This is a timeline of transhumanism, attempting to decribe significant events related to the movement. Topics directly related to transhumanism, including extropianism, life extension and eradication of suffering, are also described.
This week our guest is Meghan O’Gieblyn, who has written regularly for entities such as Wired, The New York Times, and The Guardian, in addition to authoring books such as Interior States and her latest book: God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning.
Interestingly, much of Meghan’s work pulls on her experience losing her faith in religion while simultaneously being drawn into transhumanism from reading the Age of Spiritual Machines by Singularity’s very own Ray Kurzweil. This exploration of Meghan’s background and her latest book takes us on a journey through the ways in which technology and spirituality have historically woven together, the current ways in which they are conflicting, and the future philosophical questions we’re going to be forced to reconcile. For those of you interested in this subject, I highly recommend going and listening to episode 52 with Micah Redding, which lays a lot of the foundation that we build on her in this episode.
It is the first bionic hand with a multi-touch feedback feature and boasts a 32-grip pattern.
Psyonic, a bionic device manufacturer, presented the Ability Hand at CES 2023, the world’s first touch-sensing bionic hand. The hand can feel the things it holds, even the most delicate objects. It is a bionic prosthetic device, and the company aims to deliver it to more people than ever.
German Bionic was a pioneer in the field of wearable suits when it became the first firm to introduce connected exoskeletons for workplaces. The suit supports users in lifting movements and prevents poor posture. The award-winning Cray X exoskeleton, which is featured in the CES 2023 “Best of Innovation” (Wearable Technologies) category, will be available for demonstrations at the event from January 5–8.
H umans are at the center of most discussions about both the environment and technology. One goal of sustainability is to ensure that future generations of humans have opportunities to thrive on planet Earth. Debates about the ethics of technology often focus on how to protect human rights and promote human autonomy.
At the same time, some conversations about the environment and technology are now taking humans out of the equation. As Adam Kirsch points out in a new book, “The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us,” people in two very different schools of thought are coming to a similar conclusion: that the world might not have people much longer and might be better off as a result.
Kirsch takes readers on a guided tour of the discussions in these two camps. “Antihumanists” are obsessed with our having sown the seeds of our demise and bringing environmental apocalypse upon ourselves — possibly even deserving to go extinct. “Transhumanists” are obsessed with maintaining control and envision a future in which we use technology to become something greater than homo sapiens and even cheat death itself.
Irina Rish is a world-renowned professor of computer science and operations research at the Université de Montréal and a core member of the prestigious Mila organisation. She is a Canada CIFAR AI Chair and the Canadian Excellence Research Chair in Autonomous AI. Irina holds an MSc and PhD in AI from the University of California, Irvine as well as an MSc in Applied Mathematics from the Moscow Gubkin Institute. Her research focuses on machine learning, neural data analysis, and neuroscience-inspired AI. In particular, she is exploring continual lifelong learning, optimization algorithms for deep neural networks, sparse modelling and probabilistic inference, dialog generation, biologically plausible reinforcement learning, and dynamical systems approaches to brain imaging analysis. Prof. Rish holds 64 patents, has published over 80 research papers, several book chapters, three edited books, and a monograph on Sparse Modelling. She has served as a Senior Area Chair for NeurIPS and ICML. Irina’s research is focussed on taking us closer to the holy grail of Artificial General Intelligence. She continues to push the boundaries of machine learning, continually striving to make advancements in neuroscience-inspired AI.
From cyborgs to the Sugababes, IT expert Robert Anderson talks about a world where the line between humans and machines becomes blurred. Drawing on his personal experiences of facing prejudices and bigotry while growing up, he shares his insight on how we can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past in order to create a society where humans and transhumans can live together in an open and equal manner. He urges us to take action now because as he says, “Transhumanism is coming and it’s coming sooner than you think. We cannot afford to have the fear of the other rule this world.“ Robert Anderson has been interested in how technology can improve humans’ lives ever since he can remember. He started programming computers at age 10 and has been working in IT for the past 20 years with blue-chip companies to develop IT strategies and roadmaps.
Robert says he likes how ‘TEDxFolkstone cares about developing a group of people who are speakers, not just about people who are doing TED talks.’
To claim your matching donation with Givewell, go to https://www.givewell.org/isaac. In the future, humanity may embrace genetic engineering and cybernetic augmentation of mind and body, but what does this Transhuman future look like? And should we embrace or resist these paths?