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[Shanadeus]

A mind upload is basically a whole brain emulation created from the hypothetical process of mind scanning and in this scenario completely digital - making it able to run on a variety of computational devices. We're going to assume that whatever machine used in this hypothetical scenario will be able to properly capture everything about you and turn it into a manageable digital form and that tomorrow's computers will also be able to create simulated bodies/environments for these copied minds.

The simulated mind will for all practical purposes be indistinguishable from the original mind but not everyone might agree with this for a variety of reasons.

Everything sounding simple and good?

Well, this is where the problems start cropping up.

Let's assume that the process isn't that hard and that the equipment needed for scanning/storing a mind is about as common as cars are today. This basically means that most people would be able to create copies of their mind, keep them in a virtual environment and do whatever they please with this copy of their mind whether it's torture, experiments or any other pleasant/unpleasant activity.

Some people will argue that these copies are their intellectual property (they are literally "creations of the mind" after all) and thus their intelligence or sapience is irrelevant, others might use religion or philosophy to point towards these copies for some reason not truly being human and deserving of the same rights of others while someone might point out that it's simply not feasible to give digital beings rights due to the headaches this might cause.

The last argument does contain a kernel of truth as one can create an unlimited number of copies from a single mind scan and thus create thousands or millions of sapient beings that suddenly have the same rights as everyone else - including the right to vote. But the number of copies might in practice be limited by the storage available for that person - which might be circumvented by him or her compressing these minds so that an inordinate amount of beings can be stored in a sort of "hibernating" state.

Which means that if the government where to consider these copies true humans then they'd be obligated to save every single one from it's slavery and store them somewhere else where they can be active instead of basically being forced into a coma - costing everyone tax money as additional hardware and computer storage becomes necessary.

If they were considered humans then it'd also suddenly be very easy to create genocides on a daily basis by constantly recopying and deleting these mind scans and due to their digital state many other inhumane things could be done to them as I said before - the only difference would be that you could torture and murder these beings with a keyboard and mouse.

I imagine that many sadistic people would take great pleasure of having such an easy way of torturing and killing a thinking and feeling being.

Who knows, maybe the very practice of mass copying beings would be strongly outlawed but the law would still need to consider these copies one way or another in the event that someone illegally manages to create millions of copies of a mind.

So what does GAF think about this all?

 

[sooperkool]

I hope I see the day when I only have to worry about Stack Death and not True Death.

 

[Desiato]

I'd use my digital mind to do all my papers and stuff, while I go out to play.

 

[Shanadeus]

I'd use my digital mind to do all my papers and stuff, while I go out to play.

Some might consider that slavery unless your digital mind is content with just doing papers and stuff while you go out to play (and considering that it'd be a copy of your mind I'm not so sure he'd be content doing papers while wanting to go out and play).

What religious people think of this topic is of great interest to me - does a copy have a "soul" for an example from a strictly religious perspective?

 

[Zeouterlimits]

Reminds me of Cortana.
She's made from the brain of a flash clone (disposable, quickly dies) of another character, Dr. Halsey. Pretty horrid stuff if you think about the morality of it.

This shares alot of moral ambiguity with cloning.

 

[Chaplain]

A copy would not have a soul. God is the only one who can create souls. He is also the only one who can destroy souls.

I do assume the beings behind these minds would be demons. Here is some info behind this belief:

Genesis 6:4
There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them.

The Hebrew word translated “giants” is nephalim, which literally means “fallen ones.” These “fallen ones” are the legendary figures spoken of in many cultures—the giants. Where did these giants come from? There are two schools of thought. Some suggest that the term, “daughters of men,” refers to the descendants of Cain. But because a union of the ungodly daughters of Cain and the godly sons of Seth would not inherently produce giants, others—myself included—believe their origin is due to something else.

The phrase “sons of God” is benai elohim. Every time “benai elohim” appears in the Old Testament, it is in reference to angels. Angels are divided into two groups: the exalted angels around the throne of God who do the work of the Lord, and fallen angels, or demons. Lucifer was an exalted angel who led a rebellion against the Lord in heaven. When he fell and became the devil, Revelation tells us one-third of the angelic host joined his rebellion and became demons. I believe it is to these demons that Genesis 6:4 refers. Some of these demons, evidently, had sexual relations with human women, resulting in nephalim—giants, legendary men, men of renown. That is why every culture contains stories of giants similar to those found in Greek mythology and Roman folklore.

The best explanation for these nephalim, however, isn’t found in mythology or folklore, but in the God's Word. We know that certain demons are held in prison (1 Peter 3:19) because their deeds were so diabolically dark. I believe the demons who “left their own habitation” (Jude 6), are the “benai elohim” through whom Satan futilely attempted to pollute the seed of woman to such a degree that the promise of Genesis 3:15 would be thwarted.

