SAND18 US — The Challenge of Transhumanism

Our human-ness will become more and more threatened by AI (artificial intelligence), the augmentation of biological intelligence by machine intelligence, and those who believe that the human entity is nothing more than information that can stored in a memory device. As the world is increasingly governed by AI and as humans inhabit virtual realities more than the realm of nature and interpersonal relationships, we may lose our most human attributes, becoming desensitized, depersonalized, without empathy, bereft of intimacy. The great sacred traditions basically agree that the greatest possibility of human conscious life is to upload our consciousness to an energetic body. The goal of preserving our sensory memories belies a complete misunderstanding of what the human being and individual consciousness essentially is. Society is unprepared emotionally, intellectually, economically, and spiritually for the challenge. Without an adequate articulated metaphysics we may not be able to defend our very human-ness from slipping gradually into a non- or post-human world.