What are the benefits and risks of transhumanist technologies, and why are they so taboo? How do we legislate to avoid existential risks, without holding back too much the enormous possible benefits? How do we secure the mental health, rights and equal access of the public as it inevitably rolls out?

So today we have the tricky and somewhat taboo topic of how to ethically guide the ever-increasing application of transhumanist technologies. With the recent advances in bio-technology, and some technologies already making their way into our bodies, it seems that the move towards a transhumanist vision of how to improve our standard of living is already well under way. So the question now is how do we educate ourselves the public and legislate tech corporations and governments, to be sure that people’s mental and physical health, access to opportunities, and personal freedoms are not being compromised in the gold-rush.   

Fortunately our guest today is a sociologist and bioethicist with over 25 years of debating exactly these kind of questions. He is the executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies or IEET, and he is the Associate Provost for Institutional research, Assessment and Planning at the University of Massachusetts Boston, James Hughes.

He is a Buddhist and techno-optimist, and was executive director of the World Transhumanist Organisation from 2004-2006. He argues for a democratic transhumanism in which human enhancement technologies should only be allowed if available to everyone, with respect for the rights of the individuals to control their own bodies.

He’s the writer of many articles and papers and the author of the book,“Citizen Cyborg: Why democratic societies must respond to the redesigned human of the future”. He is currently working on another book about moral enhancement, tentatively titled “Cyborg Buddha: Using neurotechnology to become better people”.

Being a techno-optimist and futurist myself, yet extremely cautious of mankind’s reckless and often blind curiosity when developing technology, I felt it was an important time to take a balanced multi-perspectival look into the ethics and policy development of transhumanist technologies. The interview offered me a process of re-evalutation of my own preconceptions and triggers, so I hope it helps you question your own opinions on this complex topic. 

What we discuss:

00:00 Intro

08:00 Difficulty accepting our inevitable transhumanist future

14:00 The taboo of transhumanism and debating toxic issues

19:45 It’s not the tech that’s the risk but the way we use it and legislate it: Max Tegmark

33:20 The History of Transhumanism

44:50 Is Eugenics connected to Transhumanism?

51:00 The roadmap towards markets rolling out transhumanist technologies 

52:30 The Kurzweilian paradigm: Smaller, smarter and faster 

55:45 Backing up memories - replacing and supplementing brain function

57:00 Instantiating brain backups in robot bodies, cloned bodies or computers

58:45 The Metaverse and brain-internet interfaces assessed

01:03:00 Augmented reality will be more popular than virtual reality

01:06:00 Technology interfering with the evolution of brains and culture

01:10:00 Selective scientific publication about the negative mental health outcomes

01:21:00 Neurolink: brain computer internet interfaces assessed

01:27:00 Gene therapy assessed: the risks of yet further inequality of wealth and power

01:43:50 The Singularity explained

01:56:20 Inequality leads to dangerous conflict VS Transnational collaboration leads to peace

References:

James J Hughes ‘Citizen Cyborg’

Nick Bostrum - ‘A History of Transhumanist thought’ paper

The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies IEET