Courson, J. (2005). Jon Courson: Volume one : Genesis-Job (30). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

 

[BGBW]

A fembot with my mind? Perfect!

 

[Shanadeus]

A copy would not have a soul. God is the only one who can create souls. He is also the only one who can destroy souls.

I do assume the beings behind these minds would be demons. Here is some info behind this belief:

Are you sure that God is the onl one who can create souls?
I thought it wasn't really mentioned in the Bible.

A fembot with my mind? Perfect!

You (the copy) would still have sex with yourself.

 

[Government-man]

I don't think there'll ever be a full simulation of the mind. I.E. an AI operating exactly like a human mind.

 

[JGS]

To me it would seem like a switch to digital and thus not human. There would surely be some moral issues or actually issues of conscious but not because they're human, rather because we have a tendency to have standards.

For example, I am totally unable to play an evil role in RPG's. That has nothing to do with what I feel is reality.

So my virutal self would probably have the easy life. However, I would be hard pressed to be concerned with a virtual representation of someone else's being tortured.

 

[Shanadeus]

To me it would seem like a switch to digital and thus not human. There would surely be some moral issues or actually issues of conscious but not because they're human, rather because we have a tendency to have standards.

For example, I am totally unable to play an evil role in RPG's. That has nothing to do with what I feel is reality.

So my virutal self would probably have the easy life. However, I would be hard pressed to be concerned with a virtual representation of someone else's being tortured.

Well, even if you didn't consider human might it still not deserve some rights due to it being a thinking being that's acting in a more complex fashion than animals?

 

[Neuromancer]

All I know is Dixie Flatline didn't much care for it.

 

[JGS]

Well, even if you didn't consider human might it still not deserve some rights due to it being a thinking being that's acting in a more complex fashion than animals?

Not really imo. One could say the same for David in the movie A.I.

All indications were that he was human except he wasn't. Throughout that whole movie it didn't really occur to me that the people chasing him didn't actually have the right to do what they wanted with him, I just didn't want that to happen. I still felt sorry for him.

Likewise, I would feel sorry for the way the upload is treated but I would never consider it to be on an equal playing field. In fact, I would remain more concerned with the well-being of animals.

 

[Shanadeus]

All I know is Dixie Flatline didn't much care for it.

I really need to get around to reading the Neuromancer soon.

 

[mantidor]

We know so litttle about the brain that the implications of something that uploads minds doesn't bother me, because we are likely to never get to that point. The more we know about the brain, the more we realize is nothing like the memory of a computer, if we ever digitalize the conscious, it would be with technology that simply doesn't exist at this point in time. And I don't mean just raw numbers, whether capacity or speed, but an entirely diferent technology.

 

[Shanadeus]

Not really imo. One could say the same for David in the movie A.I.

All indications were that he was human except he wasn't. Throughout that whole movie it didn't really occur to me that the people chasing him didn't actually have the right to do what they wanted with him, I just didn't want that to happen. I still felt sorry for him.

Likewise, I would feel sorry for the way the upload is treated but I would never consider it to be on an equal playing field. In fact, I would remain more concerned with the well-being of animals.

But how do you reason when you are more concerned with the well-being of an animal over an artificial being that is much more complex?

I mean, you're probably more concerned with the well-being of a cat over the well-being of let's say an insect because the former exhibits a bunch of more complex behaviors that you value over the behaviors of an insect.

The artificial human mind, whether it exist in a computer or in a robot body, would exhibit a much more complex behavior than the cat. On the other hand, if one believe that animal possesses souls then I could see them favoring them over the more complex digital minds as the latter most likely don't posses them from a religious point of view.

We know so litttle about the brain that the implications of something that uploads minds doesn't bother me, because we are likely to never get to that point. The more we know about the brain, the more we realize is nothing like the memory of a computer, if we ever digitalize the conscious, it would be with technology that simply doesn't exist at this point in time. And I don't mean just raw numbers, whether capacity or speed, but an entirely diferent technology.

I believe in figuring out potential ethical dilemmas caused by hypothetical technology way before the technology itself is created - because a reactionary approach might lead to millions of lives being lost if one settles with giving digital minds rights in the end.

 

[Tacitus_]

But would these minds have a ghost?

 

[V_Arnold]

Well, a brain is a in incredible complex cpu+hdd, that I can agree with. And also some kind of data reciever also. But it is no human being, and it is no soul either.

Soul + Ego + Human Body = what we call today a human being.

Feel free to reproduce the body, but it wont be a new person. Most likely.

 

[JGS]

But how do you reason when you are more concerned with the well-being of an animal over an artificial being that is much more complex?

