Category Archives: Mind Uploading

Unsterblichkeit ist die Vorstellung eines zeitlich unbegrenzten Lebens in physischer oder spiritueller Form.

Der Beweis fr biologische Unsterblichkeit bei hher entwickelten tierischen und pflanzlichen Lebensformen steht noch aus. Bei den meisten bekannten Tieren nimmt die Fhigkeit zur Selbstregeneration im Verlaufe des Lebens aus verschiedenen Grnden jedoch ab. Sollte ein Wesen existieren, das Beschdigungen in demselben Mae reparieren kann, in dem sie auftreten, wre es wohl zeitlich unbegrenzt lebensfhig.

Diese Unsterblichkeit ist naturgem in der Realitt dadurch begrenzt, dass die Organismen durch uere Einflsse und Krankheiten sehr wohl zu Tode kommen knnen. Daher wird diese Unsterblichkeit als potenzielle oder relative Unsterblichkeit bezeichnet.

Es wird angenommen, dass das Altern eine Folge des Evolutionsprozesses ist warum sich allerdings Altern als Selektionskriterium durchgesetzt hat, bleibt bisher eine offene Frage. Der programmierte Zelltod und das Problem sich verringernder Telomere finden sich bereits in einfachsten Organismen. Dies knnte die Folge eines Kompromisses zwischen einer Vermeidung von Krebs einerseits und dem Altern andererseits sein.

Unter den modernen Theorien zur Evolution des Alterns finden sich unter anderem:

Bereits heute ist die Lebensspanne in den Industrienationen weit ber dem Niveau frherer Tage. Dazu haben Fortschritte bei der Hygiene, Ernhrung, dem Lebensstandard und ganz allgemein in der medizinischen Versorgung gefhrt. Durch die Weiterentwicklung von Technologien in den Bereichen Gentherapie, Zelltherapie, regenerative Medizin, Biomedizin und Mikro- bzw. Nanotechnologie ist damit zu rechnen, dass ein weiterer signifikanter Anstieg der Lebenserwartung mglich wird. Wie blich werden sich diese Entwicklungen schrittweise vollziehen, sodass bereits mittelfristig mit greifbaren Resultaten gerechnet werden kann, die mit der Zeit immer umfassender und wirkungsvoller werden sollten. Robert Freitas, ein Wissenschaftler auf dem Gebiet der theoretischen Nanorobotik, konstruiert Modelle von Nanomaschinen, die in Zukunft dauerhaft im menschlichen Krper eingesetzt werden knnten, um Pathogene zu eliminieren, Krebs in Schach zu halten und Reparaturarbeiten durchzufhren. Somit knnte mglicherweise der Alterungsprozess zum Stillstand gebracht werden, indem es zu einem Gleichgewicht zwischen den Verschleierscheinungen einerseits und regenerativen Prozessen andererseits kommt.

Aubrey de Grey entwickelt Theorien ber das menschliche Altern, das er wie eine Krankheit auf ungnstige biochemische Prozesse zurckfhrt, die durch gezieltes Beeinflussen gestoppt oder umgekehrt werden knnen. Das von ihm vorgeschlagene Verfahren, das er als Strategien zur Bekmpfung des Alterns (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, kurz SENS) bezeichnet, basiert auf sieben von ihm propagierten Angriffspunkten. De Grey ist Mitbegrnder (gemeinsam mit David Gobel) und leitender Wissenschaftler des Projektes Methusalem-Maus-Preis, das die Beschleunigung und Frderung der Forschung auf dem Gebiet der Lebensverlngerung zur Aufgabe hat. Das durch Spenden stndig wachsende Preisgeld, das im Juni 2008 einen Stand von 2,8 Millionen EUR (4,4 Millionen USD) betrug, wird an Labore vergeben, deren Arbeit die Lebensspanne von Musen nachweislich deutlich verlngern kann. Die Intention des Preises ist es, dass berzeugende Erfolge im Mausmodell groe Investitionen fr das bertragen der Ergebnisse auf den menschlichen Einsatz mit sich bringen wrden.

