Joe Allen, author of Dark Aeon: Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity, said transhumanism in artificial intelligence, commonly known as AI, is a war against the “very concept of the human.”
Allen, on Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report, described transhumanism as a “quest to go beyond our current human state by way of science and technology – to transform the some portion of the human species and some versions of it or to transform the entire human species using everything from genetic engineering to artificial intelligence, a kind of symbiosis with artificial intelligence, a partnership, and, of course, using whatever means are available to connect the brain to artificial intelligence.”
Noting how transhumanism is a “war against humanity,” Allen detailed two levels of which the concept can transform human life.
“The first, and the most pressing issue, is it’s a war against the very concept of the human. It begins with materialism, by and large, the idea that human beings are just meat bags with DNA programming the meat, and there is not necessarily, or probably not, a soul inside. The idea is there is no clear distinction between the human being and, say, an animal, or, in the very near future, a clear distinction between the human being and the machine,” Allen explained.
“The second level is simply the idea that artificial intelligence, once it reaches a certain degree of sophistication, will be completely out of human control. It will do what it warrants and many, even those who are creating the systems, believe that the possibility of it destroying the human race, just simply because it has no use for us, is on the table,” Allen continued.
“So that is in a nutshell, the kind of nightmarish visions that are boiling up in Silicon Valley, in Seattle, in Boston, in London, in Tel Aviv, in Dubai – all across the planet, all the way over to Shenzhen and Beijing,” Allen added.
Allen also addressed a bill that is to soon be introduced in the Tennessee General Assembly by House Majority Whip Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville), which would make individuals who use AI to copy another person’s likeness or image to disclose that AI was used.
“I think that’s fantastic and I think that the more of that sort of legislation that’s in place, the more of the damage, which is pretty much inevitable, will be mitigated,” Allen said. “One of the dangers of many dangers, one of the most immediate dangers of AI is the ability to create deep fakes to create the likeness of someone to in some way smear them. And also just in general, just creating whole worlds using generative AI that aren’t real. People are already attracted to them, they’re going to be immersed in them.”
“So yes, I think that sort of legislation requiring anything from a watermark or just some sort of disclaimer requiring that people disclose that so that they aren’t able to do the sorts of nefarious things, at least not without consequence,” Allen added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Artificial Intelligence & AI & Machine Learning” by Mike MacKenzie. CC BY 2.0.
