Transhumanism to Posthuman

Some people today envision a future where human beings will have evolved beyond our bodies to a super artificially intelligent posthuman that may or may not inhabit a body (biological or robotic). They see the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) as a dream come true and they want to encourage and support AI so that AI can free us from our biological constraints and usher in a utopia. Others, transhumanists, see AI as a tool for us to enhance our human limitations and incorporate AI into a cyborg-like utopian future. These transhumanists also want to encourage and support AI with a utopian future in mind. And many others see AI as only an important tool for business and other uses. How should we see and deal with AI in our lives today?

Transhumans or cyborgs are here today. People today with pacemakers, advanced prosthetics, cochlear implants, or other technological implants can be considered real-live cyborgs. They may not be like the Six Million Dollar Man from that old TV show who had superhuman capabilities, but they do have technological enhancements. And I also would argue that it is not much different than the basic tools we use today. Smart phones seem to almost be body parts for some people, but even a simple lever enhances our capabilities. So in some ways, we have been enhancing our abilities since Adam and Eve, and God started the technology enhancements with the technology of clothing (Genesis 3:21).

Today’s hype is all about enhancing our brain power with AI. Will that make us all cyborgs? Will that lead us to “evolve” beyond our biological selves to this posthuman future? Technology has always changed society. Unfortunately we do not always see the downsides of new technology. Social media is here to stay and it can be a good way to stay in contact with people. However, social media is also addictive and can create echo chambers of like thinking. AI has already been shown to be addictive when it becomes a companion. We need to evaluate the new technology, like AI, to make certain it is a good tool for us. You need to figure out what the cost of this new technology is.

Technology has a tendency to isolate, so does this technology help or hinder social relationships?
In making life easier in one part of your life, does this technology make another part of your life more difficult?
Does this technology make life easier for one segment of society at a cost to another segment of society?
Does this technology satisfy a felt need while costing you some real needs?

You need to evaluate any new technology. One may need to not use this technology if the cost is too high, or to limit its use to prevent addictions and harm to others. What is the cost of AI today? What will be the cost tomorrow when AI is much more powerful? How will it change society? How for the better and how for the worse? These are questions to ask and to decide what we can do and whether this is a technology that is good to use or not.

Note I only explored the posthuman future from an AI superintelligence viewpoint. Others see the posthuman future with biologically modified humans to be like elves, dwarves, dog-people, cat-people, vampires, and the like. This view also aims to free us from our biological constraints by modifying them.

As Christians, we know who we are and whose we are (Galatians 2:20). We have a God who loves us (1John 4:19), became human for us (John 1:1,14), and died for us (Romans 5:6-8). We are sons and daughters of the Heavenly King (2 Corinthians 6:18). We are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), so we are not constrained by our biology, because it is God who formed us (Psalm 139:13-16). We are who we are in order to serve him by serving others (Ephesians 2:10). Transhumanism and Posthumanism is all about using technology to become like God (Genesis 11:4). We are not God.

Let me leave you with this quote from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg from a podcast (found in this AP article). “When people in the tech industry talk about building this one true AI, it’s almost as if they think they’re creating God or something.”

This post was inspired in part by the article “Resisting a Posthuman Future” by C. Ben Mitchell, found in the Summer 2025 edition of the Concordia Journal on page 21.

Super Intelligent AI?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here or close to being here now and artificial superintelligence (ASI) will be here in two years (2027) according to the “AI Futures Project”, which is a nonprofit forecasting the future of AI. Wait! The AI we see does some amazing things but I am not certain I would call it intelligent. We have been disappointed. However, you can argue that the AI we see out in public is several months behind what is in the labs. The AI Futures Project says the world will be totally changed by 2030. It will then be an AI economy.

This change, if correct, is happening much faster than I had imagined. But I can not deny the work they put into creating this forecast. (Here is a summary of the results of their work.) So perhaps I need to rethink my reasoning. But there are some assumptions that if not true can change that forecast. For the forecast to work, one needs a whole lot of computing power. That is a significant limitation. Also the forecast requires a couple breakthroughs that will move AI forward. Will that happen? Who knows. They also assume that AI growth is exponentially increasing. Several of their forecast models come up with AI becoming like a superhuman coder that will automate the coding of AI which means AI will be improving itself without human coding. The forecast has that happening in 2027. Note I think there is also an implicit assumption that knowledge is equivalent to intelligence if you know how to process the information. That requires wisdom or common sense which I wonder how that will be learned. I have known people with lots of knowledge and little common sense.

