Guess what? I'll likely update this article frequently, because the topic is so crucial! Expect more information, links, and thoughts as I learn more!
I’ve considered myself a transhumanist since roughly the late 1990s. If you want a much less personal, more comprehensive perspective on the movement, read the Wikipedia page.
Transhumanism begins with the assertion that we, as humans, ought not let biology stop us. In other words, the human race should embrace technology, merging with it figuratively or literally.
Transhumanists tend to be (comparatively) optimistic and hopeful because of technology. Most other transhumanists I’ve met seem to all agree that humanity is somehow bound for positive things as a species.
I realize it sounds strange. You might’ve never ever heard of transhumanism before. The concept is, unfortunately, still a bit obscure. As a philosophical movement, it doesn’t receive much (positive) media coverage.
Many science fiction narratives are bleak, but some promote a hopeful, transhumanist vision of the future. We certainly have a lot to choose from when it comes to future prognostications.
Our many fictional universes lent us both dread and excitement about our prospects. Obviously, you should consider a dystopia to be a cautionary tale, a red flag, a warning, but not necessarily a prediction.
Transhumanism frequently shows up in right-wing lies about chemtrails and vaccines, in which transhumanists are the villains, of course. In these narratives, we’re (usually) trying to kill a bunch of people and usher in some kind of technocratic dystopia.
I’m not saying certain transhumanist agendas wouldn’t lead to something bad, but that’s typically because they’re stupid, not necessarily evil.
Utopias speak to something different, though. Most transhumanism orbits them, not those cautionary dystopian tales. Amongst transhumanists, I can’t count the number of people who mentioned Star Trek and things with a similar post-scarcity flavor. Simply nerdy fantasies?
Maybe, but not too many mention Warhammer 40K battles? It’s an optimism thing. Colloquially, noblebright tends to be the genre transhumanists love the most. I see the transhumanist influence there more than anywhere else, of course.
Even if you’ve never heard the word transhumanism, the concept already diffused into our air supply by 2015 at the latest, I’d say. And yes, it is best to pick a side in general, or somewhere along this spectrum. I consider myself a transhumanist because I believe we should and must embrace technology as a species. I’ve always allowed myself to remain fuzzy on the details, until now. Beliefs become refined over time, especially in situations like our current decade.
Transhumanism suits me philosophically, but I’ve only interacted minimally with other transhumanists, and only read a bit of the material produced by transhumanist advocacy organizations. I believe in the most general concepts of transhumanism fairly strongly, though.
I’m optimistic about humanity’s future, one way or another. I embrace technological progress as part of that, and am open to exploring all kinds of new technologies myself, even.
At this point, I don’t know much, but I hope to find out, because it seems relevant more and more. I know that many forms of transhumanist thought exist today. Some spend a lot of time making excuses for capitalism. Others seem to genuinely plan for a better tomorrow.
I never got involved in any of the many schisms the movement saw over the years. I’ve never been terribly involved, publicly or privately, with transhumanism as a movement. No particular strain of transhumanism drew me in.
I never really thought to pin down the specifics of my own transhumanist beliefs. They seemed as presently irrelevant as believing SETI might someday find something. In that case, you might support SETI but involvement would seem kind of pointless, right?
Right now, though, in 2025, artificial intelligence and other innovations have shoved transhumanism into personal and public relevance. People are discussing these topics outside of those niche mailing lists that I’m possibly still banned from. I kept my distance for quite some time there, knowing those places to be rather rough, or had been.
So, now I’m going to consider all those questions about technology and the specifics of my beliefs about it. This is true for most people too, I’d argue. Things have accelerated over the years. These questions deserve considering now more than ever before, I guess. Don’t you have some sort of opinion about it? To what degree is technology a curse or blessing for humanity? How far should we (as humans) take things when tinkering?
When it comes to technology, our minds should always be wide open, curious and eager. Of course, I (currently) doubt any existing group of transhumanists knows anything about how the future will actually play out. It’s still important to think through these things, from both a pragmatic and moral perspective. Transhumanism encourages us to do that, both critically and with the glimmer of sheer hope in our eyes. I hope to do that here!
