Will AI Make Us Immortal?

Department of Philosophy and Religious studies invites you to public lecture „Will AI Make Us Immortal? Mind Uploading and Personal Identity“ by Ralph Stefan Weir (Oxford / Lincoln). The lecture will take place on 3 April 2024 at 2:10 pm in room P217 at the main building of CU FA (nám. Jana Palacha 1/2, Prague 1).

A large number of influential and well-informed people believe that technologies capable of making us humans immortal will emerge in a matter of decades. In the words of Google’s Principle Researcher and AI Visionary, Ray Kurzweil, “We have the means right now to live long enough to live forever”. Kurzweil is a leading exponent of transhumanism, an ideology committed to using technology to transcend human nature. Extending human lives to the point of immortality is one of transhumanism’s main goals. The principal means by which transhumanists hope to achieve this goal, especially in the long term, is by „uploading“ our minds onto computers. Transhumanism is a big deal. It has vocal proponents in circles ranging from Silicon Valley to Oxford University to the Russian oligarchy. It counts in its number world-famous tech magnates. And transhumanist ideas are beginning to influence mainstream politics. While I admire the daring, big-picture thinking of transhumanism, I will argue that the promise of everlasting life via mind uploading is extremely dubious. In particular, proponents of mind uploading presuppose two incompatible theories of personal identity.

Ralph Stefan Weir is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Lincoln, UK. He is the author of The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics: An Argument from Consciousness to Mental Substance (Routledge, 2023) and articles on philosophy of mind, metaphysics, religion, and emerging technologies. He is currently on a year’s research leave in Central and Eastern Europe, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.