With AI or ASI rapidly improving itself, there will need to be tests that run to make certain things are improving the way we want. Since the ASI is improving at a very fast rate, it is hard for us humans to keep up, and yet we must make certain that the ASI is passing the tests for the right reasons. We do not want any twisted thinking or passing the tests by putting the answers in the code just to pass the tests.

The article describes two possible scenarios, one where we are in a race with China and do not stop to evaluate the ASI but instead trust that ASI is working correctly, and the other scenario is where we slow down the AI development to correct any “misalignment” or errors that have crept in. (Note there are more than just two possible scenarios.) In the race scenario, ASI takes over and kills the human race and it goes out to explore the universe as robots. In the slowdown scenario, ASI remains a servant of us humans, and we go out to explore the universe. All this happens by 2030.

If true, this very rapid advancement of AI concerns me because we are not ready for it. It is also open for abuse. We need guardrails to direct the ASI and prevent abuse. We need oversight so that the ASI ends up working correctly for our good. It is possible that a small group of people (or one person) can gain control of the ASI and use it for their benefit, whether it be conquering the world or getting extremely wealthy. It is also possible that the ASI ends up controlling or eliminating us. ASI will change our economy and our society. ASI will take over most jobs and do them more efficiently, using robots for manual labor. The slowdown scenario says we then will have a basic income and free time for other activities. (I ask, “Is this a good thing?”)

How can we prepare for a big change like this? I do not know, but let us be aware of the changes happening around us. I do not think it will bring utopia like some want. We are too broken for that. We corrupt everything we touch and we will make a mess of AI too. But can we make it into a powerful tool that will be used mostly for good? I think it is possible, but I suspect there will be a lot of chaos on the way there.

Computer Evolution

My Grandpa Hein grew up with horses when automobiles were experimental and he lived to see men land on the moon. That was a tremendous change he went through. In the same way I have gone through another tremendous change from large computers occupying rooms to an even more powerful computer in my pocket, my smart phone.

The Cray 1 was one of the first supercomputers. Supercomputers were and are built for performance, for quickly calculating numbers. The Cray 1 blew away the competition in the 1970s. In 2013, Roy Longbottom in comparing a Raspberry Pi 1 to a Cray 1 wrote “In 1978, the Cray 1 supercomputer cost $7 Million, weighed 10,500 pounds and had a 115 kilowatt power supply. It was, by far, the fastest computer in the world. The Raspberry Pi [1] costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD card), weighs a few ounces, uses a 5 watt power supply and is more than 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1.” I own a Raspberry Pi 400 (RPi 400) and the CPU is an ARM A72, which is a pretty normal cell phone CPU. He later ran a floating point benchmark on the RPi 400. My $100 RPi 400 is 78.5 times faster than a Cray 1.

What is the big difference between the Cray 1 and the RPi 400? It is the clock speed. The Cray 1 ran at only 80 MHz and my RPi 400 runs at 1800 MHz. The RPi 400 clock speed is 22.5 times faster than the Cray 1. Taking away the clock speed means the floating point improvements or gains are roughly 3.5 times. And it is miniaturization that puts the transistors closer together to allow for these extra performance gains, and miniaturization is also what allowed the clock speed to increase.

Moore’s Law is an observation that about every two years the number of transistors in a microchip doubles. This self-fulfilling observation has driven the industry to make smaller and smaller transistors and thus allowed the clock speed to increase without the chips overheating. Unfortunately Moore’s Law has ended or is ending because the transistors are now approaching the size of atoms. It is becoming physically impossible to continue to shrink the transistors.

Computer storage also has had an amazing evolution. We have gone from a computer disk the size of a washing machine to fingernail size disks. We have gone from 8 inch floppies that hold 80,000 bytes to disks today that hold 22,000,000,000,000 bytes (22 TB). I remember purchasing in 1994-95 for work a 2 GB (2,000,000,000 bytes) disk for $2000. 30 years later you can get a 22 TB disk that costs $420 and has 11,000 times more storage. My phone has more storage than that 2 GB disk from 30 years ago. Computer storage has also benefited from miniaturization. That fingernail size (11mm x 15mm) microSD disk can today hold up to 1.5 TB.

Computer technology has transformed the world. I have written about the amazing computer performance advances that have taken place, but computers have become parts of phones, automobiles, and even washing machines. Think of the influence of the internet. The internet is all about computers sharing information. Computer technology is everywhere. So what is next? Right now, there is a lot of talk about artificial intelligence (AI). Will computers eventually become intelligent beings? Or will AI assist us in our tasks and only be a tool for us to use? We will have to see.