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Eugen Leitl
eugen at leitl.org
Mon Jan 17 09:29:19 EST 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading
Mind transfer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from Mind uploading)
In Transhumanism and science fiction, mind transfer (also referred to as mind
uploading or mind downloading, depending on one's perspective) refers to the
hypothetical transfer of a human mind either into a computer or other
non-human receptacle, or from one human body to another.
In the case where it is transferred into a computer, it would become a form
of artificial intelligence sometimes called an infomorph. In the case where
it is transferred into an artificial body to which its consciousness is
confined, it would become a robot, albeit one which might claim ordinary
human rights, certainly if the consciousness within were feeling (or were
doing a good job of simulating) as if it 'were' the donor. (See cyborg.)
However, even if uploading is theoretically possible, there is currently no
technology capable of recording or describing mind states in the way
imagined, and no-one knows how much computer power or storage would be needed
to simulate the activity of the mind inside a computer.
Uploading, in this sense, is a common theme in science fiction. One of the
earlier instances of this theme was in the Roger Zelazny novel Lord of Light.
Those with a strongly mechanistic view of human intelligence, e.g. Marvin
Minsky, or a strongly positive view of robot-human social integration, e.g.
Hans Moravec, Ray Kurzweil, have openly speculated about the possibilities
and their desirability.
The idea of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many
philosophical questions which people may find interesting and disturbing,
such as matters of individuality and the soul. Vitalists would say that
uploading was a priori impossible.
Uploading consciousness into bodies created by robotic means is a goal of
some in the artificial intelligence community. In the uploading scenario, the
physical human brain does not move from its original body into a new robotic
shell; rather, the consciousness is assumed to be recorded and/or transferred
to a new robotic brain, which generates responses indistinguishable from the
original organic brain.
Contents [showhide]
1 How might mind transfer be performed?
1.1 Serial sectioning
1.2 Nanotechnology
1.3 Brain imaging
1.4 Recreating
2 Copying vs. moving
3 Ethical issues of mind uploading
4 Mind transfer in science fiction
5 Mind transfer advocates
6 See also
[edit]
How might mind transfer be performed?
An extremely crude means of moving (if not exactly 'uploading') consciousness
using current technology is the head transplant which has been done on
primates. Another such crude means which some researchers think is feasible
in the near term is the whole-body transplant which moves only the brain.
Since it is not easy to tell whether a body contains its original brain, nor
necessarily easy to tell whether a body has the head it was born with, some
of the identity questions are identical for these methods and those based on
robotics. However, these methods do not involve copying the mind nor moving
it into a non-organic medium, such as an electronic computer. Accordingly,
they are technically quite different, and subject to normal limits of organic
bodies and brains.
True mind uploading remains speculation; the technology to perform such a
feat is not currently available, nor is it expected to be for several decades
at least.
[edit]
Serial sectioning
The most likely method we can foresee is serial sectioning, in which the
brain tissue and perhaps other parts of the nervous system are frozen solid,
sliced apart or ablated layer by layer, and each layer scanned at high
resolution, perhaps with a transmission electron microscope. The scans are
then recombined and uploaded to appropriate emulation hardware (i.e., an
artificial brain). This would require MEMS but would not seem to require
molecular nanotechnology.
[edit]
Nanotechnology
A more advanced hypothetical technique that would require nanotechnology
might involve infiltrating the intact brain with a network of cell-sized
machines to "read" the structure and activity of the brain in situ, much like
current-day electrode meshes but on a much finer and more sophisticated
scale. This might even allow for the replacement of living neurons with
artificial neurons one by one while the subject is still concious, providing
a smooth transition from an organic to synthetic brain - potentially
significant for those who worry about the loss of personal continuity that
other uploading processes may entail.
[edit]
Brain imaging
It might also be possible to use advanced brain imaging technology to build a
detailed 3-dimensional model of the brain using non-invasive methods.
[edit]
Recreating
It has also been suggested (for example, in Greg Egan's "jewelhead" stories)
that a detailed examination of the brain itself may not be required, that the
brain could be treated as a black box instead and effectively duplicated "for
all practical purposes" by merely duplicating how it responds to specific
external stimuli. This leads into even deeper philosophical questions of what
the "self" is.
