Transhumanism

Technology has become one of the forefronts of change in our society. From the way we communicate with people, build and create things, create medicine, and so many other everyday doings. However, how far is technology willing to go until a boundary is crossed? Transhumanism involves science and technology involving humanistic ideas, which can take a wrong turn if the idea is put into the wrong hands. 

One example of a technology that can be categorized under transhumanistic ideas is CRISPR. CRISPR is a genome technology that has the ability to edit one’s genes. This technology has the capability to be useful and save people’s lives who may have a detrimental genetic mutation. However, CRISPR can become dangerous if used poorly. One scary tactic that can be pushed by CRISPR is this idea of designer babies. According to the MIT technology review, Chinese scientists have “been recruiting couples in an effort to create the first gene-edited babies.” They have been working on genes that may cause certain diseases, however, they have also been working on the idea of adding characteristics that the parents may want, specific hair color and eye color, into the babies genes. This is where the line is drawn. Everyone has their own different and special characteristics that should be embraced by them, and everybody around them. Having this ideology, a transhumanistic idea, that we need technology to alter what a human looks like, takes away the special differences of everyone. Eventually, everyone would have similar characteristics and there would be no differences amongst the general population. If this process of picking and choosing what genes to edit continues for years to come, at what point are the human outcomes even human? This is where the transhumanist technologies become scary and cross a line.  For more about what Chinese scientists have been working on involving CRISPR, visit the following site: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612458/exclusive-chinese-scientists-are-creating-crispr-babies/

Furthermore, another significant topic pertaining to transhumanistic ideas would be artificial intelligence. To what extent can programmers program and enhance computers to the point where the computers control us? Technology and code have to start somewhere. That is in the programmers hands. Once the technology gains an understanding of the code being presented, it will keep learning. When this happens, it creates possibilities of robots learning more than we, as humans, can possibly understand at the rate that it is learning and then it is out of our hands. We see this happen when computers are coded to crack or hack into a system. The computer begins distributing numbers and algorithms at a speed inhumanly possible. This is where the artificial intelligence becomes questionable. The computer is doing things at a speed that we cannot control. How do we know that it will listen and stop when we tell it too? We don’t. This comes into the idea of robots. How do we know the robots we are creating to act like humans will listen to what we are programming them to do? We don’t. 

Technology is all around us, and is it beneficial with how we use it. These transhumanistic ideas like CRISPR can be beneficial until used poorly and dangerously.