Musings on Transhuman Dystopic Visions & Species Warfare

Artilects, Cosmists, Cyborgs, and Terrans…recent contributors on ieet.org (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies) have opined on the possible (for some, impending) end of century species war.

Two distinct visions are explored there.  

Vision 1A: Dystopic visions of Artilect vs. Terran global species warfare leading to the extinction of humans (homo-meat sack-sapiens) and the accession of Artilects (AI, god-like, multidimensional entities) into the great black. A vision championed by Hugo de Garis.

 

Vision 1B: Semi-Utopic-Optimistic (if not bumpy) visions of negotiation and co-existence, where Artilects (& Cosmists) leave Terra for the great beyond, while remaining as benevolent overseers of Terrans.

Consider this approach: "The first Terran shots against the Cosmists," by Giulio Prisco.

"I am persuaded that artilects will feel no hostility toward old-style humans. The universe is a big place, and they will have other things to do. I am sure that Cosmists and artilects will be perfectly happy to leave the solar system to Terrans and move to the stars, and I hope that they will even keep a benevolent eye on the Terrans, and help them every now and then. The only realistic possibility of violent action from Cosmists and artilects will be in self-defense, for their own survival."

Benjamin Abbot provides delicate balance to the binary visions of techno-topias in "Transhumanism’s Dark Side: Tittle’s Regulation, Prisco’s “Progress,” and Scaruffi’s Austerity." 

The religious overtones in both narratives are pronounced. Consider the rise of robot-cultists and the increasing religiosity present in techno-futurists thinking. Do we replace the old gods of Terra with the new Artilect gods of space time.  

Prisco: "To me, Cosmism is a religion in an even stronger sense:  I believe future extremely advanced artilect Gods will be able to affect their past — our present — by means of spacetime engineering, and achieve, by scientific means, most of the promises of religions — and many amazing things that no human religion ever dreamed. Future Gods will be able to resurrect the dead by “copying them to the future.” For those who share this belief, building artilects is not only a “philosophical” duty, but a very practical one."

Consider the third option: John Smart's Transcension Hypothesis, which derives its theoretical propositions from Moore’s law (in part), wherein human-techno interface, post singularity, will accelerate to a point where the external (outer-space) becomes the internal (inner-space), driving transhumanstic existence ever inward until dimensional black holes (driven by STEM compression) transport us (now as virtual minds) out of the physical existence,  into more complex dimensions of existence, where we will find the rest of the universe(s) waiting. 

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Now taking reservations. Thanks for the Fish.