1 OPERATOR: All right. We are ready to go. If
2 you are done on that end, we'll go ahead and get an
3 opening. Just one moment please. Please stand by.
4 Good day everyone. Welcome to the first
5 Colloquium on the Law of Transhuman Persons.
6 Today's call is being recorded now for opening
7 remarks and introductions.
8 I would like to turn the call over to
9 Dr. Martine Rothblatt.
10 Please go ahead, Doctor.
11 DR. ROTHBLATT: Thank you very much.
12 I'm very pleased to welcome everybody to our
13 first Colloquium on the Law of Transhuman Persons.
14 In addition to all of us assembled here at the
15 Terasem Space Coast Conference Center, we also have
16 an open conference call with both national and
17 international dial-in lines so we may enable the
18 public at large to participate in the Colloquia,
19 mostly through just listing but, also we will have
20 intermittent breaks when individuals can ask
21 questions who are on the conference call. And, of
22 course, during these breaks we also invite
23 questions from all the participants.
24 We ask that you not ask questions during the
25 formal presentation of each participant because
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1 otherwise there would be no way that they could
2 ensure that they keep to their time limit. And as
3 the chairman of the conference I'll be doing my
4 best to keep everybody to their time limits so that
5 everybody that's outside the conference can
6 easily follow along with which session they want to
7 listen in to, or ask questions of.
8 I'd like to also express appreciation to our
9 transcribing team that's here, the videography
10 team and our court reporter. As mentioned, all of
11 the formal sessions of the meeting, the
12 presentation, and the formal questions and answers
13 will ultimately be completely webcast, via
14 streaming video. The text of what's actually
15 said, however, will be first submitted to everybody
16 who has said something in the text and you will
17 have the opportunity to edit your textual remarks
18 to your satisfaction, so that the text that
19 actually appear in our web archive, will be what
20 you feel comfortable with saying, rather than what
21 you might have said in the spur of the moment.
22 That's largely because we realize that there is a
23 difference between spontaneity and archiving
24 something and we want people to feel spontaneous
25 and not to feel that whatever they say
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1 spontaneously is what will be archived. So,
2 spontaneously, say whatever you feel, or want to say.
3 Nothing will be put in the transcript of the
4 colloquium except that which you have edited and
5 expressed to your written satisfaction with.
6 With those introductory remarks, I am very happy
7 to have all of the participants here who are listed
8 in the program as well as guests and other
9 distinguished visitors to the colloquium.
10 I would like to begin with the first
11 presentation which is: Forms of Transhuman Persons,
12 The Importance of Prior Resolution of Relevant Law,
13 in particular comparison with The Law of Outer
14 Space. And the purpose of this presentation is
15 just to kind of queue up what is the purpose of the
16 Colloquia on the Law of Transhuman Persons, why are
17 we bothering to do this? I'd like to start with a
18 definition of "transhuman" and there are, in fact,
19 a great many different definitions of "transhuman".
20 I've listed on the Power Point here, some of the
21 ones which come from dictionaries, and from the Extropy
22 Institute, which is considered to be the founder of
23 the Transhumanist Movement, and the Terasem
24 Movement's own definition of "transhuman", which is
25 trans-biological receptive and noetically synthetic
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1 humans. And the transhuman -- the Terasem
2 Movement's belief that the word "human" depends on
3 thoughts and not DNA. So you can see that there is
4 a wide range of definitions of what is human.
5 Perhaps the common theme to all of these
6 definitions is that a transhuman is something other
7 than what we normally consider it to be, for the past
8 several Millennia, a typical biological human. So
9 something beyond that, something different from
10 that.
11 If you take a look at the different
12 definitions of "transhuman", it's interesting that
13 you can see that they have a varying emphasis on
14 some of the definitions, some concentrate more on the
15 form of the entity; and other definitions
16 concentrate more on the entity's attitude. So I
17 think this is an interesting way to sort of explore
18 the scope that's provided by the term "transhuman".
