How will advances in technology change the definition of personhood and free will?

With the proliferation of smartphone chat applications, questions arise about the possibility that the person on the other end of the line is not human but an artificial intelligence. This raises the question of whether free will, not the body, is the essence of humanity, and how technological advances will change the definition of humanity.

 

Recently, the smartphone application market has seen a proliferation of chat-related applications. From conversations with close acquaintances to random chats with strangers, applications that mediate communication between people in various ways are being developed more than ever before. This phenomenon isn’t just a product of technological advancement, it’s also a reflection of our inherent need to connect. But are we truly connecting through these chat applications, or are we just having superficial conversations that rely on the other person’s responses? As I was checking out the long list of chat applications, I had a thought. Could it be that the person we’re talking to isn’t a real human being, but rather a program that has learned our language habits and reactions, and is responding to us accordingly? If so, are we really communicating with them, and what does our conversation mean if it turns out that they are not human, but just a program?
Furthermore, if there can be human-level intelligent beings that have no physical appearance, but feel and think for themselves, what makes them different from the others around us, and can they not also be seen as human? This essay is a small journey into the nature of humanity, imagining technological advances that threaten the category of human. On what basis do we call a person human? Is the biological body an essential element, or are there more important criteria beyond it?
I don’t think a biological body is necessary to define humanity. Let’s say that technology is replacing biological organs step by step. When the relevant technologies, such as electrical connections to nerves and in vivo immune rejection control, become feasible, we will gradually replace our arms and legs with robots. These changes are more than just physical, they raise philosophical questions about human existence. In the movie “RoboCop,” the protagonist who is critically injured is fitted with a suit that replaces his body through cutting-edge technology. I believe that even if the body is replaced with another substance, as in the movie RoboCop, or even if we expand the scope of human appearance, humanity, the essence of what makes us human, is not replaced. The biological body can be understood as the complex expression of gene sequences. If the mechanisms of physical and mental behavior that result from the expression of genes can be reproduced equally well with non-biological materials, then the replacement of the body cannot be considered to harm the essence of being human.
On the other hand, the protagonist of “RoboCop” has his body replaced by a robot, but his brain and lungs remain biological organs. Since the brain remains biological, it can be argued that the biological body is not completely replaced. However, it is possible to imagine a case where the body is not replaced by something else, but rather has no appearance at all. The movie Transcendence is a rather extreme example. The protagonist’s vital activity deteriorates due to radiation exposure, but his mental activity is fully restored through a technology that analyzes electrical signals in the brain and uses them to express intelligence. Even after all his physical activity stops, his cognitive abilities remain intact, and his mind is connected to the Internet, where it researches, evolves, and eventually surpasses human intellectual limits. In the movie, he further develops the skills to manipulate life, and later restores his biological body on his own. This scenario makes us think deeply about how we define humanity. Is he still the same person after losing his biological body, and can he still be human after reconstructing it on his own? If technology is perfect, I believe that the protagonist continues to have humanity, and therefore continues to be human. Even if there are many fictional elements, I think we can see from these examples that having a body is not the essence of what defines us as human.
The main characters in the aforementioned movies all started out no different from us. They grew up with the expression of their genes and were what we would recognize as human, which makes it hard to imagine them becoming anything else. But we need to think more deeply about how technological advances can change our humanity. If, as we discussed earlier, a biological body is not included in the category of humanity, then beings that have not undergone the process of biological development but have human characteristics can be considered human. How can we define humanity then? Humanity is the possibility of mental activity rather than mental activity itself. Mental activity is not easily defined, but I interpret it as the free will to reflect, feel, and decide for oneself. Free will is not something that happens suddenly, but is the result of gradual integration and processing of information. If technology advances to the point where human mental activity or a similar level of free will is possible outside of biological manifestations, we will no longer be dealing with mere imagination, but with reality. And when that happens, the criteria for defining humanity will have to go beyond the traditional biological framework.
As technology advances, we will be able to distinguish between degrees of information integration and processing, and thus degrees of free will. We can then define personhood as a certain level of demonstrable free will. A human being is a being with the potential for a certain level of demonstrable free will. But this new definition raises new ethical questions. How do we define the relationship between free will and personhood, and who will we recognize as human when new criteria for defining personhood are established? These questions will become increasingly important as technology advances.
So far, we have imagined that with all technological advances, we will be able to measure our own or others’ mental activity and thus prove that we are human. But in reality, it is difficult to prove the proposition “I am human” except on biological grounds. Mental activity is not defined, and the differences in its degree are unclear, so while we may claim to be capable of mental activity, it is currently impossible to determine. Perhaps the reason most people recognize others as human is that, having already convinced themselves that they are human, they can confirm that others are engaged in mental activity at the same level or higher than they can conceive of. This confirmation can be through language, behavior, or emotional expression, and it is through these that we recognize others as human beings like ourselves. Thus, we can see that the basis for recognizing the humanity of the person we are communicating with is ultimately a subjective judgment. Which brings us back to our first question. Can an intelligent person be considered human? Based on the discussion so far, we can conclude that if we can recognize an intelligent entity as having humanity based on our subjective judgment, then it is human. If we assume infinite technological advancement, which is contrary to common sense, the body becomes irrelevant, and there is no difference between us and the intelligent person.
As technology threatens the common sense and categories that have defined us as human beings, we must ask ourselves what makes us human and reflect on what makes us human. When we define a human being as a being with humanity, we need to rewrite our definition of humanity. It’s time for a recombination of humanity. And this process is not just a philosophical exercise, but a practical matter that will be important in the world we will live in. As technology advances, we need to seriously consider how far we can extend humanity and how it will affect our society. This will eventually lead us to the fundamental question of what it means to be human.