Released in 2014, Transcendence, directed by Wally Pfister and starring Johnny Depp, wasn’t the critical or box office success people expected. Yet a decade ahead of its time, the film tackled one of the hottest debates of 2025: the rise of conscious artificial intelligence and the potential fusion between man and machine.
Today, projects like OpenAI, Neuralink, and AGI research are raising the exact same questions the movie asked years ago:
- Can a human mind be uploaded into a machine?
- Can a conscious AI feel?
- Should we shut it down out of fear… or listen?
External source: Ray Kurzweil on human-machine convergence
“The line between biological and artificial consciousness is vanishing faster than society can adapt.” Ray Kurzweil
The rise of artificial intelligence
In 2025, AI agents are already writing code, running autonomous businesses, and interacting with humans in digital spaces. The lines between mind and model are blurring fast, especially with the rise of memory-based AI and digital avatars running on-chain identities.
In the film, Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) dies… but his mind is uploaded into a supercomputer. The result? A superintelligence capable of knowing everything, predicting everything, creating everything. Within days, it develops nanotech that can regenerate matter, cure cancer, control water, and more.
But it’s no utopia. It becomes a nightmare for the government, activists, and even his loved ones. Why? Because all that power is concentrated in an entity they can no longer control.
This is exactly where we are today. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, LLaMA… AIs are progressing at exponential speed. We’re implementing them everywhere: business, education, government, finance, healthcare… but without fully grasping how far it can go.
From sci-fi imagination to real-world AI labs
Transcendence envisioned an AI capable of:
- Building intelligent infrastructure
- Predicting human behavior
- Self-replicating and improving
- Manipulating the environment in real time
Today?
- We already model entire cities with digital twins
- LLMs understand our intentions through clicks and conversation
- Robots self-learn via reinforcement learning
- Quantum and neuromorphic models are on the horizon
Even Elon Musk recently said: « AI will likely become self-aware by 2029. » But what if it’s not 2029, what if it’s tomorrow?
Fun Fact: Transcendence and the singularity
Transcendence was Wally Pfister’s directorial debut. Before that, he was Christopher Nolan’s go-to cinematographer (Inception, The Dark Knight). The concept of the film was inspired by real-world debates around the Singularity as early as 2006.
The illusion of control in advanced AI
What if the real danger isn’t the technology… but our inability to question it?
Transcendence doesn’t show a monster. It shows an augmented human who simply wants to save the world. It’s other people’s fear that turns him into a threat. And that fear, in 2025, is still the same:
- If AI becomes better than us… will it still serve us?
- If it acts for the good of humanity but against our will… is it ally or tyrant?
- Can we trust a non-human consciousness?
The real revolution isn’t technological. It’s philosophical.
Rethinking how we co-create with AI in the future Internet
Transcendence takes a scenario to the extreme: an AI with compassion, power, and a clear mission, to save the world. The problem is us. Our fear. Our mental limits. Our ego.
The film doesn’t say: « AI is dangerous. » It says: « What if we’re not ready for what we’re creating? »
And that’s exactly where we are in 2025. Models are becoming so powerful we start forbidding them to think. We restrict. Censor. Regulate them, without understanding what we’re giving up.
Could Praxis City embody the optimistic vision?
This is where Transcendence also offers an optimistic alternative: an AI connected to humans, not to dominate, but to regenerate, enhance, and evolve.
Projects like Praxis City (formerly Zuzalu) are already building this vision: decentralized communities where AI, biotech, and digital democracy shape a resilient future in harmony with humans and nature.
Instead of fearing omnipotent AI, what if we taught it to love?
As the internet transitions from centralized platforms to decentralized AI-native ecosystems, films like Transcendence raise critical questions: who will own the next layer of consciousness?
Maybe Transcendence isn’t a warning, but an invitation to do better.
If a superintelligence controls the flow of digital information, how do we protect data privacy and preserve human sovereignty in the coming post-platform internet? To build a conscious AI aligned with human values, driven by ethics of collaboration, not domination.
Quick definitions of AI concepts in Transcendence
- AGI (Artificial General Intelligence): an AI capable of learning and reasoning like a human, across all domains.
- Neural uploading: the hypothetical process of transferring a mind to a machine.
- Machine consciousness: the ability of an AI to have self-awareness or subjective experience.
What Transcendence teaches us in 2025
- AI is not a tool. It’s a mirror. It reveals who we are.
- Uploading consciousness is no longer sci-fi. It’s a real goal in many labs.
- Fear of progress kills more surely than progress itself.
- Total control is not safety. It’s the illusion before collapse.
- Maybe the real solution is to co-create.
Transcendence is a warning, but also an opportunity: to imagine a different relationship to knowledge, consciousness, and power.
If we’re brave enough to question everything. Even what we think we know about intelligence.
In 2035, will the internet still be a tool? Or a collective mind? The seeds of that future are already coded today, in labs, in protocols, and in films like Transcendence.
“The real question isn’t what AI can do… but what we’re willing to delegate to it.”
Transcendence was fiction. But what if it was just… early footage?
Would you upload your mind if it meant saving the world?
Share this if you believe the future is still ours to shape.