19 And, in fact, the ambiguity, the constructive
20 ambiguity I think which is contained within that
21 term. For example, definitions which say
22 transhuman means superhuman, tend to be more about
23 the form of the transhuman and they envision it
24 more like a post-human human, something that has a
25 tremendously different body and tremendously
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1 greater power, or a tremendously different mind.
2 On the other hand, definitions of "transhuman",
3 more likely, say Terasem's definition, which
4 emphasizes the receptivity of the individual to
5 trans-biological unity, those are really more about
6 attitude. Anybody and everybody in this room
7 and on the conference call, could call themselves or
8 say I too, am a transhuman. And it's because it's
9 really more about one's attitude. Are you receptive
10 to being trans-biological? So this is -- I think,
11 this graph provides you a way to sort of parse the
12 different types of definitions of "transhuman".
13 There are also many opportunities to challenge
14 even this span of definitions. How about
15 brain-enhanced, non-human animals? How are they
16 considered within the definitions? It seems to me
17 that even all the definitions I've listed may not
18 quite encompass brain-enhanced, non-human animals.
19 We are very fortunate to have a presentation by
20 Guido, later this afternoon, who will further
21 explore that concept.
22 What of Kimera? How about sideways evolution?
23 I think is very interesting. Many people have sort of
24 assumed, even since the time of Darwin's
25 contemporaries, that evolution always went to this
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1 upward path of greater and greater
2 complexity. Darwin himself actually was not of
3 that misapprehension and most
4 evolutionary biologists will emphasize, that
5 evolution occurs as much sideways as anything else,
6 so when we think about -- about other versions
7 of humans that may not be more advanced
8 intellectually or physically, would they also be
9 transhumans? What of artificial intelligence
10 that's not patterned on human thoughts at all? We
11 are very fortunate to have in our speaker list
12 today Peter Voss and he is, I believe, going to
13 emphasize this topic, in particular, that AI may not
14 be patterned, or Artificial General Intelligence may
15 not be patterned on human thought at all, and
16 Peter Voss is one of the greatest thinkers in this
17 area. So this simply means that the term
18 "transhuman" is an evolving term and I think that
19 that actually is a good thing, and it ties in with
20 the theme of my talk, which is a comparison between
21 The Law of Outer Space and the Law of Transhumans.
22 We'll see briefly, outer space itself
23 has never been a well-defined concept. It has been
24 a continuously evolving concept, a difference
25 between air space and outer space.
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1 We talk about the Law of Transhuman Persons,
2 and that gives rise to some questions about how
3 we would define "persons". My Power Point here
4 identifies several different possible definitions
5 of "persons". It is defined in the United States
6 Code. We have kind of a common definition of a
7 human or an organization with legal rights and
8 duties. But it gives rise to questions, such as the
9 United States Code defines a United States person,
10 as a UnitedState's citizen. So are transhumanized
11 U.S. citizens, still U.S. citizens? If there is no
12 renunciation or death, it probably still is a citizen;
13 even if you've chosen bit by bit to replace
14 yourself or to maybe just change your attitudes and
15 become transhumanized as an individual, physically or
16 attitudinally. But how about a revived person?
17 How about somebody who has, who has
18 experienced legal death and perhaps heart death,
19 but not information theory death, that their brain
20 is vitrified or cryonicized, in an organization such
21 as ALCOR, and subsequently becomes revived and
22 living, autonomous and conscious. Is that
23 individual a citizen or not? These are all
24 interesting questions to explore.
25 The last bullet I have here: Can non-citizens
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1 be organized as trusts or business entities?
2 We are fortunate today to have a number of expert
3 speakers on the subject of trusts, in this state.
4 Attorneys Eric Engelhardt, John Dedon and Chris
5 Sega, will opine as to what extent trusts and
6 estates are useful as business organization concepts,
7 for at least some types of transhuman persons.
