Sentient Cybernetic Organisms as a Goal of Transhumanism
Among the more potentially ominous goals of transhumanist philosophy is that of creating intelligent machines, or cyborgs. For transhumanists this means using robotics to facilitate the creation of highly advanced sapient beings who will be considered cybernetic organisms, possibly with self awareness, and worthy of the legal rights and protections that are afforded to human beings. Indeed, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is seeking to extend such protections to Artificially Intelligent (AI) humanoids, should they be created, in the same way that rights were won in women's suffrage, for blacks in the wake of American slavery, and are now being sought for those in the LBGTQ minority.
If this sounds a little far fetched, consider how the milieu of science fiction has portrayed such affable characters as R2D2, CP30, and Commander Data. These depictions have served to open the minds of those in the West to the potential personhood of cyborgs. The cumulative result is that the vast majority of the public does not recognize the full implications of creating a life form that could turn out to be a sentient form of AI.
"I have exposure to the most cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned by it. AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization in a way that car accidents, airplane crashes, faulty drugs or bad food were not . . . they were harmful to a set of individuals within society, of course, but they were not harmful to society as a whole.” Elon Musk
One potential consequence of creating cybernetic organisms is that it is not known if sentient AI organisms will be cognitively remain within the confines of their original programming. The question must also be asked regarding sentient AI deciding whether it is morally neutral or malevolent. In addition, transhumanists also hope that AI robotics could also serve as a future platform for uploading human consciousness to achieve a human-cybernetic synergy that could truly be defined as a posthuman which transhumanists believe will be the next stage of human evolution.
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