A.rtificial I.mmortality

Living forever and regarding death as a mere option, thanks to technological breakthroughs, is the theme explored by director Anne Shin in her documentary film A.rtifical I.mmortality. For some, prolonging life by escaping its alienating condition of bodily deterioration is not a utopia, but a reality in the making. For transhumanists, the conception of the human being is part of a paradigm whereby technology can transform people into post-humans, optimizing their capacities and freeing them from the constraints of their bodily shell. The prowess of AI would thus transcend the human condition in the quest for infinite existence. To assert that the soul is a given, and that human beings must adapt to technology or risk extinction, is a somewhat shortcut conceptual route that ignores the great wealth of work in the human and social science.

The film highlights the technological discourse that demonstrates that it is possible to calculate and rationalize the individual, reducing him or her to pure data consisting of a sequence of 1's and 0's, thus capturing his or her essence in an avatar. This raises an important philosophical question: how can we formulate the next stage in the evolution of human civilization without calling into question the different approaches that run through the technological paradigm? The intentions of these different trends - the Terasem movement, technological singularity, longtermism, transhumanism, etc. - are difficult to grasp, sometimes contradict each other and are often couched in both fear and lofty promises. Is this the emergence of a new religiosity for our times, a new path to salvation? This film has the merit of questioning the need to open the debate on the very meaning of human nature and our inability to come to terms with death.

Lyse Langlois
Executive Director
OBVIA

References


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FAUVEL, G. 2015. «Les utopies du posthumain ou l'avènement des sociétés oublieuses». Sociétés, 3(129), 49-61.

HOFSTADTER, D. 2006. « Le médium cerveau est-il remplaçable? La loi de Moore, l'intelligence artificielle et le destin de l'humanité ». Médium, 4(9), 3-23

LAFONTAINE, C. 2008b. « La condition postmortelle. Du déni de la mort à la quête d'une vie sans fin». Études, 10(409), 327-335.