Ben Herzel, CEO of the decentralized AI network SingularityNET and chairman of the transhumanist organization Humanity+, told Decrypt about how artificial intelligence is bringing humanity closer to a transhumanist future.
He noted that people now have a large amount of data about the human body and various organisms, but our minds or standard machine learning are not able to understand all the information and process it. AI can help with this and generate various hypotheses.
The expert named nanotechnology as a promising area for achieving success.
"AI is much better than humans at designing things on the nanoscale or femtoscale. We have a lot of practical know-how on how to hold things together at a scale where we intuitively understand physics, but we don't have a good intuition for physics at the nano and femtoscale, and AI can handle this as well as the scale we are at now." He said.
Herzel noted that neural networks can be useful for decoding signals coming from the brain.
Transhumanism is not just for the rich
Opponents of transhumanism believe that this movement is a "game of God", and only the rich and the elite will benefit from achievements in this area. According to Herzel, this will not always be the case, efforts need to be made to ensure wider and equal access to technology. He cited the proliferation of smartphones as an example.
"These small mobile supercomputers that we all carry with us have benefited not only the rich.[...] Even if you go to a village in sub-Saharan Africa, everyone has regular phones. They use them to keep in touch with their family and check prices in the city for various agricultural products that they sell," he said.
Herzel emphasized the role of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in reducing costs and expanding access to technologies that improve human capabilities.
"Theoretically, blockchain and cryptocurrencies can help combat these problems by creating a parallel economic system that is not connected to outdated economic systems. In practice, this is a problem because many governments ban cryptocurrencies," he said.
AI and transhumanism will not be banned
The CEO of SingularityNET notes that there should be restrictions on what research in the field of transhumanism should be carried out so that it does not reach deaths. According to him, laws are already being developed taking into account such restrictions. Humanity should identify ways to use technology for the common good.
"I don't think trying to ban AI will help because it provides too much useful value to many people and businesses. There are not many precedents when a free society prohibits what is useful for everyone. And I think that eventually the same will be true for technologies focused on transhumanism," the expert concluded.
Recall that in January, Elon Musk's Neuralink startup successfully implanted a brain chip implant to the first volunteer, Noland Arbo. A month later, he could control a computer mouse with his mind.
In May, Arbo talked about the possibilities of technology and the changes in his daily life.