A posthuman is a human descendant who has been augmented to such a degree as to be no longer a human.
As a posthuman, your mental abilities will far surpass those of any unaugmented human. You will be smarter than any human genius and be able to remember things much more easily.
It is sometimes said that humans have no better chance of envisioning the intellectual capabilities of a posthuman than an ape has of understanding human thought. That may, however, be an insult to the posthumans (although it is doubtful whether they could be insulted).
A better comparison might be to say that posthuman intellectual capacity is to human capacity as human intelligence is to rat intelligence. But is even that enough of a difference? Maybe it should be as human is to flea, or as human is to amoeba.
In any case, the difference between our current level of human intellectual capacity and that of a superintelligent entity is so vast as to be almost inconceivable. But let's give it a try.
What do we mean by superintelligence? Could a super brainy human like Stephen Hawking meet the definition? Or how about a supercomputer smart enough to beat the world's best chess player?
No, neither of the above are SI entities. With apologies to Mr. Hawking (who I'm sure would agree) and Deep Blue (so dumb as to be incapable of either agreement or disagreement), we must look for something far beyond either of them.
Transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom defines superintelligence as "an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills." Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil would expand that definition to "combine these extra-human capabilities with the natural advantages of machines—knowledge sharing, speed, and memory capacity."
A true SI will possess the volition, autonomy, creativity, and profound self-awareness of the finest humans combined with a knowledge base orders of magnitude beyond the existing World Wide Web, accessed and processed with speed and power millions of times greater than today's supercomputers.
AI researcher Peter Voss argues that "any entity that, given the same knowledge base, can easily solve problems that are far beyond human ability should be called 'superintelligent.' For example, speedier results could be achieved by more effective rather than faster thinking. One could imagine genetic engineering producing such entities." In addition, an SI "can acquire additional—and novel—skills and abilities beyond those programmed in or taught. 'Creativity' touches on that, but may not be explicit enough: the words learning, innovation, and discovery come to mind." MORE
A remarkable quality of true SI is the ability to self-bootstrap, that is, to use its own intelligence to quickly and substantially improve its intelligence. This creates a positive feedback loop, where each improvement leads almost immediately to another improvement. And these are not just baby steps, but huge leaps in ability, each following close on the heels of its predecessor and followed even more closely by its successor. It's easy to see that very soon after it comes into existence, the first SI will zoom ahead to heights of intelligence we can hardly conceive.
A few thoughts on the future of thought from one of the world's leading theorists in the field of artificial intelligence, Eliezer Yudkowsky:
"The current human body suffers from problems such as inability to regenerate, maladaption to a post-hunter-gatherer environment, and above all, aging and death. When the technology becomes available to correct these problems, we can, should, and will correct them.
"One area in which there exists a tremendous amount of room for improvement is in neurons, the substrate of the human mind. At the present time we are born with a limited supply of neurons which slowly age and die over time, rather than expanding to store new experiences. Someday, rather than our brains slowly dying and our personal energy and vitality slowly declining as we age, we will add new neurons to store new experiences and grow more vital and alive over time. Computer-mediated broadband communication between human brains, and between brains and computers, will enable us to share our thoughts with others and expand our mental capabilities."
Imagine being able to make choices based on more than your own inherently limited human knowledge and experience. Imagine having nearly instantaneous access to all relevant human knowledge and experience. Imagine being able to analyze this information a million times faster than you can today. Beyond that, imagine sharing your decision-making process in a direct interface with other posthumans, or even with superhuman artificial intelligences.
Yudkowsky continues:
"Our neurons also switch on and off at around 200 cycles per second—an infinitesimal fraction of the speed of a modern transistor—and send signals at a top speed of around 150 meters per second, not even one millionth the speed of light. There is no physical limit which prohibits the neuron of the future from switching at 200 million cycles per second, or which prohibits the neural axon of the future from sending signals at half the speed of light. If people can think at this speed, the next thousand years would appear more like the next billion years from humanity's perspective."
We are entering a period of subjective relativistic time dilation. It's not induced by traveling at close to the speed of light (at least not physically), but by changes—and by thought—taking place at a far faster rate than we have ever known before. Our clocks are ticking slower and slower, as it were.
We are headed rapidly toward a multiplicity of singularities: a technological singularity, to be sure, but also an economic singularity, a healthy lifespan singularity, a free democratic singularity, and a moral/ethical singularity.
