Transhumanism: Future scenarios, with Ben Goertzel

Among the big thinkers in the transhumanist community, Ben Goertzel has often had some of the most mind-expanding ideas.

For example, here's the first of "ten cosmist convictions" that he included in his 2010 book The Cosmist Manifesto:

"Humans will merge with technology, to a rapidly increasing extent. This is a new phase of the evolution of our species, just picking up speed about now. The divide between natural and artificial will blur, then disappear. Some of us will continue to be humans, but with a radically expanded and always growing range of available options, and radically increased diversity and complexity. Others will grow into new forms of intelligence far beyond the human domain."

More recently, Ben has published the book The Consciousness Explosion: A Mindful Human's Guide to the Coming Technological and Experiential Singularity, which (among many other bold concepts) champions the following hypotheses:

• A Technological Singularity is very likely coming, and has the potential to be dramatically and (by current human capabilities) inconceivably positive
• This Singularity is going to be not only an advance in technology and science and economy, but also a radical advance in terms of the states and level of consciousness of the intelligences on our planet (and beyond)
• This “Consciousness Explosion” will come out smoothest and most broadly beneficial if the people and human systems bringing it about exemplify compassionate, self-aware, loving and joyous consciousness.

To bring us up to date with his thinking, Ben will be the speaker at this London Futurists webinar, the third in the our series "Transhumanism: Future scenarios":

• Reviewing how his ideas have evolved over the years
• Considering the implications of the potential imminent arrival of Artificial General Intelligence
• Exploring the connections between his transhumanist thinking and his numerous activities in the development and deployment of breakthrough technologies
• Highlighting priorities for 2025 and beyond.

The webinar will include plenty of time for audience questions and feedback.

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This event will be hosted on Zoom. To register, click here.

There will be no charge to attend the webinar.

The webinar will start broadcasting at 4pm UK time on Sat 26th April. To find this time in other timezones, you can use this conversion page.

Please log into Zoom up to 10 minutes ahead of the start time of the event, so you won't miss the start of the live broadcast.

As the discussion proceeds, attendees will be welcome to raise questions and vote to prioritise questions raised by others.

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Dr Ben Goertzel has been chair or vice-chair of Humanity+, the international transhumanist organization, since 2008.

Ben leads the SingularityNET Foundation, the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society which runs the annual Artificial General Intelligence conference.

Ben's research work encompasses multiple areas including artificial general intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive science, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds, gaming, parapsychology, theoretical physics and more. He has published 25+ scientific books, ~150 technical papers, and numerous journalistic articles, and given talks at a vast number of events of all sorts around the globe.

Before entering the software industry, Ben obtained his PhD in mathematics from Temple University in 1989, and served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia, and New Zealand.

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To register on Zoom for this event, click here.