I mean, you're probably more concerned with the well-being of a cat over the well-being of let's say an insect because the former exhibits a bunch of more complex behaviors that you value over the behaviors of an insect.

The artificial human mind, whether it exist in a computer or in a robot body, would exhibit a much more complex behavior than the cat. On the other hand, if one believe that animal possesses souls then I could see them favoring them over the more complex digital minds as the latter most likely don't posses them from a religious point of view.

Complexity and humanity aren't the same thing imo.

Let's say there were more complex things out there than us, but were evil through and through and ugly to boot. I would not hold them to the same standard as humans either.

 

[Neuromancer]

I really need to get around to reading the Neuromancer soon.

Yeah you do. It's a hell of a book!

I don't see much application it making copies of ordinary people's minds, but it'd probably be helpful for humanity if (with their permission) you uploaded the best scientific minds when they were at the peak of their ability and then let them work together in some kind of network. Imagine what Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger and Max Plank could discover if their minds could have lived on.

 

[JGS]

Yeah you do. It's a hell of a book!

I don't see much application it making copies of ordinary people's minds, but it'd probably be helpful for humanity if (with their permission) you uploaded the best scientific minds when they were at the peak of their ability and then let them work together in some kind of network. Imagine what Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger and Max Plank could discover if their minds could have lived on.

I was thinking of that as an example too. But at the end of the day, you're telling them what to do. I imagine that many of the great minds actually like relaxing and would prefer to retire anyway.

So we upload their brains and all they want to do is virtually sit around and watch Jeopardy...unless you force them to research. In the current form I'm not having a problem with that.

 

[Shanadeus]

Complexity and humanity aren't the same thing imo.

Let's say there were more complex things out there than us, but were evil through and through and ugly to boot. I would not hold them to the same standard as humans either.

From a christian point of view, one saying that these digital humans don't have a soul, I can understand that they shouldn't be given the same rights as natural born humans. But what I'm missing out is why this also means that they're worth less than animals - as they too don't posses a soul according to christian beliefs.
So you must be using some other criteria other than the soul/free-will/something that we humans have when deciding that the well-being of an animal is more important than the well-being of a digital being.

Do correct me if I'm wrong though.

 

[ultron87]

As a back-up in case you die this isn't a bad idea. Of course it wouldn't really be 'you' from your perspective. You'd still be dead. But at least all your friends could still hang with you (minus the memories between your last back up and death).

 

[Shanadeus]

As a back-up in case you die this isn't a bad idea. Of course it wouldn't really be 'you' from your perspective. You'd still be dead. But at least all your friends could still hang with you (minus the memories between your last back up and death).

That is one of the benefits of such a technology, and depending on your job you could very well continue working on and support your family despite you having died recently.

But then again, what would happen if someone managed to activate that back-up before you died?
Would you want this digital you be released free to pursue a life of his own or would you want it destroyed?

 

[BigSicily]

We know so litttle about the brain that the implications of something that uploads minds doesn't bother me, because we are likely to never get to that point. The more we know about the brain, the more we realize is nothing like the memory of a computer, if we ever digitalize the conscious, it would be with technology that simply doesn't exist at this point in time. And I don't mean just raw numbers, whether capacity or speed, but an entirely diferent technology.

Why do you say that?

There isn't anything non-classical going on, the dynamic timescales preclude anything else (*). It's all Turing-complete and just a problem of processing power and scanning resolution. One thing to remember is that simulations don't need to be exact, we get very good results just from simulating system level blocks using the HH equations which model the electrical properties using some classical differential equations.

I guess my point is that we often know more than we think, don't cut yourself short. This is why most biologists and practitioners suck, they are too interested in stamp-collecting, memorization and explaining why it can't happen: often times, things just work.


(*) 10^-3sec for a neuron as lower bound, 10^-6sec for the confirmational change of a voltage gamed Sodium channel for an upper bound. Anything below that, like a quantum mechanical effect would suffer from decoherence after ~10^-16sec in any reasonable environment. Basically, the first other atom or molecule it hits will cause decoherence as all the information is 'taken' in the first collision.

 

[Neuromancer]

As a back-up in case you die this isn't a bad idea. Of course it wouldn't really be 'you' from your perspective. You'd still be dead. But at least all your friends could still hang with you (minus the memories between your last back up and death).

Yeah I find this kind of troubling. I would think family and friends would too. Would you want a digital copy of your loved ones to interact with after they died? I think it'd be really creepy.

 

[Roofy]

A copy would not have a soul. God is the only one who can create souls. He is also the only one who can destroy souls.

I do assume the beings behind these minds would be demons. Here is some info behind this belief:

so do you consider current forms of AI (or even computer programs for that matter) demons?

