Transhumanism

Transhumanism is a philosophical and political movement that supports using current and emerging technologies to enhance human abilities. Britannica describes it as advocating the use of technologies such as genetic engineering, cryonics, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology to augment human capabilities and improve the human condition. In politics, transhumanists argue that governments should fund research, protect the freedom to use enhancement technologies and prepare society for major technological change. They see aging, disease and many human limits as problems that science may one day solve.

Ideas about improving human nature through science go back to the Enlightenment, when some thinkers imagined unlimited human progress. In 1923, the British scientist J. B. S. Haldane gave a lecture called Daedalus, or Science and the Future, imagining biological changes to humans. The English biologist Julian Huxley popularized the word transhumanism in a 1957 essay, describing humanity transcending itself through science. In the 1970s and 1980s, the futurist known as FM-2030 wrote about people who were moving beyond current human limits. Organized transhumanism grew in the 1980s and 1990s. The World Transhumanist Association was founded in 1998 and renamed itself Humanity+ in 2008. Small transhumanist parties have since appeared in several countries.

Libertarian transhumanists, linked to the earlier extropian movement, stress personal freedom and private innovation with little regulation. Democratic transhumanists argue that enhancement should be publicly funded, regulated for safety and made available to everyone, not only the wealthy. Some transhumanists focus on life extension and longevity science. Others focus on artificial intelligence and the idea of a technological singularity, a point at which machine intelligence would transform society. A related field studies long-term risks from technology. Religious transhumanists try to combine faith with support for human enhancement.

Bioconservative critics argue that changing human nature through technology could threaten human dignity, equality and the meaning of ordinary life. Many religious critics argue that transhumanism goes beyond proper human limits and tries to replace spiritual hopes with technology. Critics on the left argue that enhancement could deepen inequality, since wealthy people would gain access first, and some note similarities between enhancement goals and the older eugenics movement. Other critics question whether the movement's predictions about technology are realistic, and environmental thinkers often warn against unchecked technological change.

Transhumanist parties have had little electoral success, but the ideas appear in wider policy debates. Governments debate how to regulate gene editing, human enhancement drugs, brain-computer interfaces and artificial intelligence. The Council of Europe's Oviedo Convention of 1997 bars genetic changes that would be passed on to future generations in countries that ratified it. Public and private funding for research on aging, regenerative medicine and AI has grown in many countries, and these debates often draw directly on transhumanist and bioconservative arguments.