Bei ausreichend tiefen Temperaturen, in der Praxis 196 C, kommt jede Form von Bioaktivitt im Organismus zum Erliegen; damit wird jeder weitere Verfall des Gewebes gestoppt. Die Kryonik, das Einfrieren des ganzen Krpers oder des Gehirns als Sitz des Bewusstseins, ist eine Hoffnung auf eine Verlngerung des eigenen Lebens fr Menschen, deren Alterungsprozess zu weit fortgeschritten ist oder sein wird, als dass sie von dem technischen Stand der lebensverlngernden Manahmen profitieren knnten oder deren Krankheiten nach aktuellem Stand der Medizin nicht geheilt werden knnen. Die Hoffnung dieser Kryonik-Patienten ist, dass zuknftige Generationen ihre Krankheiten oder das Altern an sich behandeln knnen.

Moderne Kryonikverfahren nutzen zur Konservierung einen als Vitrifizierung bezeichneten Prozess. Bei diesem wird die organische Materie nicht im klassischen Sinne eingefroren. Bei den verwendeten extrem tiefen Temperaturen geht die Biomasse Mensch in eine glashnliche Struktur ber. Damit kommt es nicht zu der ansonsten beobachteten Zellschdigung durch die Bildung von Eiskristallen. Besonders beim Gewebe des Gehirns ist es entscheidend, die exakte Struktur zu konservieren. Nur so besteht die Hoffnung, die darin enthaltenen Informationen die Erinnerungen und das Bewusstsein des Individuums in der Zukunft wiederherstellen zu knnen.

Die Umwandlung eines Menschen in einen Cyborg sagt im Wesentlichen aus, dass der Mensch durch technische Implantate erhalten oder verbessert wird. In Anfngen kann eine solche Perspektive bereits heute bei der Entwicklung knstlicher Herzen gesehen werden, obwohl die mensch-gemachten Systeme dem biologischen Vorbild noch klar unterlegen sind. Cyborgologie umfasst potentiell die Integration von Neuro-Implantaten zum Erhalt und zur Erweiterung kognitiver Mglichkeiten und den Austausch biologischer Organe und Systeme durch leistungsfhigere technische Alternativen.

Unter Mind-Uploading versteht man die Auslagerung der bewusstseinsrelevanten Teile des Gehirns in ein digitales Medium. Durch diesen Prozess knnte man zum einen eine digitale Alternative zur Kryonik als konservierende Manahme schaffen. Andererseits knnte es auch mglich sein, das gespeicherte Bewusstsein in einer digitalen virtuellen Welt zum Leben zu erwecken. Grundstzlich ist die Frage legitim, inwieweit diese Simulation einen Realittsanspruch erheben knnte. Allerdings ist jeder Eindruck, den unser Bewusstsein von der Umwelt erhlt, auch nicht viel mehr als das Ergebnis von im Gehirn verarbeiteten Sinneseindrcken und daher subjektiv.

Alternativ wre auch denkbar, das Bewusstsein bei Bedarf in eine geeignete physische Einheit (z.B. Roboter) zu transferieren, dessen Sinneseindrcke zu verarbeiten und ber Adduktoren (z.B. Arme oder Beine) mit der Umgebung zu interagieren.

Fr das Erlangen von Unsterblichkeit bietet die Methode des Uploading einen guten Sicherheitsvorteil, da man vor physischen krperlichen Schden sicher wre und man zustzlich Backups auf rumlich verteilten digitalen Systemen speichern knnte. Der entscheidende Nachteil ist die neue physische Form bzw. das Fehlen einer solchen. Es besteht natrlich kein Konsens bezglich der prinzipiellen Realisierbarkeit von Mind-Uploading, da diese Frage von der geistesphilosophischen Auffassung abhngt, es knnte sich zum Beispiel die Frage stellen, ob eine angenommene Subjektivitt verloren ginge.

Die Idee der Unsterblichkeit gehrt in nahezu allen Religionen zum festen Glaubensbestand. Dabei haftet dem verehrten Gott oder der Gtterwelt das Attribut des Unsterblichseins an, wird aber auch der menschlichen Seele Unsterblichkeit zugebilligt. Im Daoismus bestand in vielen Strmungen die berzeugung, der Mensch knne seinen Geist und Krper durch Kultivierung soweit entwickeln, dass er physische Unsterblichkeit erlangt und ein Xian wird, in anderen Strmungen des Daoismus handelt es sich um eine nicht-physisch gemeinte spirituelle oder geistige, teilweise nachtodliche Unsterblichkeit. Die chinesische Alchemie widmete sich bis zum Ende der Tang-Zeit vornehmlich der Suche nach dem Elixier der Unsterblichkeit, der Quanzhen-Daoismus wandte sich explizit vom Ziel der physischen Unsterblichkeit ab.