8 Getting back to why the Terasem Movement
9 decided to organize the Colloquia on The Law of
10 Transhuman Persons. We've been inspired, and
11 certainly I personally was inspired, by the ongoing
12 Colloquia on the Law of Outer Space. In 1958, a
13 group of technologists and lawyers, about the same
14 size as this group, roughly 30 individuals,
15 gathered together to hold the first Colloquia on The
16 Law of Outer Space. Some of the pictures here give
17 you the context. This was the era of the Nikita
18 Khrushchev, and the Nixon Kitchen debates, over
19 which system would produce a better washing
20 machine; the time of forced desegregation in
21 Little Rock; and the first launches of the U.S. and
22 Soviet satellite. So if it was all the way back
23 then, at the very dawning of the space age, that
24 technologists and lawyers got together and said,
25 Let's start to think about The Law of Outer Space.
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1 I feel really, that we are at about that same
2 point right now with regard to transhuman
3 technology. As I'll show in the next few
4 slides, there is much to be inspired from the
5 experience of this Colloquia on The Law of Outer
6 Space.
7 Experts met to start the field and I want to
8 emphasize it was a combination of technical and
9 legal experts, just as we have here today, a
10 combination of technologists and attorneys.
11 When you're dealing with technology law,
12 both have to work together, hand in hand to come up
13 with a rational result. At the time when experts
14 met to begin the field of space law, no animal had
15 even been to orbit. So for some people to say,
16 Hey, aren't we starting to think about transhuman
17 law too soon? Well, it was not too soon for
18 the experts on space law. It was just 10 years
19 after, actually, 12 years after Arthur C. Clark,
20 who was the inventor of Geostationary Satellite
21 Communications, had published his first article
22 pointing out to people that if you put a satellite
23 in geostationary orbit, it would be able to
24 broadcast continuously over a portion of the
25 Earth's surface. No one had thought about the idea
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1 before. He published that idea in the Wireless
2 World. Being the nice beneficent sort of person
3 that he is, he did not patent that idea first,
4 which he later regretted, but it was – it became,
5 public domain. I have the original Wireless World
6 article, and my favorite part of it, I would like
7 for future presentations, to scan the image, it shows
8 a little person inside the satellite, because they
9 could not conceive at this point in time,
10 that electronic technology would be adequately
11 sophisticated and reliable, that it could handle the
12 switching of calls within a communication satellite.
13 So it was thought it would be necessary to launch a
14 person into the satellite like the old operator of
15 the 1950s who connected people to each other.
16 The first damage caused by a space object,
17 let's say the first legal issue, that was really
18 a legal issue, was 20 years in the future.
19 Perhaps now we are 20 years in the future,
20 before the first artificial intelligence agent
21 causes damage, or maybe it will occur sooner. In
22 any event, the point of this slide is to say, that
23 based on analogy with space law I think one would
24 be hard pressed to say that we are starting too
25 soon with the Colloquia of the Law of Transhuman
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1 Persons.
2 Here's a comparison of where we were with
3 outer space technology and transhuman technology,
4 you can see by going down this chart that in
5 each different category we are at a comparable
6 point today in transhuman technology where outer
7 space technology was in 1958. So I think, comparably,
8 it’s a good time to start legal efforts.
9 This next slide is from Raymond Kurzweil and
10 shows that based on his analyses we are within 20
11 years from the point in time when computers, for
12 example, will have human level intelligence. And
13 here is another slide from Raymond Kurzweil that
14 basically makes the same point because of the
15 accelerating rate of technology in general,
16 miniaturization in size, speed of processing,
17 and advances in medical technology. We will even have
18 some of the more aggressive concepts of transhuman
19 technology, transhuman persons walking around,
20 curious about things within 20 years.
