Transhumanism  

Summary When DARPA states it wants to explore unconventional approaches in biology to create transformational new technology, it is fitting that they got transhumanist Martine Rothblatt as a keynote speaker for their "Biology is Technology" symposium.  Check out the incredibly interesting video.

Martine Rothblatt, Chairman and CEO of United Therapeutics, delivered a keynote address at DARPA’s "Biology is Technology" symposium in New York City recently.

The two-day event was held by DARPA's newly created Biological Technologies Office to bring together leading-edge technologists, start-ups, industry, and academic researchers to look at how advances in engineering and information sciences can be used to drive biology for technological advantage.

The Biological Technologies Office or, BTO, was created to explore the increasingly dynamic intersection of biology and the physical sciences. The office's goal is to harness the power of biological systems by applying the rigorous tools of engineering and related disciplines.

"Achieving our mission of developing breakthrough, transformative technologies often demands taking unconventional approaches and challenging assumptions. We bring together the best innovators, set aggressive technical goals, and provide focused funding and active program management."

"Weird does not mean unethical—as long as the utility exceeds the yuckiness, social acceptance wins."

It is fitting therefore that Rottblatt spoke at the symposium, because she is undoubtedly a unconventional person—but also greatly successful at implementing such transformational technology.

Rothblatt's next project is to grow 100,000 lungs, hearts, and other transplantable organs per year using synthetic biology and other biotech breakthroughs.

“I’m using technology to create an unlimited supply of transplantable organs, and I’m doing it now, with no delay,” she added. Rothblatt said. “How man made dogs, how biotech made medicine, we’ll make organs.”

Rothblatt’s company, United Therapeutics, is preparing to grow human organs in genetically modified pigs. Animal-to-human transplantation, or xenotransplantation, isn’t a new idea—the heart valves of pigs are regularly transplanted into humans all the time. Transplanting entire pig organs into humans has been something of a pipe dream for a while, which is why Rothblatt is trying a new approach.

“Organs from porcine donors fit nicely in terms of size and function, but they do not fit nicely in how the molecules mesh together,” she said. “The idea began to percolate—maybe the way an artist of a sculpture chisels off rock, maybe we can chisel off enough genes to make a human-compatible genome.”

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"My technologies were extensions of my biology."

Rothblatt started United Therapeutics and has served as Chairman of its Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer since its inception. Prior to forming United Therapeutics she created SiriusXM Satellite Radio and served as its Chairman & CEO.

Rothblatt earned a Ph.D. in Medical Ethics from the Royal London College of Medicine & Dentistry, chaired the International Bar Association’s Law & Medicine Committee and authored the book Your Life or Mine: How Geoethics Can Resolve the Conflict Between Public and Private Interests in Xenotransplantation.

“Weird does not mean unethical. There’s a 45-degree line on a graph—as long as the utility exceeds the yuckiness, social acceptance wins,” said Rothblatt. “Taking organs from dead people and putting them in living people once seemed weird, it’s not weird anymore. It would be stupid to abjure nature’s greatest invention since chemistry.”


Dr. Rothblatt has also published several other books on mindware ethics, satellite communications, gender differences, genetic engineering, organ transplantation and Middle East peace.

SOURCE  DARPAtv

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 Transhumanism  

Speaking at the 2013 Global Futures International Congress, Martine Rothblatt explains how the end goal of technology is to overcome death. From therapeutic pharmaceuticals, to mindclones Rothblatt paints a detailed picture of the potential of digital immortality.

Recently talks given at the 2013 conference, Global Future 2045 International Congress were made available online.  One of the most inspirational discussions was given by Martine Rothblatt, on how technology's overall goal is to end death.

Well known to the transhumanist community, Rothblatt, the visionary entrepreneur,  lawyer, author, and founder of Sirius satellite radio and United Therapeutics.

"Described broadly biotechnology is the creation of medical tools to enhance life processes. What is rarely even whispered, though, is that the real goal of biotechnology is the end of death."

Rothblatt, the author of Virtually Human: The Promise---and the Peril---of Digital Immortality, describes the critical skills the technology entrepreneur needs based on her experience in satellite communications and life science companies to achieve living mindclones in the decades ahead.

According to Rothblatt, closely related to these entrepreneurial skills are the social and policy interactions needed with governments and NGOs.  Through this, Rothblatt is working to help ensure the Avatar Project of the 2045 Initiative is welcomed as a positive contribution to building the world as it should be.

Rothblatt's expertise in biotechnology came from her role in saving her daughter's life. Motivated by her daughter being diagnosed with life-threatening pulmonary hypertension, Rothblatt entered the world of the life sciences by first creating the PPH Cure Foundation and later by founding United Therapeutics. "Today instead of three thousand people having pulmonary hypertension, 60,000 people have it, that's because there are 57,000 people who have it who would otherwise be dead, but are alive because a pharmaceutical treatments that are able to help them manage their condition."

"Biotechnology creates some of mankind’s most remarkable and much loved products, from treatments to forestall blindness to cures for several cancers. Described broadly biotechnology is the creation of medical tools to enhance life processes. What is rarely even whispered, though, is that the real goal of biotechnology is the end of death," describes Rothblatt. "This is taboo because it is politically incorrect at best, and Galilean in its challenge to established theology and moral philosophy. Nevertheless, because biotechnologists undertake to cure diseases, and because death is generally the victory of disease over life, the ultimate goal of biotechnology is in fact the end of at least unwanted, non-violent and non-accidental death. "

Rothblatt thinks that the next step for biotechnology is in the cybernetic and digital domain. "The vanguard of biotechnology is in the digital domain where preparations are being made for transplanting the mind from a diseased brain, or an end-stage diseased body, to a computational substrate. I call this process creating a mindclone, and it enables effective immortality for a person’s consciousness."