[edit]
Copying vs. moving
By some definitions, the copied consciousness would 'be the same person' as
the donor of the consciousness. In that case, this new being -- the same
person as the original -- could have all the rights of the consciousness
donor, including the disposal of the old body. By other definitions, the two
copies would immediately be considered different people and the issue of
which copy 'inherits' what can be much more complicated. This problem is
similar to that found when considering the possibility of teleportation,
where in some proposed methods it is possible to copy (rather than only move)
a mind. This is the classic philosophical issue of personal identity.
Philosopher John Locke published "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" in
1689, in which he proposed the following criterion for personal identity: if
you remember thinking something in the past, then you are the same person as
he or she who did the thinking. Later philosophers raised various logical
snarls, most of them caused by applying Boolean logic, which was the only
logic available at the time. It has been proposed
(http://www.ibiblio.org/jstrout/uploading/personalidentity.html) that modern
fuzzy logic can solve those problems, showing that Locke's basic idea is
sound if one treats personal identity as a continuous rather than discrete
value.
In that case, when a mind is copied -- whether during mind uploading, or
afterwards, or by some other means -- the two copies are initially two
instances of the very same person, but over time, they will gradually become
different people to an increasing degree.
[edit]
Ethical issues of mind uploading
The ethical issues of uploading consciousness are difficult even to list.
They would involve challenges to the ideas of body identity, human
immortality, property rights, capitalism, human intelligence, an afterlife,
and man as created in God's image. Often, these challenges cannot be
distinguished from those raised by all technologies that extend human
technological control over human bodies, e.g. organ transplant. Perhaps the
best way to explore such issues is to discover principles applicable to
current bioethics problems, and ask what would be permissible if they were
applied consistently to a future technology. This points back to the role of
science fiction in exploring such problems, as powerfully demonstrated in the
20th century by such works as Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Dune and
Star Trek, each of which frame current ethical problems in a future
environment where those have come to dominate the society.
[edit]
Mind transfer in science fiction
Mind transfer is a theme in many works of science fiction, including:
* Permutation City and Diaspora by Greg Egan, where "Copies" are made by
* computer simulation of scanned brain physiology
* also Egan's "jewelhead" stories, where the mind is transferred from the
* organic brain to a small, immortal backup computer at the base of the
* skull, the organic brain then being surgically removed
* The Simultaneous Man by Ralph Blum, where brainwashing and
* psychosurgery techniques are used to create a copy of the experiences
* and memories of one person in the body of another
* Tad Williams' Otherland quadrilogy, which focuses on the activities of
* a secret society whose nefarious goals are to create a virtual reality
* network where they will be uploaded and in which they will live as
* gods. Otherland contains a very hard SF approach to the topic, but
* balances the hard approach with fantastical adventures of the
* protagonists within the virtual reality network.
* John Sladek's satyrical The Muller-Fokker Effect, in which a human mind
* could be recorded on cassette tapes and then imprinted on a human body
* using tailored viruses.
* Kiln People by David Brin, postulates a future where people can create
* clay duplicates of themselves with all their memories up to that time.
* The duplicates only last 24 hours, and the original can then choose
* whether or not to upload the ditto's memories back into himself
* afterward. Most people use dittos to do their work.
* Where is the travellers home? by a Russian author Aleksandr Mirer
* describes a variant of the theory - a world where the minds are of
* three types and the more subtle level of minds can be uploaded to a
* body without removing the other mind it posesses - it just overrides
* some of its functions.
[edit]
Mind transfer advocates
The Raelian cult believes that mind uploading is practiced by
extra-terrestrial beings who will teach these skills to mankind.
However, mind uploading is also advocated by a number of sober researchers in
neuroscience and artificial intelligence, such as Marvin Minsky. In 1993, Joe
Strout (http://www.strout.net) created a small web site called the Mind
Uploading Home Page (http://www.ibiblio.org/jstrout/uploading/), and began
advocating the idea in Cryonics circles and elsewhere on the net. That site
has not been actively updated in recent years, but it has spawned other sites
including MindUploading.org (http://minduploading.org), run by Randal A.
Koene, Ph.D., who also moderates a mailing list on the topic. These advocates
see mind uploading as a medical procedure which could eventually save
billions of lives.
[edit]
See also
* soul
* Turing test
* teleportation
* virtual reality
* artificial intelligence
* direct mind-computer interface
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_transfer"
Categories: Transhumanism | Science fiction
--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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