Book Reviewed: Do Robots Make Love? Transhumanism in 12 questions, by Laurent Belando and Jean-Michel Besnier

Transhumanism and the future of humankind

This is a very short and concise book about futurology and transhumanism. Some of the topics included in the discussion are; Should humans be improved? Can the technology fix everything? Does artificial intelligence (AI) will kill mankind? And could we change the way we reproduce? These discussions provide brief introduction to the technological advancement for the future of life.

transhumanists look forward to a time when we can wrest the reins of our nature from evolution using technological enhancements to increase our intelligence, communicate brain to brain, and even upload our consciousnesses into the cloud. We use writing to extend our memories and cooking to improve our diets. But technology provides us with prosthetics that enhances strength, but there is also difference between enhancement and medical corrections that restore “normal” functions. Transhumanism believes that by altering human reproduction, genetically and technologically augmenting the body, human kind will be very different. Technology is expected to offer biological freedom and be masters of our own evolution.

Market forces and the technological advancements will drive humanity to the same end point as the “singularity” of cosmology. At the center of a black hole where matter, energy and time “dissolves” in quantum space under intense gravity. Similarly, AI transcends humanity into a unified human-machine consciousness. This unification will alter human consciousness, physical strength, and emotional state.

Both wearable and implantable brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are being developed by Elon Musk’s Neuralink, Facebook, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). For example, when we speak, we are limited by the speed we can speak, but with a computer, we are limited by the speed of typing. But BMIs enable us to communicate at the speed of thought. For example, when we share our vacation experiences, we upload photos and videos. With BMI we can share our sensory and emotional experience during a vacation. We can buy contact lenses that can take pictures or video, and earbuds with the capability of universal language translator that allow us to communicate anywhere in the world.

This book is poorly organized and the style of writing (French translation into English) could have been better. It is not reader-friendly. In fact, there are numerous discussions and blogs on the web that is informative and engaging.