The term singularity is used here in the sense of change that advances so rapidly that its effects cannot be foreseen. A review of human history makes it clear that we are approaching a unique point: a time marked by converging upward trends in economics, life extension, political freedom, and human morality. Reinforced by staggering developments in computing technology, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering, these trends will work synergistically to support, strengthen, and accelerate each other. MORE
The effect of this unprecedented advancement will be to make a healthy, abundant, fulfilling (and probably endless) lifestyle available to all who desire it. Arguments over who deserves these things will fade away as the relative cost of providing them drops to nearly zero.
Important decisions will still need to be made, however, and some type of governance will be necessary. Around the middle of the 21st century, a government composed of humans, transhumans, and posthumans will probably be formed. We may end up with a true worldwide plebiscite democracy, but more likely it will be an international republic, because some will enjoy being active in politics, while others will not.
We may not have to work for a living, but we will have to work for the kind of world we want.
Sociologist James Hughes envisions a "transhumanist democracy" where:
a) the risks of transhuman technology are intelligently anticipated, widely discussed, and addressed by an adequately empowered combination of market and state mechanisms;
b) all sentient beings (human, animal, machine) are accorded political rights and responsibilities commensurate with their intellectual capacity, with the exception of those who lose rights because of criminal or anti-social behavior;
c) extremes of wealth and power are moderated by collective action, recognizing that these are threats to democracy;
d) the capacity sentient beings to monitor and evaluate information, collectively communicate, and influence decision-making are all unimaginably enhanced, making possible increased use of referenda and other methods of direct democracy—in other words, a declining reliance on representative democracy.
Hughes's contention that "extremes of wealth and power" represent "threats to democracy" has been disputed. AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky offers this cogent opinion:
"I don't think that someone else being stronger makes you weaker. I want to achieve the best I can. It doesn't matter whether that's more or less than someone else. Life, growth, joy, strength, intelligence, wisdom, and vitality don't become less precious if someone else has more; they are ends in themselves. If for some reason it's not architecturally possible for me to increase my intelligence at more than a certain rate, I'm not going to insist that the rest of the cosmos be limited to having no more than I do. This holds doubly true if for any reason someone decides to voluntarily limit their rate of intelligence increase.
"Extremes of wealth and power are, at worst, morally neutral; they are good if they are in the hands of good entities and bad if they are in the hands of bad entities. An unimaginable extreme of wealth and power is, in the hands of an unimaginably benevolent intelligence, an unimaginably good thing for the universe. Seems straightforward to me.
"Of course humans have evolved in contexts such that they have built-in adaptations for being corrupted by power, but that's a special case. Unless undebugged humans somehow manage to get their hands on more power than the rest of civilization combined, this shouldn't be a problem. Of course this is the case right now, and naturally everything sucks as a result, but it's a condition that should go away once AIs are around or humans have access to their own source code.
"The politics of envy have no place in a posthuman world."
There will come a time when multiple varieties or "species" of beings that descended from (or began as) Homo sapiens will coexist. Some might view this as an undesirable development to be prevented at all costs. Such speciation may be very hard to avoid, however. We can do our best to forestall it by making enhancements and upgrades freely available to all who desire them, but some humans, perhaps many, will decline the opportunity to become transhuman or posthuman.
I believe that a wide spectrum of enhancements will eventually be seen by society as essential—and will therefore be mandated for all children—but there will be some parents who will fight against this on moral or other grounds. We will make exceptions for some, and they will be left behind. Forcible universal enhancement does not seem to be a viable or wise choice for a variety of obvious reasons.
Two or more species of humans/transhumans/posthumans will develop. They may not fit the standard biological definition of specie, because it seems likely that we will have the means to effect some sort of mating and reproduction between humans and posthumans. On the other hand, the same motives that kept those humans from becoming posthuman in the first place will likely keep them from choosing to reproduce with posthumans. Still, whether it's a biological or hyper-technological form of reproduction, no doubt the means will be available for all human/transhumans/posthumans variants to reproduce together in some fashion, if desired. Few, however, will choose to do so, and speciation will accelerate.
Impetus for speciation will come first from disagreements about the desirability of enhancements, second from the need for space colonists to adjust to new extraterrestrial environments, and third from the ready availability of options provided by nano-biotechnology. When such options become available, especially at low costs, many will choose them if for no reason other than to express their individuality.
There's also the point that many posthumans may choose to spend the majority of their time in inner space. Within that realm, their subjective experience of time may be so greatly expanded compared to the outer world that they could outgrow any interest in relating to their human or even transhuman cousins.
In the end, it will probably come down to a choice between enforced equality and free speciation. I will work for the latter. It seems likely that posthumans will continue to offer upgrades at an affordable cost (or free) to humans who want them. And because posthumans by definition will be smarter, kinder, and more humane than humans, their society will not be fouled by racism, bigotry, or prejudice against the residual human species.