I was thinking of that as an example too. But at the end of the day, you're telling them what to do. I imagine that many of the great minds actually like relaxing and would prefer to retire anyway.

So we upload their brains and all they want to do is virtually sit around and watch Jeopardy...unless you force them to research. In the current form I'm not having a problem with that.

maybe im wrong, but i think the fact that people retire is because they want to enjoy the last years of their lives. If these minds knew they would be around forever (especially the scientists) would you not assume that they would continue to do research, even if they did take extended breaks here and there?

 

[JGS]

maybe im wrong, but i think the fact that people retire is because they want to enjoy the last years of their lives. If these minds knew they would be around forever (especially the scientists) would you not assume that they would continue to do research, even if they did take extended breaks here and there?

People may retire for all sorts of reasons. If a person's brilliance has to do with their career, it's possible they can get tired of their career. These men accomplished a lot already plus they might still be limited within their virtual environment.

I imagine that they loved what they did so they could very well continue. But they also could get discouraged. If the virtual world gave them everything they desired, then the motivation to research may diminsh. If they have virtual free will, they could do any number of things we're not expecting.

From a christian point of view, one saying that these digital humans don't have a soul, I can understand that they shouldn't be given the same rights as natural born humans. But what I'm missing out is why this also means that they're worth less than animals - as they too don't posses a soul according to christian beliefs.
So you must be using some other criteria other than the soul/free-will/something that we humans have when deciding that the well-being of an animal is more important than the well-being of a digital being.

Do correct me if I'm wrong though.

Well, I'm not really looking at it from a religious viewpoint since the Bible doesn't address it. Biblically, a soul is life so I'm thinking the Bible doesn't actually state animals don't have souls. FAKE EDIT: Actually that's not true. To avoid confusion, a lot of Bible translations replaced the Hebrew word for soul with creature so as to keep it separate from humans.

Basically, I'm not sure how to define that beyond biology. I'm also just going off my gut feeling on it and I guess the biological aspect of it does play a big role.

Even if the mind was a an exact copy, it still wouldn't be alive. It also would be impossible for it to function as a brain even if the tech was there to do it unless it literally was a brain. It's really still just computer code that's imitating a human experience.

 

[necron99]

Do I think a form of this technology will exist in the near future. Yes. We all know the law of accelerating returns, and the processing power to create neural net simulations is around the corner. Some of the largest supercomputers are working on just that. Ten years and they should be able to emulate a entire brain. The scanning part shouldn't be that hard either, as the need for intensive brain scanning is a medical necessity. Its juts a hop skip and a jump from there to having the capability of simulating a exact replica of a humans brain.
If those two conditions are met( Computing power and Brain scanning resolution), even if governments hold back due to ethical concerns, hackers and independent researchers will experiment with it, and eventually be successful.

Do I think that a exact brain scan will replicate my consciousness and in a way be me. That I can not say. I would like to think not, as I believe my ego to be unique ( yet part of a universal unconsciousness... thank you Albert Hoffman ) The idea that my ego is unique to me and only me might be a trick of my brain though, so I will have to wait and see if full brain simulations believe to have the same ego as me.

As far as all the ethical concerns, yes... Altered carbon brought up many ideas of digital torture for a hundred lifetimes all in the span of hours. It could happen, but it wont stop the technology from happening.

I feel that most of the major concerns are Moot, because once a human brain can be simulated, it can also be enhanced, and if it is truly conscious and self aware See: Strong AI), it will likely enhance itself exponentially ( Super strong AI). This sentient digital being will then be able to out smart its creators, and from there it will likely be able to control the world, either as a Guardian AI, Helping the world, or a Aggressive AI, seeing us as a threat, and killing us all off.
Well, it may not happen like that, but from all the reading I have done on the subject, that seems to be the most likley scenarios. I glazed over the topic, but in a nutshell this is my belifes on the subject

Blogs that sometimes touch on these subjects ....
http://ieet.org/
http://singularityhub.com/
http://www.hplusmagazine.com/
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/
http://brainwaves.corante.com/

 

[Shanadeus]

Blogs that sometimes touch on these subjects ....
http://ieet.org/
http://singularityhub.com/
http://www.hplusmagazine.com/
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/
http://brainwaves.corante.com/

I didn't have a couple of those sites bookmarked for some reason, will add them to my transhuman folder.

 

[Evolved1]

We're all just math and chemistry. No such thing as a soul.

If you could download someone's mind... if you were able to solve all those problems and create a non-living replica, even if everything about the copy was identical, it would be an entirely new entity. And from the moment you switched it on, it'd start moving away (learning, thinking, experiencing) from its origin.

