Transhumanism and AI: Ancient Ethical Questions in a Modern Technological Context

Transhumanism and artificial intelligence have emerged as central topics in public, ethical, and legal debate, though neither represents an entirely new phenomenon. Transhumanism, a philosophical movement advocating the use of technology to overcome human biological limitations, encompasses advances such as genetic editing, neural interfaces, and lab-grown organs — many of which are already standard in modern medicine. Artificial intelligence, formally named as a scientific discipline at the 1956 Dartmouth Conference, has evolved from theoretical mathematics into an everyday reality, with its recent accessibility rather than its existence marking the true shift. The ethical dilemmas surrounding both fields are not new inventions; they are longstanding philosophical questions now amplified by the speed and global scale of technological development. Adding further complexity, the concept of 'pluri-consciousness' challenges the assumption that awareness is exclusively human, raising unresolved questions about whether non-biological systems could also possess some form of consciousness.