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Working with David Hanson, she has created a prototype of this first mindclone prototype, Bina 48 (shown above).   Rothblatt intends to "transplant" minds into robotic Avatar prosthetics like Bina 48.

According to Rothblatt, the mindcloning process involves: creating a mindfile, a collection of your mannerisms, personality, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values.  This can be based on computer files, cloud files or even your Facebook account.

"Over the next two or three decades, there is a rapid effort to develop 'mindware,'" states Rothblatt. "Mindware is software that analyzes a mindfile, tunes itself to reflect a consciousness operating persona that reflects the same mannerisms, personality, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values that are in your mindfile. So mindware is a consciousness operating system."

Rothblatt argues the development of artificial intelligence, including deep learning, today is essentially the development of mindware.


SOURCE  2045 Initiative

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 Books  

In her new book, Virtually Human, Martine Rothblatt explores what the not-too-distant future will look like when cyberconsciousness—simulation of the human brain via software and computer technology—becomes part of our daily lives.

Martine Rothblatt, the founder of Sirius satellite radio and pharmaceutical company United Therapeutics, was the highest paid female executive in America last year with total earnings of $38 million. She also happens to be a leading transhumanist and transgender.

She founded United Therapeutics to help find a cure for pulmonary hypertension, a disease that afflicts her daughter Jenesis. Rothblatt's futuristic ideas sometimes seem far-fetched, if not a little crazy until they actually become reality.

In 1994, Rothblatt, then a man, underwent sexual reassignment surgery and remained married to her wife, Bina Aspen, inspiration for the robot avatar BINA48.

In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via mind uploading and geoethical nanotechnology. Through a charitable foundation, leaders of this school convene publicly accessible symposia, publish explanatory analyses, conduct demonstration projects, issue grants, and encourage public awareness and adherence to Terasem values and goals. The movement maintains a "Terasem Island" on the Internet-based virtual world Second Life, which is currently composed of two sims.

"I know this sounds messianic or even childlike, but I believe it is simply practical and technologically inevitable."

Through her blog Mindfiles, Mindware and Mindclones, she writes about “the coming age of our own cyberconsciousness and techno-immortality“ and started a vlog together with Ulrike Reinhard on the same topic.

Now, Rothblatt is the author of a book about the ethics and morality of cyberconsciousness, Virtually Human: The Promise---and the Peril---of Digital Immortality.

Virtually Human, with a forward by Kurzweil and illustrations by Ralph Steadman, explores what the not-too-distant future will look like when cyberconsciousness—simulation of the human brain via software and computer technology—becomes part of our daily lives.

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"I wrote it after reading Ray Kurzweil’s book The Age of Spiritual Machines in 2002," Rothblatt told Fortune. "I felt I had a kind of revelation. I actually had never thought about the possibility of digital immortality. It had never even occurred to me. The book was written so logically, and it seemed to be based on such solid technology with all of those graphs and data-based reasoning that I found myself being intellectually intrigued by it like I hadn’t been intellectually intrigued by something since satellite communications in the ‘70s"

Bina48, arguably the world's most sentient robot, was commissioned by Rothblatt and created by Hanson Robotics. Bina48 is a nascent Mindclone of Martine’s wife that can engage in conversation, answer questions, and even have spontaneous thoughts that are derived from multimedia data in a Mindfile created by the real Bina.

If you’re active on Twitter or Facebook, share photos through Instagram, or blogging regularly, you’re already on your way to creating a Mindfile—a digital database of your thoughts, memories, feelings, and opinions that is essentially a back-up copy of your mind.

“I know this sounds messianic or even childlike,” she told New York Magazine's Lisa Miller, “But I believe it is simply practical and technologically inevitable.”

Acording to Rothblatt, soon, this Mindfile can be made conscious with special software—Mindware—that mimics the way human brains organize information, create emotions and achieve self-awareness. This may sound like science-fiction, but the nascent technology already exists. Thousands of software engineers across the globe are working to create cyberconsciousness based on human consciousness and the Obama administration recently announced plans to invest in a decade-long Brain Activity Map project.

Virtually Human examines the ethical issues relating to cyberconsciousness and Rothblatt, with a Ph.D. in medical ethics, is uniquely qualified to lead the dialogue.

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 Avatar Robotics  

On the Charlie Rose program recently, the host interviewed Dmitry Itskov and David Hanson about the possibilities of the 2045 Avatar project.

Recently on the Charlie Rose progam, the host interviewed Dmitry Itskov and David Hanson about the possibilities of the 2045 Avatar project.  The Avatar Project was initiated to create human immortality by way of technology.

Prior to the interview, Rose plays a video featuring Global Futures 2045 personalities including Dr. Martine Rothblatt, Hiroshi Ishiguro and Itskov.

Itskov states in the interview that he is using the Global Futures 2045 movement to create the social demand for immortality technology.  He is hoping this demand will push sciences and technology forward to meet his ambitious 2045 deadline.

Related articles What Is The 2045 Initiative All About?  David Hanson on The Future of Robotics  Videos from Global Futures 2045

To exemplify how the project might evolve, Hanson also brought along his Philip K. Dick robot (below).  Hanson has worked on a preliminary avatar for Itskov.

According to Hanson, the development of the life-like avatar humanoid robot, is the "greatest ambition of my career to create a robot this life-like and sophisticated - something that can be a vessel for a mind."

"By defining what might happen, you are providing a road-map of dreams that influences the development of science and technology and sometimes realizes that dream," Hanson adds.

SOURCE  Charlie Rose

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