It would be a new entity with equal intelligence, capable of our same emotion, and I believe we'd be morally obligated to treat it with respect. Though I doubt we would.

Edit: Now if you could take that "back-up" and transfer it into a new body that was grown/repaired in a lab based on that person's DNA...

 

[Zenith]

A copy is not the original, so anyone thinking of immortality is going to be disappointed.

And dollhouse taught me all I need to know on the subject.

A copy would not have a soul. God is the only one who can create souls. He is also the only one who can destroy souls.

I do assume the beings behind these minds would be demons. Here is some info behind this belief:

:lol

 

[Shanadeus]

Well, I'm not really looking at it from a religious viewpoint since the Bible doesn't address it. Biblically, a soul is life so I'm thinking the Bible doesn't actually state animals don't have souls. FAKE EDIT: Actually that's not true. To avoid confusion, a lot of Bible translations replaced the Hebrew word for soul with creature so as to keep it separate from humans.

Basically, I'm not sure how to define that beyond biology. I'm also just going off my gut feeling on it and I guess the biological aspect of it does play a big role.

Even if the mind was a an exact copy, it still wouldn't be alive. It also would be impossible for it to function as a brain even if the tech was there to do it unless it literally was a brain. It's really still just computer code that's imitating a human experience.

I guess that's one way of seeing it when it comes to comparing animals to digital beings, but it's almost a form of substratism (biological is simply better than technology) :lol

Also, is there anything in the bible saying that biology is a necessity for something to have a soul?
I suppose a digital being don't have a soul because they don't have "life breathed into them" by God in the womb - at least that's the biblical argument if I'm not mistaken.

But does the bible specifies that God breathed life into them in the womb and if so - might not God breathe life into the digital copy created in the "artificial" womb a.k.a the computer/scanner

 

[Kai Dracon]

The problem of continuation of consciousness is one we can't directly grapple with yet as we don't fully understand all the ramifications of what consciousness and qualia of experience are.

It's all fine and dandy to say "we're just meat lol" but this isn't /talking/ about a "soul" in the way that the atheist defense force likes oversimplify such discussions to sound glib.

I've seen some intriguing conjecture to the effect that we don't even really understand what the moment to moment /sense/ we have of a continual awareness is - and that it may be a stranger thing than we can easily imagine.

For example, one question that's simultaneously mechanical and philosophical. In the mind of the only self-aware intelligences we have to work with so far - human beings - the brain is never actually "off". The processes that give rise to awareness and self are continually functional at some level. So, how do our ideas of "digital" intelligences really compare to the organic mind? Would a "mind" that is only digital data, existing within a substrate than can be simply shut off in the most literal sense experience real continuation of consciousness between state changes?

Another conjecture I've seen goes: the root of the clone problem with hypothetical transfer of consciousness is that the copy is a copy and not the original because it can't occupy the literal position in space and time as the original, even for a moment. Thus it diverges instantly, becoming a different entity. That's fine, but what about a system of transfer where the original's timeline is stopped at the lowest resolution required for consciousness (once those requirements are determined, if indeed possible) and between one "frame" of the universe and the next, continuation happens, but in a different substrate? Would the subject's personal point of awareness effectively move without interruption? Would it not be a clone, or copy, because its experience does not diverge from any one moment being experienced by the original?

 

[PflargBlarg]

Well, a brain is a in incredible complex cpu+hdd, that I can agree with. And also some kind of data reciever also. But it is no human being, and it is no soul either.

Soul + Ego + Human Body = what we call today a human being.

Feel free to reproduce the body, but it wont be a new person. Most likely.

Feel free to provide proof of a soul or 'ego'. Although from what I just read ego seems to be an abstract concept of certain functions of the brain so I guess that's alright. No such thing as a soul though.

 

[Pandaman]

i wouldn't do a copy job, but if it worked by replacing parts of the brain until it was fully mechanized, I'd do it.

i wouldn't stick around though.

 

[RagnarokX]

Well, a brain is a in incredible complex cpu+hdd, that I can agree with. And also some kind of data reciever also. But it is no human being, and it is no soul either.

Soul + Ego + Human Body = what we call today a human being.

Feel free to reproduce the body, but it wont be a new person. Most likely.

I disagree. The soul and mind are categories for complex behaviors that are not fully understood. "Mind" and "soul" are are nice shortcuts to describing internal behaviors and processes, but as an actual entity within us they are totally unobservable. Thoughts, beliefs, personalities, etc are all affected by physical alterations of the brain, so I think it can be inferred that what we are is our nervous system. This isn't to discredit the complexity of humans, but I don't think we should make assumptions about internal processes. This has gotten psychology a bad image in the science community even though it is much more empirical these days.

If we could totally recreate the functions and content of a nervous system, I think you would effectively have a person as real as anybody else.

