Hollywood Brings Singularity and Transhumanism into Mainstream Consciousness
Hollywood has a new movie out about the Singularity and Transhumanism that is not entirely bad. Why would I say that? Because anything that brings these progressive ideas into the arena of common knowledge and to the general public is a good thing.
I have personally asked many people I meet, if they knew what the Technological Singularity was or Transhumanism and they simply had no idea.
Then, of course I politely gave them a crash course in AI-Tranhumanism 101. That is because it is still something that is still only discussed in intellectual circles of egghead nerds like myself. Yesterday, when the movie came out that all changed, so I say is a good thing and I can ask, "Did you see that movie Trancendence with Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman?"
The movie is of coursed strongly flawed in so many ways that I'm having trouble deciding where to start on pointing them out. So I have simply decided not to.
Instead, I will point out the things I like about the movie:
Did I mention it has big name hollywood actors?
That it goes into mind uploading and whether or not an upload is the same person as the original organic human.
That it shows an AI terrorist group that is bent on stopping the unstoppable, at any cost to life and violent destruction (leading to many opportunities for hollywood action gun violence, bloodshed and big explosions), something I don't much like personally.
That it spreads its intelligence and capabilities to the entire biosphere through nanotechnology, improving things that are already much out of control.
That it still has relationships with humans, although a bit strained on both sides.
That some people want to join it and it makes them better as a result. Controling humans too to be more productive (which may not be such a bad thing considering our autonomous score card so far).
That after it is all over, the planet some how goes on, no real damage done, a few have transcended and we now know it is possible. Maybe they are in hiding until the world is ready to Trancend again?
There you have it, my review. I personally enjoyed the movie, even though as I said it is flawed, it was a noble effort by hollywood to entertain first and to inform second, which is really all a good movie like this can do these days. If it is not finacially successful I hope it doesn't discourage other movies like this, Somehow I think it won't. I would personally re-write the ending so everyone was transformed into a great mind linked human-AI being, because that's how it really ends in my opinion. Or should I say begins . . . because then, what is not possible for such a being? And as a result . . . Are we not all then a Posthuman God?
As an alternate veiwpoint about the possible risks involved see this opinion by the famous Stephen Hawking.
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