I had a "bogus breakthrough"

... in that I'm sure smarter people than me have already figured this out -- but I swear this idea came to me on my own!

I was watching "Theory of Everything" and started thinking about the notion of transferring the human mind into a computer (the "singularity"). One of the things often brought up is the problem of whether the "you" that made it into the computer would really be the authentic you, or just a copy like we make of computer files. The original "you" would still die, and the computer "you" would be a copy -- exact at the point the copy was made, but distinct and separate from the person you were born as.

Well, I thought -- a computer isn't really just one machine; it's a system of devices -- memory, input, output, and processing. Now we have computers with multiple processors working in concert available for purchase by the public; supercomputers have many processors working together. Most computers have more memory than they need at their disposal.

So my idea is, to successfully transfer a human mind into a computer, you'd have to first make the brain a component of a larger computer system that included artificial memory, input, output and processing. The brain would control and work in tandem with all these components at first -- learning to use the artificial components the way a baby learns to use its arms and legs. At a certain point, the mind would be capable of operating using only the artificial processors, memory, input and output -- independently of the organic brain in which it originated. At that point, the mind could simply stop using the brain, much as a supercomputer could stop using all of its processors and memory.

So, that's my idea -- migrate a human mind into artificial components such as computers use through a process that makes the organic brain redundant.

What are you smoking ben?

nicko wrote:What are you smoking ben?

Haha, don't smoke anymore, but I've had a little cognac and Scotch

FYI:


Earlier this year, a Russian media mogul named Dmitry Itskov formally announced his intention to disembody our conscious minds and upload them to a hologram--an avatar--by 2045. In other words he outlined a plan to achieve immortality, removing the human mind from the physical constraints presented by the biological human body. He was serious. And now, in a letter to the members of the Forbes World's Billionaire's List, he's offering up that immortality to the world's 1,266 richest people.
"Many of you who have accumulated great wealth by making success of your businesses are supporting science, the arts and charities. I urge you to take note of the vital importance of funding scientific development in the field of cybernetic immortality and the artificial body," Itskov wrote in the letter. "Such research has the potential to free you, as well as the majority of all people on our planet, from disease, old age and even death."

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-07/billionaires-russian-mogul-wants-upload-your-brains-immortality

So this is the modern day Frankenstein. Thanks for sharing.

ONE SMALL GLITCH with Ben's idea could be the very steep start-up costs for such a project...

"SUPERCOMPUTERS" still cost $$tens of millions$$ ~ network a couple or a few together and add in the building costs to house them, with the necessary power supply and backups, refrigeration units, air conditioning, support services ~ and pretty quick you're up for a couple of hundred million dollars..

THAT'S why those universities, research institutes and software development companies that have installed the likes of Cray, IBM or Fujitsu 'supercomputer' facilities are so tight-arsed about giving out time on their computers to their staff.

AND THEN there's the small problem that "Artificial Intelligence" (or 'Artificial Stupidity' - to give it it's more popular IT industry label..) research still hasn't made ANY real breakthroughs, as yet ~ genuine "A.I." still seems to be just as far off as it was 30 or 40 years ago..    

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is still a fiction, and until it becomes a reality the idea of adding in and networking human "intelligence" and personalities into those computer/Internet/Skynet systems simply remains a fantasy, though a very attractive one in some quarters...

AS WITH thawing out those "Cryogenically frozen" rich bastards, people cloning themselves, or people controlling what tailor-made and customised and 'hothoused' kids they might produce ~ we have yet to see any 'real world' results to back their claims..

NOT FORGETTING the overreaching question covering all such investments and potential developments ~ WHY do it ?!?
ARE ANY OF those rich bovver boyz and gals REALLY worth perpetuating..
AFTER ALL, they are the very ones who have created many of the problems in our modern world !

Lone Wolf wrote:

ONE SMALL GLITCH with Ben's idea could be the very steep start-up costs for such a project...

"SUPERCOMPUTERS" still cost $$tens of millions$$ ~ network a couple or a few together and add in the building costs to house them, with the necessary power supply and backups, refrigeration units, air conditioning, support services ~ and pretty quick you're up for a couple of hundred million dollars..

THAT'S why those universities, research institutes and software development companies that have installed the likes of Cray, IBM or Fujitsu 'supercomputer' facilities are so tight-arsed about giving out time on their computers to their staff.

AND THEN there's the small problem that "Artificial Intelligence" (or 'Artificial Stupidity' - to give it it's more popular IT industry label..) research still hasn't made ANY real breakthroughs, as yet ~ genuine "A.I." still seems to be just as far off as it was 30 or 40 years ago..    

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is still a fiction, and until it becomes a reality the idea of adding in and networking human "intelligence" and personalities into those computer/Internet/Skynet systems simply remains a fantasy, though a very attractive one in some quarters...

AS WITH thawing out those "Cryogenically frozen" rich bastards, people cloning themselves, or people controlling what tailor-made and customised and 'hothoused' kids they might produce ~ we have yet to see any 'real world' results to back their claims..

NOT FORGETTING the overreaching question covering all such investments and potential developments ~ WHY do it ?!?
ARE ANY OF those rich bovver boyz and gals REALLY worth perpetuating..
AFTER ALL, they are the very ones who have created many of the problems in our modern world !

No doubt it would take a lot of money and a LOT of technological advances. We'd have to have a way of converting the data stream of the human mind into computer-readable software, for one, but I don't actually think AI would be required for this -- i.e., we just (JUST) need to figure out a way to translate brain data into computer code, not how to make the code think -- the mind will do the thinking, if that makes sense

Also, I think the best way to foster goodwill toward such an ambitious effort would be to center it around saving someone like Hawking, who most people would probably agree deserves a shot at not having his mind hopelessly locked within a completely paralyzed body.