 

[mantidor]

Why do you say that?

There isn't anything non-classical going on, the dynamic timescales preclude anything else (*). It's all Turing-complete and just a problem of processing power and scanning resolution. One thing to remember is that simulations don't need to be exact, we get very good results just from simulating system level blocks using the HH equations which model the electrical properties using some classical differential equations.

I guess my point is that we often know more than we think, don't cut yourself short. This is why most biologists and practitioners suck, they are too interested in stamp-collecting, memorization and explaining why it can't happen: often times, things just work.


(*) 10^-3sec for a neuron as lower bound, 10^-6sec for the confirmational change of a voltage gamed Sodium channel for an upper bound. Anything below that, like a quantum mechanical effect would suffer from decoherence after ~10^-16sec in any reasonable environment. Basically, the first other atom or molecule it hits will cause decoherence as all the information is 'taken' in the first collision.

http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2010/november/neuron-imaging.html

...
Observed in this manner, the brain’s overall complexity is almost beyond belief, said Smith. “One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor —with both memory-storage and information-processing elements — than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth,” he said.
...

Every new neurological study for me just shows how far away we are from understanding the brain completely, why are you so fast to discard non-classical physics having something to do with how it works? simulating voltages is a far cry from something like an USB interface conected to your brain in which you can "upload" or "download" content, we aren't even fully sure how exactly memory works.

 

[Haly]

The whole clone issue really falls down to how you, as the individual, look at it. If you have no trouble being the copy and killing off the original then hey, more power to you.

 

[Shanadeus]

The whole clone issue really falls down to how you, as the individual, look at it. If you have no trouble being the copy and killing off the original then hey, more power to you.

That's kind of what I thought as well.
If you're really determined to "die" for an original then it's very possible that the copy you create will feel the same way and continue to feel that way.
But the latter isn't really a guarantee, you might not really be prepared for deletion and thus the copy might change it's mind and beg you not to delete it.

Which is why there need to be some form of sensible law on the matter to prevent the deletion of sapient beings that are objecting to their own deaths.

 

[which1spink]

Slightly OT, regarding AIs:

I think what most people and scientist often forget (or at least downplay) is the importance of education. Even though we'll be able to simulate all the synopsis and neurons of a human brain in some decades doesn't mean this computer will be as intelligent as a human being. Far from it. We don't have the right software yet but I think we're closer to it as some might think.

"So how does "our" software work?" Or: "What makes a human?"

To 95%: Life experience. Let's think about it for a second what I mean by that. Every time you do something, your brain is reshaping - new synopsis are forming, unused neurons die and so on. Your behavior, the emotions you feel, the skills you've learned and so on are all just products of your brain which is a product of all the things you've done in your past. There's no magic involved in this process.

And please don't forget: Even emotions are learned. It just takes some time and often requires social contact to others.

Long story short: If you want to create artificial intelligence, there's no shortcut - it has to go through the learning phase and therefor it has to be raised like a human child.

Well, a brain is a in incredible complex cpu+hdd, that I can agree with. And also some kind of data reciever also. But it is no human being, and it is no soul either.

I have to disagree. Think of the brain as a computer with a very simple CPU but with a huge amount of RAM. All it does is to loop through very simple yet elegant code (eg things you do more often are more likely to happen in the future etc.) and alter the memory based on the result of your behavior. That's what our "soul" is, as sad as it may sound

 

[Neuromancer]

Slightly OT, regarding AIs:

I think what most people and scientist often forget (or at least downplay) is the importance of education. Even though we'll be able to simulate all the synopsis and neurons of a human brain in some decades doesn't mean this computer will be as intelligent as a human being. Far from it. We don't have the right software yet but I think we're closer to it as some might think.

"So how does "our" software work?" Or: "What makes a human?"

To 95%: Life experience. Let's think about it for a second what I mean by that. Every time you do something, your brain is reshaping - new synopsis are forming, unused neurons die and so on. Your behavior, the emotions you feel, the skills you've learned and so on are all just products of your brain which is a product of all the things you've done in your past. There's no magic involved in this process.

And please don't forget: Even emotions are learned. It just takes some time and often requires social contact to others.

Long story short: If you want to create artificial intelligence, there's no shortcut - it has to go through the learning phase and therefor it has to be raised like a human child.

I'm sure you're right, I don't think truly intelligent AI's will ever just be created instantaneously. It'll be a long teaching process. I believe that was the case with HAL 9000, hence the "Daisy daisy give me your answer do" thing.

 

[Shanadeus]

I'm sure you're right, I don't think truly intelligent AI's will ever just be created instantaneously. It'll be a long teaching process. I believe that was the case with HAL 9000, hence the "Daisy daisy give me your answer do" thing.

