Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

by Max Tegmark

One of today’s most prominent cyborg proponents is Ray Kurzweil. In his book The Singularity Is Near, he argues that the natural continuation of this trend is using nanobots, intelligent biofeedback systems and other technology to replace first our digestive and endocrine systems, our blood and our hearts by the early 2030s, and then move on to upgrading our skeletons, skin, brains and the rest of our bodies during the next two decades. He guesses that we’re likely to keep the aesthetics and emotional import of human bodies, but will redesign them to rapidly change their appearance at will, both physically and in virtual reality (thanks to novel brain-computer interfaces). Moravec agrees with Kurzweil that cyborgization would go far beyond merely improving our DNA: “a genetically engineered superhuman would be just a second-rate kind of robot, designed under the handicap that its construction can only be by DNA-guided protein synthesis.” Further, he argues that we’ll do even better by eliminating the human body entirely and uploading minds, creating a whole-brain emulation in software. Such an upload can live in a virtual reality or be embodied in a robot capable of walking, flying, swimming, space-faring or anything else allowed by the laws of physics, unencumbered by such everyday concerns as death or limited cognitive resources.