All posts tagged: Transhumanism

Building on the pope’s great AI encyclical: What comes next

Building on the pope’s great AI encyclical: What comes next

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” is an extraordinary document. Its integration of artificial intelligence within the church’s prior commitments to human dignity, its prophetic call for collective structural responses to systematic problems, and its use of Catholic social teaching to draw attention to labor are essential and timely contributions to one of the most consequential debates of our time. I am so grateful for it and have been writing about it with something close to (for the Seinfeld fans out there) unbridled enthusiasm. But this is Purple Catholicism. Which means forthright engagement across political and ideological differences. And, in this context, it includes naming what remains to be done. But before naming some unfinished business, it is worth recalling how central integration of a fully Catholic moral vision across ideologies is to the church’s social tradition. In #51 of “Caritas in Veritate,” Pope Benedict XVI taught us that “the overall moral tenor of society” cannot be compartmentalized. When a society loses respect for human life at its most vulnerable (through things …

Is a secular religion propelling the AI race?

Is a secular religion propelling the AI race?

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Last month, a man hurried up the driveway of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s San Francisco compound hours before sunrise and lobbed a flaming Molotov cocktail at the gate.  No one was injured, and shortly after, a suspect was arrested outside the offices of OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, allegedly threatening to “kill everyone inside.” Daniel Moreno-Gama, 20, who has no prior criminal record, has been charged with 13 felonies, including attempted murder. Moreno-Gama’s parents and lawyer have said he has a history of mental illness, but his digital footprint also shows he was deeply concerned that artificial intelligence would lead to human extinction. He frequented an anti-AI Discord server, where he mused in a chat about violent acts against tech leaders like Altman. And in a podcast interview recorded in January, he described himself as an “AI safetyist” and cited the influence of Eliezer Yudkowsky, a prominent AI theorist who argues that if anyone builds superintelligent AI, everyone will die.  The attack on Altman has ratcheted up existing tensions in Silicon Valley. …

Homo HURAQUS 2050 and the Disruptive Techno-Convergence Era: How Humanoid Robotics, AI, Quantum and Synthetic Biology Are Recasting The Future of Humanity

Homo HURAQUS 2050 and the Disruptive Techno-Convergence Era: How Humanoid Robotics, AI, Quantum and Synthetic Biology Are Recasting The Future of Humanity

Published by Jenni Sidey

Screenshot Human civilization is entering a period of unprecedented technological acceleration. This convergence is pushing humanity toward what I define as civilizational frontier risks: systemic, transboundary, and potentially existential challenges arising when transformative technologies intersect with the primal human drives that shape their use. These risks appear when scientific and technological power outpaces the ethical, political, and governance frameworks needed to manage it responsibly. For the first time, the boundaries between the biological, digital, and physical realms are dissolving. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is approaching levels of reasoning and autonomy that challenge human oversight. Quantum technologies promise to transform computation, encryption, and scientific discovery. Synthetic biology gives us the power to design and modify life itself. And humanoid robots are taking machine agency into the physical world, increasingly integrated into homes, workplaces, care facilities, and military systems. These convergences signal that humanity is entering uncharted terrain. We now possess, or soon will, the ability to alter life, rewrite ecosystems, manipulate cognition, disrupt geopolitical stability, and create autonomous systems with agency we barely comprehend.  At this civilizational …

China Jumps on the Transhumanism Train

China Jumps on the Transhumanism Train

Published by Jenni Sidey

This article is republished from National Review with the permission of the author. Transhumanism offers a (delusional, in my opinion) hope to blaze a materialistic path to immortality. Transhumanists yearn, for example, to upload their minds to computers, thinking that will do the trick. It won’t. Even if the “mind” could be uploaded, it would merely be software that mimicked a person’s beliefs. The “uploaded” subject would still be dead. Image Credit: AImg – Adobe Stock Now, according to an interesting story in the New York Times, China has apparently jumped onto this longevity train and is devoting much energy and many resources to the life-extension project: China, eager to catch up with and, whenever possible, surpass the West in biotech, artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies, has made the longevity industry a national priority, pouring billions into research and related commercial spinoffs. “They have improved very rapidly. A few years ago, there was nothing here and the West was still far ahead,” said Vadim Gladyshev, a Harvard Medical School professor who has done pioneering work on longevity, …