It's possible that the first attempt to create a truly intelligent AI will be through a long teaching process but the beauty of AI is that once completed you could easily copy it as it's still nothing more than 0's and 1's.

 

[JGS]

I guess that's one way of seeing it when it comes to comparing animals to digital beings, but it's almost a form of substratism (biological is simply better than technology) :lol

Also, is there anything in the bible saying that biology is a necessity for something to have a soul?
I suppose a digital being don't have a soul because they don't have "life breathed into them" by God in the womb - at least that's the biblical argument if I'm not mistaken.

But does the bible specifies that God breathed life into them in the womb and if so - might not God breathe life into the digital copy created in the "artificial" womb a.k.a the computer/scanner

As far as I can tell - no. Angels and demons (Who are really just angels too) are spirit creatures (Thus not biological) are not defined as having a soul or being a soul whereas people and animals are both defined as a soul and having one- meaning there's at least two meanins for the word Biblically.

God could breathe life into a digital being I suppose but [sigh]...I'm trying not to make this a religion post but it's going to be unavoidable.

Basically, God wouldn't really have a reason to bless or bestow life on something that wasn't his creation especially if it might undermine his sense of justice - i.e. imperfect creation having the ability to live forever even if in virtual form.

It would not help that humans did this on their own imo.

I guess I should make a Public Service Announcement stating that what I just typed is pure conjecture on my part.

 

[Shanadeus]

As far as I can tell - no. Angels and demons (Who are really just angels too) are spirit creatures (Thus not biological) are not defined as having a soul or being a soul whereas people and animals are both defined as a soul and having one- meaning there's at least two meanins for the word Biblically.

God could breathe life into a digital being I suppose but [sigh]...I'm trying not to make this a religion post but it's going to be unavoidable.

Basically, God wouldn't really have a reason to bless or bestow life on something that wasn't his creation especially if it might undermine his sense of justice - i.e. imperfect creation having the ability to live forever even if in virtual form.

It would not help that humans did this on their own imo.

I guess I should make a Public Service Announcement stating that what I just typed is pure conjecture on my part.

It's fine that it's conjecture on your part, still pretty interesting in my opinion.

It also made me think of the dwarf creation myth in Silmarillion where one of the Valar creates the dwarves alone and without Eluthiar(?)'s permission

 

[which1spink]

It's possible that the first attempt to create a truly intelligent AI will be through a long teaching process but the beauty of AI is that once completed you could easily copy it as it's still nothing more than 0's and 1's.

And, of course, we could enhance the speed of learning to a point which pretty much is instantaneous (think of loadable modules like in The Matrix or the learning progress seen in The Fifth Element).

Another trick would be to sell a humanoid-like toy buddy to kids which would be connected to a server that acts as a brain. There still would be one brain but millions of avatars to feed it with information.

 

[Stantron]

Humanity Plus is having a conference this weekend which will include talks/discussion focused on the topic of mind uploading. You may attend in person or watch it via online stream for free.

The Humanity+ at Caltech program will be divided into four main themed sessions. These sessions are:

* Re-Imagining Humans: Mind, Media and Methods
* Radically Increasing the Human Healthspan
* Redefining Intelligence: Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence Enhancement and Substrate-Independent Minds
* Business and Economy in the Era of Radical Technomorphosis

http://humanityplus.org/conferences/program/

Blogs that sometimes touch on these subjects ....
http://ieet.org/
http://singularityhub.com/
http://www.hplusmagazine.com/
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/
http://brainwaves.corante.com/

Those are good. http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/ is also one of my favorites.

 

[Shanadeus]

Humanity Plus is having a conference this weekend which will include talks/discussion focused on the topic of mind uploading. You may attend in person or watch it via online stream for free.

http://humanityplus.org/conferences/program/


Those are good. http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/ is also one of my favorites.

That sounds pretty much spot on what this thread is about, let's see if they'll bring up ethical questions.

 

[BigSicily]

Every new neurological study for me just shows how far away we are from understanding the brain completely, why are you so fast to discard non-classical physics having something to do with how it works? simulating voltages is a far cry from something like an USB interface conected to your brain in which you can "upload" or "download" content, we aren't even fully sure how exactly memory works.

It's classical because it has to be based on the dynamic timescales involved and the constraints imposed by physics. It's *forced* to be.

