How critical are you of transhumanist assumptions? Are you convinced that uploading human personalities to computers is possible? Do you believe that some people currently preserved cryonically will be successfully revived? Is a technological singularity inevitable?
Not everyone reading this will self-identify as a transhumanist. Not all technoprogressives are transhumanists. In fact, some IEET Fellows do not regard themselves as transhumanists. But most of us here are at least sympathetic to transhumanist positions and aspirations.
Still, there is a big difference between being sympathetic to ideas in general and accepting them wholeheartedly. So, if you are a transhumanist (or even if you’re not), how skeptical or critical are you of its major futurist themes?
We have just posted a new reader poll (see sidebar) asking whether you agree with the following statements:
- By 2100, robots will do nearly all physical work.
- Uploading of human personalities to computer substrates is bound to happen.
- At some point, healthy human lifespans will be extended indefinitely.
- Emerging technologies will produce a post-scarcity economy within 50 years.
- Some people currently preserved cryonically will be revived successfully.
- We or our descendants will colonize the galaxy within a few hundred years.
- AI will be smarter than humans like humans are smarter than goats.
- Human/machine ‘cyborgs’ will be common by the end of this century.
- The first person to live a thousand years has already been born.
- A technological singularity is certain to occur before the middle of this century.
Some of these things may happen and some may not. Which do you think are most likely?
Mike Treder is the Managing Director of the IEET, and former Executive Director of the non-profit Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.