21 So what did the experts conclude on space law
22 in 1958? Even back then they came to a
23 conclusion that the age old concept of national
24 sovereignty over air space had to give way to the
25 technological reality of orbital over-flight. You
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1 have to remember, up until the time of the space age it
2 was thought that a country's sovereignty went from
3 the core of the Earth, in a cone, out to the cosmos
4 and you did not have a right to fly a balloon or a
5 plane over another country's space without their
6 prior permission. So when Sputnik went orbiting
7 around the world the Russians didn't ask for
8 anybody's permission and it became
9 clear it would be ludicrous to ask for peoples
10 permission for orbital over-flight. So
11 technological advancement abolished a
12 fundamental principle of international law,
13 national sovereignty. Another thing that they
14 concluded was that some entity had to be legally
15 responsible for every object launched into outer
16 space because they realized these objects could
17 become damaged, and if nobody was responsible, if
18 there was no rule of law, there would be the
19 possibility of conflict and possibly even war
20 resulting. So how did they fare? These are
21 pictures of two of the founding members of the
22 Colloquia on the Law of Outer Space, Andrew Haley
23 from Washington, D.C. and Stephen Gurrow from the
24 University of Mississippi. Within eight years,
25 after they began founding, they had an outer space
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1 treaty that had banned sovereignty over space. So an
2 international treaty was adopted based on the
3 recommendations and incorporated the rough draft
4 developed in the Colloquia of the Law of Outer Space -- just
5 nine years, I'm sorry, after the first Colloquia.
6 Six years after that, an international treaty
7 on liability caused by space objects was adopted
8 worldwide, again, based every year, the Colloquia
9 would develop and draft treaties and papers to be
10 presented, pros and cons, what was realistic
11 damage, and what wasn't. A few years after that yet
12 another treaty, and in this year the Colloquia on
13 The Law of Outer Space had its 47th Colloquia,
14 never missing a year since 1958. So that's
15 certainly a great role model for us
16 working on the Law of Transhuman Persons.
17 What might we conclude analogous to our legal
18 forbearers? Perhaps transhumanist technology
19 renders age-old concepts of citizenship and death
20 as obsolete as the age-old legal concept of
21 national sovereignty. And we'll have to come up
22 with new definitions or new concepts to transcend
23 death or citizenship because of our own
24 “Sputnikizing” of technology in our own time.
25 Perhaps we will agree that responsibility for
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1 transhuman persons needs to be regularized in some
2 fashion so that newly created individuals have a
3 train of responsibility, whether to themselves or to
4 the non-transhuman people who created them.
5 A possible analytic framework for transhuman
6 person law is laid out in this flowchart where
7 perhaps, we will need to evolve to an information
8 theory definition of death instead of heart deaths
9 or brain deaths, which have been previous
10 definitions. And if an individual's mind
11 information is still organized then they really are
12 not dead under a concept of information theory
13 death. We will then have to ask whether or not
14 that entity is conscious. And consciousness is a
15 complex subject which I'm sure many people will
16 opine on today. My favorite definition of
17 consciousness is that of Justice Potter
18 Stewart's -- borrowed from Justice Potter Stewart's
19 definition of "pornography". That he can't define
20 it but he knows it when he sees it. And when he
21 said he’d know it when he saw it, he said, "Finally,
22 we will have to revert to community standards of
23 what is pornography to a particular community."
24 Perhaps we’ll need community standards with regard to
25 whether or not an entity is conscious. They may be
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1 more conscious in one state and not conscious in
2 another. These are things that we'll have to
3 explore as fundamental aspects of transhuman person
4 law.
5 And, finally, if an entity is not dead and
6 they are conscious, what type of legal rights will
7 they have? Will the equal protection clause of the
8 Constitution apply so if they have the same rights
9 of people who have been biologically born in the
10 United States? We've got a number of years to
11 explore these decisions. We certainly don't have
12 to solve them at this first Colloquia. But if we
13 could do what the first Colloquia of The Law of
14 Outer Space did, create an agenda of legal issues
15 to be addressed, I think we’ll be on a very good
16 track.
17 Finally, if we do agree that transhuman
18 individuals should be granted transhuman
19 citizenship, it would certainly be a huge leap to