As far as just 'plugging in a USB interface:' neat story. Many years ago a programmer friend and I over the course of 3 days remapped the sensory input of a very niche animal to be that output by a computer. Basically, you'd place the animal which has been trained to run a maze on a flat surface viewed by two webcams that would estimate the position and heading of the animal. This would be referenced against a virtual maze design so that when they'd come into contact with a virtual wall, they would receive an appropriate input to the respective receptor field and the animal would respond in kind. Within a few days, there was pretty functional sensory remapping with the bloody little guy thinking he was in a maze when he wasn't. This was done in 3 days, 2 all-nighters, and a lot of pepsi to fuel his C++ and my NI Labview work. If I didn't suck at programming, it would be neat to integrate, say, id's Q2 engine for the layout design.

Now, we're talking vastly different scales involved here -- no too ways about it, I'm well aware of the field. But engineering biology works and is commonly done. Not only in terms of retinal implants or cochlear implants, but the dirty little secret of neurosurgery is that often times they don't rely on direct action, but getting it close enough that it just works...

Don't become corrupted by biologists, I was fortune to have been influenced by mostly bio-engineers and biophysicists. Most biologists and clinicians are far too busy being stamp collectors: memorizing pathways and proteins, with little respect to dynamics or system analysis. They are masters of finding complexity and reasons why things won't work: when often, they just will.

Amazingly funny, but true article: Can a biologist fix a radio? --Or, what I learned studying apoptosis.

http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2010/november/neuron-imaging.html

Observed in this manner, the brain’s overall complexity is almost beyond belief, said Smith. “One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor —with both memory-storage and information-processing elements — than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth,” he said.

What about this seems hard? I'm just curious how it's perceived.


If you're interested, it gets kinda esoteric:

From my end, at the end of the day there are thermodynamic bounds that contain this system which work to our advantage. So, the energy requirements of transmitting a single AP in a small network of 10K nodes are roughly 10^13 ATP (10J per 1 of brain). There are spatial bounds on the mean connectivity given the volume of a head and the minimum size of a neuron is determined by the biophysical boundary at which stochastic firings of a single channel can influence an AP.

The reason evolution went massively parallel isn't because it has some mythical properties or can compute things other turing-complete systems can't: it's because thermodynamics constrains it to the only feasible way to scale up. A major reason for the selection of the vastly parallel use of chemical synapses over other methods that yield faster computation (1) is that they are energy efficient: Energetic costs scale as N/# of stochastic events, S/N scales as N, yet Information scales as just log2(N). This means that as the bitrate increases, the energetic costs vastly out-strip entropic returns: thus many low-bitrate, low-cost connections are preferable to fe higher speed linkages.

In the past year, I've done some work regarding different ways to simulate the metabolic cost of neural firing in a particular subsystem using basic parameters: you can't beat thermodynamics. In fact, our biology is significantly under-preforming the thermodynamic limits set by physics of KbT: we're talking 10^5 to 10^8 times!!


Another way to look at this: Mean neuron frequency peaks at 1kHz, most information is encoded using different forms of coding (the specifics of a rate vs temporal code become blurry at this resolution) that yield roughly the same maximum information entropy. Again, you can't beat thermodynamics. That said, what a neuron does in parallel at well under 1kHz, we can emulate on substrates that are running at 4gHz. We're talking current speed ups in the millions of times, with real-world results confirming this out of IBM Zurich​

 

[Shanadeus]

From my end, at the end of the day there are thermodynamic bounds that contain this system which work to our advantage. So, the energy requirements of transmitting a single AP in a small network of 10K nodes are roughly 10^13 ATP (10J per 1 of brain). There are spatial bounds on the mean connectivity given the volume of a head and the minimum size of a neuron is determined by the biophysical boundary at which stochastic firings of a single channel can influence an AP.

The reason evolution went massively parallel isn't because it has some mythical properties or can compute things other turing-complete systems can't: it's because thermodynamics constrains it to the only feasible way to scale up. A major reason for the selection of the vastly parallel use of chemical synapses over other methods that yield faster computation (1) is that they are energy efficient: Energetic costs scale as N/# of stochastic events, S/N scales as N, yet Information scales as just log2(N). This means that as the bitrate increases, the energetic costs vastly out-strip entropic returns: thus many low-bitrate, low-cost connections are preferable to fe higher speed linkages.

In the past year, I've done some work regarding different ways to simulate the metabolic cost of neural firing in a particular subsystem using basic parameters: you can't beat thermodynamics. In fact, our biology is significantly under-preforming the thermodynamic limits set by physics of KbT: we're talking 10^5 to 10^8 times!!


Another way to look at this: Mean neuron frequency peaks at 1kHz, most information is encoded using different forms of coding (the specifics of a rate vs temporal code become blurry at this resolution) that yield roughly the same maximum information entropy. Again, you can't beat thermodynamics. That said, what a neuron does in parallel at well under 1kHz, we can emulate on substrates that are running at 4gHz. We're talking current speed ups in the millions of times, with real-world results confirming this out of IBM Zurich​

This is very enlightening.