By akademiotoelektronik, 16/04/2022
These transhumanists who promise immortality | Radio-Canada.ca
A badge defies gravity on the tip of Dorian Kodelja's ring finger. As with all magic tricks, there is a logical explanation. This is a bit unexpected though. The badge, far from escaping the laws of physics, is rather held between heaven and earth thanks to a small magnet that Dorian had implanted at the end of his finger.
The young man, a doctoral student in artificial intelligence, is a transhumanist. He believes that the human body can overcome certain limits, and he is ready to experience new sensations and functions with his own body.
Enlarge image (New window)A magnet is implanted in the finger of transhumanist Dorian Kodelja.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Janic Tremblay
This magnet now allows him to feel electromagnetic fields such as those emitted by microwave ovens.
“It allows me to understand what it feels like to have a new meaning. When my finger vibrates, I feel it a bit like a burning smell. My brain adapted to this new sensation,” explains Dorian Kodelja.
Enlarge image (New window)Transhumanist Dorian Kodelja
Photo: Radio-Canada / Janic Tremblay
Dorian says he therefore has no problem using his body in any way to take advantage of the wealth of the world. It is only part of the transhumanist ideology, which goes much further.
Janic Tremblay's report on our increasingly close ties with machines is broadcast on February 17 in Désautels on Sundays on ICI PREMIÈRE, as part of a series on our digital lives.
Upload your brain so you don't die
The pope of the movement, the engineer and futurologist Raymond Kurzweil, aims squarely to put an end to death. He believes that in a few decades, computing power and scientific developments will make it possible to no longer die...or at the very least to upload his brain to the computing cloud in order to continue to exist as pure spirit until at the end of time.
The artificial intelligence specialist co-founded Singularity University and is now one of the directors of Google. The arrival of this theoretician of transhumanism within the web giant has renewed interest in the movement. One of the spokespersons for the French Transhumanist Association, Florent Boissonnet, does not hide his enthusiasm.
Enlarge image (New window)Florent Boissonnet, spokesperson for the French Transhumanist Association
Photo: Radio-Canada / Janic Tremblay
He quotes the Calico company which wants to lengthen human life. Or Neuralink, the company of billionaire Elon Musk, whose work focuses on brain-machine interfaces. And lots of applications that are currently reserved for people with disabilities or with certain medical problems, but which could well become accessible to ordinary mortals in a few years.
The dream of increasing the human
A point in common between these projects: it is always a question of increasing the human. Cantors of the transhumanist project like the American Tim Cannon refuse the biological limits of our species. For a few months, he even had a device the size of an iPhone inserted directly under his skin in order to transmit his biometric data directly to his phone.
The English scientist Kevin Warwick goes even further by asserting that, in the future, those who refuse to augment themselves will be handicapped compared to the rest of the population who will choose the transhumanist path.
In France, one of the most influential spokespersons for transhumanism is probably the doctor and web entrepreneur Laurent Alexandre.
Author of a book entitled The Death of Death, he is convinced that children born today will live much longer. He believes they will benefit from technical and biomedical advances that we do not yet imagine, but which will begin to appear in about 30 years, when artificial intelligence will exceed that of humans, he predicts. .
It could mean chips in the brain or some other type of increase. What will then be the inviolability of the body or human dignity? He believes that these principles will fluctuate to adapt to a new context.
Enlarge image (New window)Laurent Alexandre, during a dinner-conference in front of the members of the Cercle de l'union interalliée in Paris in November 2018
Photo: Radio-Canada / Janic Tremblay
Transhumanism, a utopia?
The transhumanist project is far from unanimous and receives virulent criticism in the world of science and ethics. Jacques Testart is precisely at the confluence of these two worlds.
The biologist, known as the father of the first French test-tube baby, is a scientist, but also a renowned bioethicist. He published a book a few months ago entitled Au peril de l'homme - The suicidal promises of transhumanists. For him, nothing in the current state of science validates the ideas and projections of transhumanists.
Enlarge image (New window)Jacques Testart, met at his home in the suburbs of Paris.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Janic Tremblay
He reminds us that we know almost nothing about the genome and the functioning of the brain. A supporter of a slow and cautious science, he is convinced that it will take many more years before certain aspects of the transhumanist project become possible. But anyway, he totally rejects almost everything they propose.
His criticisms do not stop there. For Jacques Testart, transhumanism is not a social project, but rather an amalgam of individual and selfish aspirations. He searches without finding the collective and civic values in this movement.
"It won't work, but it still hurts our species, because it isolates people. Where is the empathy? Where is the solidarity in all this? We should not forget that if Homo sapiens has succeeded in imposing itself, it is above all thanks to the cooperation that characterizes our species”, observes Jacques Testart.
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