Future of singularity and transhumanism

A group of experts from all around the world thought and spoke about it at a conference on global catastrophic risks. The risks they predict are not the ones we all are able to predict like terrorism or collision course of a asteroid. No there was also special attention for unintended consequences of new technologies. And some of the future technologies can have a huge impact on the human race.

Some experts even believe that technologies like super intelligent machines might cause the extinction of the human species.

Any entity which is radically smarter than human beings would also be very powerful. If we get something wrong, you could imagine the consequences would involve the extinction of the human species (Dr. Nick Bostrom, director of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute)

Nick Bostrom is also actively involved in the movement of transhumanism. This movement believes that anticipates an era where bio- and nano technologies merge together with artificial intelligence. This merging of technologies will make it possible to improve human limited skills and even enhance our emotional well-being.

The end result would be a new form of "posthuman" life with beings that possess qualities and skills so exceedingly advanced they no longer can be classified simply as humans.

We will begin to use science and technology not just to manage the world around us but to manage our own human biology as well. The changes will be faster and more profound than the very, very slow changes that would occur over tens of thousands of years as a result of natural selection and biological evolution (Dr. Nick Bostrom)

When will this all happen? According to Bostrom it is hard to predict. Well that is easy to say...his timeframe is between 8 - 200 years. But we have heard these kind of predictions before from our friend Dr. Ray Kurzweil!

This will happen faster than people realize. There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality. (Dr. Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and futurist)

Kurzweil calls this Singularity and he defines this as: the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots. On Extend Limits we wrote about it many times before (just read this and this ). And we follow the vision of Kurzweil on this. Kurzweil foresees this future by the 2030's when humans become more non biologically than biologically. By the 2040's the non biologically will be millions of times better than the biological intelligence humans have today.

Our brains are a million times slower than electronics. We will increasingly become software entities if you go out enough decades.

The technological enhancements are going very fast. For example the development of a respirocyte. This is a robotic red blood cell that, if injected into the bloodstream, would allow humans to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath or sit at the bottom of a swimming pool for hours at a time. Nanotechnology will also play an important role in our fight against cancer. Researchers are also developing nano particles that can locate tumours and in the near future even eradicate them.

Nanotechnology will not just be used to reprogram but to transcend biology and go beyond its limitations by merging with non-biological systems. If we rebuild biological systems with nanotechnology, we can go beyond its limits.(Kurzweil)

All these new insights and innovations will not only lead to new cures for diseases or more capabilities for humans. It will also have possible negative future effects. A possible bigger define between the super intelligent (rich) and the less intelligent will change forces and power in the world.