Videos

This talk asks a hopeful question: What if it all works out? The speaker envisions AI's positive potential at three levels—garden, city, and planet. At the garden level, he invokes the simple paradise of Epicurus: friends discussing ideas in peaceful surroundings, suggesting we may already be closer to Eden than we realize. But this vision falters when one considers the unhoused sleeping under Zion's Bank, prompting a turn to the Mormon vision of Zion where there are no poor. Finally, at the planetary level, the speaker sees AI's greatest promise in its capacity to detect microscopic toxins and enable truly sustainable material cycles—going from “one to zero” as nature does, so that everyone might eventually enjoy the simple luxury of talking about ideas with friends.

Nancy Fulda, an AI researcher and science fiction writer, offers a primer on how neural networks actually work—explaining backpropagation, weights, and training in accessible terms. She recounts how her own research on ChatGPT’s ability to predict statistical voting patterns was sensationalized by headlines into claims of AI omniscience, illustrating the terminology gap between researchers and the public. Fulda emphasizes that while AI is genuinely transformative—enabling new medicines, restoring sight, generating video—current systems lack internal state between interactions and remain far from sentience, with roughly 80% of commercial AI projects failing.

Vinay Gupta, founder of the blockchain company Materium and inventor of the Hexayurt refugee shelter, introduces the concept of "moral computing"—using technology to address the "moral toxins" that accumulate when consumers unknowingly support exploitative labor practices or environmental harm. He argues that while supply chain information about products already exists, it remains siloed within distant organizations, leaving consumers unable to make informed ethical choices. By combining blockchain’s transparency with Gandhian principles of fair trade, Gupta envisions a future where purchasing automatically triggers offsetting actions—like carbon credits—and where machine-readable specifications allow people to automate their moral preferences, filtering out goods produced under questionable conditions.

This closing session roundtable discussion from the 2020 MTA conference explores the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on global interconnectedness. Participants highlight encouraging developments—from a seventeen-year-old creating a widely-used pandemic dashboard to international cooperation on medical technology and the rapid expansion of remote work and education. The conversation turns to what the MTA can do during the crisis, with participants emphasizing the need to balance transhumanist optimism with genuine empathy for those suffering, the importance of understanding exponential growth's implications, and the opportunity to strengthen the broader transhumanist movement through increased virtual collaboration.

Richard Harvey surveys genetic technologies from present capabilities to far-future possibilities, covering gene editing, personalized medicine, GMOs, and de-extinction. He raises ethical concerns about the concentration of genetic technology ownership, the mixed blessing of genetic diagnoses like Huntington’s disease, and the potential for personalized pathogens. Looking further ahead, Harvey explores how biodiversification could become a manufacturable resource and how our expanding powers will require new ethical frameworks—suggesting that religious transhumanism, with its tradition of contemplating human-like gods, offers valuable insights for thinking about the ethics of beings who can rewrite entire ecologies.

Giulio Prisco explores the speculative physics and technology that might one day enable the resurrection of the dead, using his ancestor Eduardo Scarpeta as a personal example. Drawing on concepts from string theory, higher-dimensional physics, and the film Interstellar, he imagines future beings with access to the fourth spatial dimension who could scan information from the past and restore individuals to life. Prisco frames technological resurrection not as imminent but as a far-future possibility—one that invites hope rather than passive waiting, much like early science fiction inspired the eventual reality of space travel.

This panel discussion features keynote speakers Liz Parrish, CEO of BioViva, and Melissa Inouye, a scholar of Chinese Christianity, exploring the intersection of life extension, gene therapy, and religious meaning. Parrish discusses her company’s work on regenerative gene therapies and the ethics of expanding access to such treatments, while Inouye reflects on how her experience with cancer has deepened questions about embodiment, vulnerability, and divine capacity. The conversation touches on Mormon theology’s unique views of God’s body, suffering, and human potential.

Ross Richey draws a striking parallel between the challenges of ensuring AI safety and the LDS plan of salvation. He argues that the requirements AI researchers propose for testing superintelligent machines—isolation, moral guidelines, the possibility of failure, and the presence of suffering—mirror the conditions described in Mormon scripture for proving intelligences before granting them godlike powers. The talk suggests that concepts like the Fall, temptation, obedience, and even a Savior figure emerge naturally from thinking rigorously about how to verify that powerful beings can be trusted with cosmic responsibility.

Chris Bradford reflects on the Mormon Transhumanist Association’s first decade, noting how religious transhumanism—once considered inconceivable—has gained legitimacy in both transhumanist and religious communities. He surveys technological advances from 2006 to 2017, including mobile technology, AI, autonomous vehicles, and CRISPR, arguing that the MTA must now expand its influence beyond transhumanist circles to engage with government, industry, and the broader public. Bradford presents a new mission statement focused on becoming a thought leader in integrating religion and science while exemplifying a new paradigm for religion in an increasingly technological world.

Michaelann Gardner explores whether Mormon theology provides space for sentient artificial intelligence. She examines LDS scripture on intelligences, the spiritual nature of animals, and passages where objects like stones and the earth itself express emotion—suggesting that consciousness may not be exclusive to biological brains. Gardner argues that sentience, with its capacity for desire and subjective experience, may be key to developing AI that can solve complex real-world problems, and proposes that the most fruitful path forward may be human-machine integration rather than standalone artificial general intelligence.