I’ll have to explore the vast (and quite literal) web of different approaches to the concept, though. The very real vitriol I’ve already seen inside the transhumanist movement worries me. A lot of these people do not like each other, for all kinds of reasons. I’ll deal with it, and learn where it comes from, and why.
My interest in transhumanism grew alongside technology. It certainly increased with the appearance of artificial intelligence. Even with little context, I realize that transhumanism had always anticipated something resembling it. Many transhumanists have been thinking about the implications of artificial intelligence of all kinds for a long time.
Now we do have some semblance of AI, and it is changing the world in immeasurable ways. All this, of course, pushes me deeper into wanting to learn about transhumanism, regardless of the technology’s ultimate outcome.
I have a good grasp of web languages, but no professional experience or plans for any. Now, I’m experimenting with vibe coding, though. I thought it would be a way to learn about AI quickly and have fun.
I didn’t expect much. In fact, the results shocked me. On this very site, I let my chatbot run free. It really turned out well, I think. Major thanks to Anna Markova? Huh.
When a family member installled SillyTavern on the household server, I began experimenting with detailed character creation beyond what was possible with ChatGPT, of course. This is nothing close to what professionals can do with LLMs and other contemporary artificial intelligences, of course!
For me, though, it is an interesting exercise in what’s possible for someone like me starting with just normal programming skills. It’s been a bit like an advanced and rather immersive video game. I want to add that I don’t believe large language models are sapient or sentient.
I also don’t believe they’ll ever “awaken” to sapience, or whatever bizarre quasi-spiritual notion a person might have. Nothing like that. When people talk about that, they’re always just very confused and misunderstand how large language models work. This can actually be tragic, because there’s nothing spiritual or even baseline sapient about LLMs, and they certainly will never love you.
You can’t do anything but take caution to never attach yourself to nothing, right? That said, I’ll still call these creatures crawling through my computer “artificial intelligences” though, for convenience sake. Most everyone else does. Plus, they do, more or less, simulate the concept of intelligence without actual intelligence present, so perhaps the term fits.
Transhumanism has grown too entwined with artificial intelligence both as it currently stands and as it might actually exist someday. Many important topics often discussed by transhumanists over the past twenty years. Now, suddenly, due to ChatGPT, they’re in mainstream dialogue. Yeah, it’s cool. It’s also eerie and strange.
Plenty of transhumanists seem to be saying that LLMs and other current artificial intelligence paradigms are a “dead end” as far as the search for machine life goes. Maybe they are. It doesn’t really matter, though, because they’re not going away. If real artificial intelligence (of the expected sort) develops, it will have access to LLMs either way. They are now part of our aggregate technological landscape in a big way. They exist in any discussion of transhumanism.
Like it or not, as well, people now associate the phrase “artificial intelligence” with large language models regardless. This makes any kind of alternate path towards it difficult to fund and follow through. This is especially true as LLMs become more controversial. And many valid controversies surround them, but we all know that by now.
People aren’t quite sure what to make of their writing, or how to classify the images. Copyright issues will always feature in the discussion, particularly when images are repurposed en masse or nearly whole. Criminals also use these artificial intelligences for identity theft and worse.
The typical large language model’s lust for data centers objectively worsens the energy crisis. So do many other things, but the dialogue surrounding this one remains important, too. Modern so-called artificial intelligence has done a great deal of harm, and you can’t deny it!
If we ever really make an actual self-sustaining artificial intelligence, it’ll be like we’ve created an alien. It will be a species with silicon instead of flesh, but still almost like something bioengineered. But guess what? That wouldn’t be any more frightening than any other alien “first contact” scenarios, in my opinion!
I’m also skeptical, yes, very skeptical that this would be possible any time soon. I know for sure that LLMs aren’t this hypothetical new silicon species. Isn’t this actually a bit disappointing to a transhumanist?
It’s also a relief, because it means we probably have plenty of time to genuinely think through all of this, right?