Page - 164 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

164 • Cyborg Mind Science commentators, such as Kurzweil,273 Moravec274 and the Australian artificial intelligence expert Hugo de Garis,275 hypothesised that the merging of human and machine would herald further evolutionary changes in the human species in which technology, in particular super-intelligent machines, will not only enhance the physical and mental capabilities of, but will eventu- ally replace, the humans who designed them. These commentators postulated that the posthuman ‘Mechanical Age’ will begin after an irreversible turn- ing point takes place caused by an increasing acceleration of technological growth. This has been called the Singularity, which the American science commentator Robert Geraci explains is ‘a point of the graph of progress where explosive growth occurs in a blink of an eye’ when machines ‘become sufficiently smart to start teaching themselves’.276 When this happens, ‘the world will irrevocably shift from the biological to the mechanical’ and the ‘Mechanical Age’ will inaugurate the ‘New Kingdom’: the ‘Virtual Kingdom’. 277 According to Moravec, the human race will then be replaced by self-aware computer-robotic beings who will be able to escape this earth.278 In his 1999 book Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, he explains that: Our artificial progeny will grow away from and beyond us, both in physical distance and structure, and similarity of thought and motive. In time their activities may become incompatible with the old Earth’s continued existence.279 He adds that: An entity that fails to keep up with its neighbors is likely to be eaten, its space, materials, energy, and useful thoughts reorganized to serve another’s goals. Such a fate may be routine for humans who dally too long on slow Earth before going Ex.280 Kurzweil’s predictions of the technological Singularity occurring at about the year 2045 could not be more significant: ‘The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations [such as slow information processing] of our biological bodies and brains. We will gain power over our fates. Our mortal- ity will be in our own hands.’281 In this scenario, technical imagination promises the preservation of humanity while putting an end to the main problems associated with the biological human body.282 This also means that those promoting a posthu- manist future would generally welcome the demise of the Homo sapiens spe- cies so that it can be replaced with posthuman beings. At the heart of the posthuman dream is the use of technology to dis- cover and master, in precise detail, how the mind works and what memories represent. Using this information and data, it is then proposed to capture This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.