No subject

to the following questions. I'll start the ball rolling by suggesting
some answers, then others can add on or take things out until we
mostly agree. There's nothing stopping individuals from also
suggesting it as a prize, but a group effort toward the write up may
make for a better submission.

Suggested Name of Challenge:
WTN X Prize for Human (or Whole?) Brain Emulation

**If the prize is actually offered, its name will be the first
exposure most people will have to the idea of mind uploading. I find
brain emulation to be a preferable term because I think it's more
concrete. "Mind uploading" begs the questions: What mind? Uploaded to
where? "Human brain emulation," on the other hand, better specifies
what we mean. One possible problem is that this use of the term
emulation is its computer science definition, not necessarily the more
common usage of it.

Brief Description of Suggested Challenge:
(nothing yet)

**This is the only section of the form that gives us a chance to
describe just how beneficial this technology would be. Mind uploading
would have benefits of all sorts, including: business productivity and
profit (uploaded employees could do many days of work during the time
it takes a flesh employee to do one, and uploaded employees could be
paid less since all they need is electricity), medical (medical care
costs would decrease thanks to the elimination of disease, starvation,
etc), scientific (mankind would no longer lose its greatest minds to
the depths of death), and so forth. Given that the money for this
prize has to come from somewhere, appealing to the pockets of large
businesses might be a good way to win people over--hence my emphasis
on economic benefits.
I'm sure we all agree that to a first approximation, the challenge
should state "The first team to successfully upload a human mind is
the winner." The definition of "success" in that sentence will require
thought. How can we actually know an upload is successful? One easy
possibility for non-destructive uploading is a Turing-like test in
which a person is allowed to interact with both the upload and the
original and is to try to tell which is which.
Also, if the subject dies, is that considered a success? Should the
prize be awarded for either destructive and non-destructive uploading,
or only for one of the two?

Suggested Potential Rules:
(nothing yet)

**We should probably hold off on deciding the rules until we know
exactly what the challenge is.

Suggested Time of the Award (how long is given to win?):
25 years.

**That value is just a suggestion and may be way too big or way too
small. It seems odd they'd ask this, as it's really hard to know. If
anyone has a better guess I'd be happy to hear it.

How Many Companties to Compete?
?

**An odd question: as many as want to, I figure. A large number of
neuroscientists that are around today could reasonably begin tackling
the problem, and a prize of this sort (or even public awareness of the
possibility of mind uploading) should draw many other people to the
competition. Their main problem would likely be getting independant
funding to carry out the research, which would likely be quite
expensive.

Suggested Prize Amount
?

**They allow values in a range of $1-100 million. What should we
suggest? To decide, we should consider how important the prize money
really is. SpaceShipOne cost 3 times the amount that the team got back
in prize money, and at least one other team that was in the challenge
but didn't win is continuing work. This makes it seem that the money
itself isn't as important as the fame one gets from winning.
SpaceShipOne may be effectively $20 million in the hole, but that
money is more of an investment which will probably be repaid as the
team licenses its technology. If we assume a prize of 1/3 the
investment is reasonable, we could try to estimate how much it would
cost to upload a human. Anyone have a guess?

Suggested Funding Mechanism:
(nothing yet)

**Where should the prize money come from? That goes back to my idea
above of using the expected economic benefits to make the technology
more appealing for an investment by large companies. Any company that
spends a significant amount on manpower for tasks that could be
accelerated by uploading employees (software engineering, most things
involving writing, theoretical research, etc) may be willing to
invest.


There end my thoughts on the write up. Let the discussion begin!

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 09:38:03 -0700, Brubaker, Shane
<shane_brubaker at affymetrix.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> I like the idea of writing this up as an X prize.  It will bring some public
> attention to the idea and help make the goals and concept more concrete.
> 
> Is anyone from MURG planning on doing this?  Should we put together a
> virtual team?  I would be willing to put some part time work into it.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Shane
> 

-- 
Eric Zilli
Hasselmo Lab - Computational Neurophysiology
Center for Memory and Brain
Boston University
2 Cummington St.
Boston MA, 02215
digfarenough at gmail.com -- www.digfarenough.com