman Lives in a Make-or-break Century, she is trying to do something about it.

Being told that my flabby, pasty body is illequipped to keep pace with a world of robot workers, lethal autonomous machines and smart AI systems that know us better than we know ourselves isnt surprising. Although we rarely recognise it, says Bohan, the 21st century is already a transhuman era: think smartphones, the cloud and our digital second skins, algorithms that know how we want to work out and what we want to google. Our biological bits are struggling to keep up. AI helped Moderna design and manufacture a Covid vaccine in 42 days flat. I, meanwhile, cant remember where I left my iPhone charger 10 minutes ago.

Which is where transhumanism comes in. A transhumanist, Bohan says, is someone who believes in being something better than human. Think of TV shows such as Black Mirror, books like Yuval Noah Huraris Homo Deus and films like Ex Machina and youre in the right ballpark. Its a philosophy. Its a quest. Its a necessity. Its about technological transcendence. Things that make you go hmmm. As Bohan puts it: It strikes transhumanists asobvious that humanity could be better.

If were lucky, humanity gets to be the parents of something magnificent

Whos in the club, I ask? Theres Ray Kurzweil, appointed Googles director of engineering in 2012, who popularised the concept of the technological singularity (the idea that were heading for a rapid intelligence explosion due to exponential improvements in information technology). Elon Musk? Transhumanist. Bill Gates? Transhumanist. Mark Zuckerberg? Big old transhumanist. Musks big play is Neuralink, a secretive company he founded in 2016 to help human and machine intelligence by developing an electronic brain implant, a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires. Musk told the Joe Rogan podcast in 2020 that it is five to 10 years away. His plans, he says, include giving humans the option of merging with artificial intelligence by exchanging thoughts with a computer augmenting their mental capacity. You might have seen the video of its monkey implanted with the chip playing video game Pong using only its mind. In January it advertised for a clinical trial director to run tests on humans. Small matter that at least eight of the monkeys have died.

I think its a bit grim. This isnt sexy technology, agrees Bohan. Musks SpaceX rockets and Tesla cars are a lot more du jour. Transhumanism has a terrible image problem, she says. Its not fuzzy. Its not what we want to hear. But the idea and Musk is hardly alone here is that we get to piggyback and come along for the ride and be involved in the evolution of that form of digital consciousness. What it means to be human, from our brains and bodies to our values and ways of life, is poised to be transformed as we move from a purely biological species to a techno-human hybrid. Its a very different kind of trans debate. Will I need a subscription fee to buy the best brainwaves? Wont the rich simply get richer, lining their superbodies with, I dont know, literal stardust? Pass. Transhumanism is not merely this life-extension project: lets upload, lets live forever, lets just rack up the billions, says Bohan. So much of it is focused on making the world a better place in a sustainable way. Then why, I ask, does it all feel so undemocratic? A bit bermensch. When people accumulate too much power, it rarely goes well. The thing about history is that the great movers have all been undemocratic, Bohan says. Usually, its tectonic plates or pathogens or the availability of domestic arable crops. Human beings love to think of history in terms of rational actors, kings, emperors, goodies, baddies. I think this is a really interesting moment of history because we so want to believe that were in control.

Plus, she says, democracy hasnt done much to fix climate change in the past 30 years. Sooner or later mankinds trajectory will throw up a doomsday scenario we dont have the tools to deal with, she says: nuclear apocalypse, lab-made virus, rampant AI. Its like were engaged in a complex juggling act. First two balls, then three, then four. As time wears on, the balls are supplanted by live grenades that can detonate on impact. Quick, catch the next one its labelled nukes. And the next pandemics. Dont drop a single one! Good, AI is coming soon.

AI and automation threaten factory jobs, driving jobs heck, any jobs. Wages will tumble. Traditional family models will fall apart. Life scripts will be torn up. Dreams will turn to dust. An eruption of disruption, already underway. Its not panning out for so, so many, she says. And the anger is palpable. Overeducated generations, frankly, dont know what theyre doing. Meanwhile, theres a crude social media landscape of today like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok its awful, its brain junk, its vapid, I dont know how anyone finds it fulfilling, but its addictive enough for people to be invested in curating their identity and existence in these virtual worlds. Imagine what happens when Mark Zuckerbergs Metaverse finally turns its trillions into something that doesnt look drawn by a toddler with a crayon up its nostril. Well never log off. Which brings us on to another fascinating conundrum: Ive used the Oculus Rift, Ive had virtual sex, quote unquote, and its so immersive, says Bohan. She believes we are 10 years away from enjoying fluent and emotionally enriching conversations with Alexa and her kind. She talks of AI characters conscious? Alive? Who can say? that will evolve from best friend to life partner, sing lullabies, make love. Its wild stuff. But then again, theres already Microsofts Chinese chatbot Xiaoice (pronounced Shao-ice) designed with a focus on high emotional intelligence a simulated 18-year-old with 660 million users, 25 per cent of whom have confessed their love to her. I think a growing subset, particularly of young men, will be opting into this technology, the result being that it skews the sex ratios in the human dating pool, making men ever more scarce. The end of men? Just maybe.

I like my humanity. Im a happy-ish meatsack. I like the sound of rain on the window; I like long, muddy walks and the smell of gorse. I like looking at bell heather and bog asphodels. I like the idea of children I might have one day. I might bore them about flowers, too. I like my friends and my family, I value my weaknesses and my wilfulness, I suffer theirs gladly. I want to think this is all bollocks and billionaires, and that my little life might just be left alone. Its hard to think about transcendence without thinking about endings. I dont like them at all.

Funnily enough, all those impulses I share, says Bohan. Im happiest reading books, talking to my friends, being in the ocean, being outdoors. A quiet simple life Im very big on. Its in my interest to ignore all of this. Maybe I have the means and opportunities to block a lot of this out. [But] I dont think if you have children you can afford to block it out because the ramifications for their development and schooling and so many other things are really important.

She thinks this is bigger than us, as individuals, anyway. That she needs to warn us, that we get busy techno-living or get busy homo-dying. Im talking about future generations for trillions of people yet to be born, more people than have ever lived on this planet. Her hope? That the most beautiful things about humanity do get to survive far into the future and do potentially go on to do amazing things that are beyond the reach of you or I today, that are beyond the reach of the merely human, which doesnt mean its a project of celebrating the demise of humanity. If were lucky, humanity gets to be the parents of something magnificent that can explore the wonders and the mysteries of the universe and consciousness. Her goal is to make us take these ideas seriously, that we dont take it personally, that we dont sulk. I say come friendly bombs, fall upon Silicon Valley. But what do I know? Im obsolete.

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Transhumanism: The Final Frontier? - Evening Standard