Ben you may have given up smoking the weed but I think I need some to understand that

until you can define conciousness and self awareness and transfer that to a "electronic"brain all you are doing is copying information

Also you would not "transfer" you would copy leaving the original brain and all its neurons and synapses unless you intend to destroy the original by ether method of copying or design

also unlike the brain, electronics are very very suitable to interference power loss  or EMP unless shielded would you put you "self" in a system so .......fragile by choice

as a student of science fiction i caan tell you these questions have been explored at length from Roy in blade runner to star trek

simply put nothing good will come of such a transformation

korban dallas wrote:until you can define conciousness and self awareness and transfer that to a "electronic"brain all you are doing is copying information

Also you would not "transfer" you would copy leaving the original brain and all its neurons and synapses unless you intend to destroy the original by ether method of copying or design

also unlike the brain, electronics are very very suitable to interference power loss  or EMP unless shielded would you put you "self" in a system so .......fragile by choice

as a student of science fiction i caan tell you these questions have been explored at length from Roy in blade runner to star trek

simply put nothing good will come of such a transformation

I think everything going on in our brains *is* just information, and while daunting, I think it can't be ruled forever impossible to translate the organic electrical signals that make up the mind into artificial electrical signals.

Because of that, I think a brain that was assisted by artificial components that could communicate in the "software of the brain" could eventually reach the point where it used only the artificial components, not the organic brain itself. For that matter, our brains do grow new neurons throughout life, so when old neurons die and are replaced by new ones, does our mind become a copy? I don't think so, not in any particularly meaningful way at least.

I know what I'm talking about is weird But I guess I'm trying to say that the organic human brain is limited by being a self-contained unit, with no processing or memory beyond what we have inside our skulls. But if it could be connected to a larger information processing system that it controls, I think the organic part of it could eventually be unnecessary.

Forgot to address the issue of fragility -- for one thing, a computer isn't a self-protecting thing. You-in-a-computer, as long as you were actually a robot that could move itself, communicate and manipulate objects, would be just as prudent about maintenance, EMPs and power outages as the real you is about diet, exercise and not walking out in front of buses.

And for all those dangers, electronic components surely aren't any more fragile than ourselves. Getting dropped on the floor is more dangerous for my skull than for my cell phone

yeah, but how often do YOU drop YOUR skull?

plus constant cloud sync.
your vessel gets damaged reboot/repair/replace it and download the most recent copy of 'you'

Most of the more realistic variants of this suggest the biggest issue will be memory gaps.
'you' would be a cloud based operating system (or processing protocols, since their is no 'interface'), 'you' would install yourself on hardware from a cloud system. and re-sync back to the cloud the issue would be if your vessel got destroyed between sync's you would lose the memories between the last sync and vessel destruction.
this also allow multiple instances of 'you' all 'syncing' back to the same 'you'. thus we can gain multiple lifetimes worth of experiences simultaneously. Vessels with a pre installed 'You' could be sent out into space and set to turn on and attempt to sync once they land on distance planets, worse case there will be an artificial instance of you existing out there in space, best case the Cloud based 'you' gains a bunch of knowledge from a far off planet when the sync signal makes it back to the Cloud's network.

I figure eventually we'd make a death star like ship that rather than tunnels and rooms was just solid data drives on the inside, propulsion and weapons. it could then move through space as a giant sync point for the cloud and we could all launch 'vessels' off it.

veya_victaous wrote:plus constant cloud sync.
your vessel gets damaged reboot/repair/replace it and download the most recent copy of 'you'

Most of the more realistic variants of this suggest the biggest issue will be memory gaps.
'you' would be a cloud based operating system (or processing protocols, since their is no 'interface'), 'you' would install yourself on hardware from a cloud system. and re-sync back to the cloud the issue would be if your vessel got destroyed between sync's you would lose the memories between the last sync and vessel destruction.
this also allow multiple instances of 'you' all 'syncing' back to the same 'you'. thus we can gain multiple lifetimes worth of experiences simultaneously. Vessels with a pre installed 'You' could be sent out into space and set to turn on and attempt to sync once they land on distance planets, worse case there will be an artificial instance of you existing out there in space, best case the Cloud based 'you' gains a bunch of knowledge from a far off planet when the sync signal makes it back to the Cloud's network.

I figure eventually we'd make a death star like ship that rather than tunnels and rooms was just solid data drives on the inside, propulsion and weapons. it could then move through space as a giant sync point for the cloud and we could all launch 'vessels' off it.

Absolutely -- a bit like the Cylons on Battlestar Galactica.

Another thought I had -- you could tune the user experience through a wide range of possibilities. Some people might prefer to feel as human as possible; they could get the sensation of hunger or thirst when their power was running low and have artificially unenhanced abilities. Other people might like to explore the full range of being an artificial being, complete with zoom-lens eyes, super- and sub-sonic hearing, etc., etc. ....

And the GUI to control your robotic body would be updated every six to twelve months ... new robotic bodies would come out yearly and people would stand in lines to be the first to have them ... that company's competitor would keep rolling out software updates named after candy and other desserts ...

let alone we could be not hominid like at all, be tiny as a mite when we need to be a transfer/operate giant mechs when convenient

veya_victaous wrote:let alone we could be not hominid like at all, be tiny as a mite when we need to be a transfer/operate giant mechs when convenient  

Hell yes! We'd probably choose a pretty small form most of the time because of the low energy cost -- which could also give you the chance to see what it's like to be eaten by a predator while in a body it can't digest

"Hell yes! We'd probably choose a pretty small form most of the time because of the low energy cost -- which could also give you the chance to see what it's like to be eaten by a predator while in a body it can't digest Smile"


which would add a whole shade of new meaning to "feeling like something the cat sicked up"