In der Bibel gibt es einige Stellen, die sich auf relative physische Unsterblichkeit beziehen (nachfolgende im Wortlaut aus der Lutherbibel, Ausgabe Revidierte Fassung 1984 (1985) der sterreichischen Bibelgesellschaft), freilich nur bedingt durch gttlichen Willen. Nachfolgende Textpassagen stammen smtlich von den vier Evangelisten.

Nach: Als Petrus diesen sah, spricht er zu Jesus: Herr, aber was wird mit diesem? Jesus spricht zu ihm: Wenn ich will, dass er bleibt bis ich komme, was geht es dich an? Folge du mir nach! Da kam unter den Brdern die Rede auf: Dieser Jnger stirbt nicht (Johannes 21,22) Ich sage euch aber wahrlich: Einige von denen, die hier stehen, werden den Tod nicht schmecken, bis sie das Reich Gottes sehen (Lukas 9,27) Und er sprach zu ihnen: Wahrlich ich sage euch: Es stehen einige hier, die werden den Tod nicht schmecken, bis sie sehen das Reich Gottes kommen mit Kraft. (Markus 9,1) Bei Lukas und Markus findet sich sogar fast wrtliche bereinstimmung. Anzumerken ist, dass insbesondere das Christentum das Leben nach dem Tode sowie die Auferstehung betont. Obengenannte Bibelstellen werden daher selten zitiert, da sie meist in der christlichen Theologie einen untergeordneten Stellenwert besitzen. In der christlichen Bibel selbst gibt es ungeachtet des Topos ewiges Leben/Unsterblichkeit Berichte ber besonders langlebige Individuen wie etwa Methusalem oder die Erzvter.

Die philosophische Argumentation fr die Unsterblichkeit (der Seele oder des Geistes) geht u.a. zurck auf Platon. Das Hauptargument lautet: Die geistige Seele kann nicht sterben, d.h. zerstrt oder zerteilt werden, weil sie eine einfache, nicht-zusammengesetzte, immaterielle Substanz ist.

Immanuel Kant, der sich zum Christentum bekannte, formulierte 1793 in seiner religionsphilosophischen Schrift Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloen Vernunft seine Doktrin fr eine Vernunftreligion. Kant postuliert darin die Mglichkeit der Existenz Gottes und der Unsterblichkeit der Seele, die somit Gegenstand eines rationalen Glaubens sein knnen. Allerdings lehnte er metaphysische Beweise hierfr ab.

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Unsterblichkeit Wikipedia

2100

Human intelligence is being vastly amplified by AI

Ubiquitous, large-scale automation has led to vast swathes of human employees being replaced by virtual or robotic counterparts. Strong AI now occupies almost every level of business, government, the military, manufacturing and service sectors.

Rather than being separate entities, these AI programs are often merged with human minds, greatly extending the latter's capability. For instance, knowledge and skills on any subject can now be downloaded and stored directly within the brain. As well as basic information and data, this includes physical abilities. A person can learn self-defence, for example, become an expert in any sport, or be taught to operate a new vehicle, all within a matter of seconds.

The world has been transformed by this fusion of people and machines. The vastly greater power of AI means that it has become, at the same time, both master and servant to the human race.

The benefits of this human-AI merger require the extensive use of implants, however something which a significant minority of the population still refuses to accept. Compared to transhumans, these non-upgraded humans are becoming like cavemen thousands of years behind in intellectual development.* Unable to comprehend the latest technology, the world around them appears "fast" and "strange" from their increasingly limited perspective.* This is creating a major division in society.

Nomadic floating cities are roaming the oceans

At the dawn of the 22nd century, many of the world's cities lie partially submerged due to rising sea levels.* Despite some attempts to build flood defences, even famous locations such as New York, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Sydney have been affected. With over 10% of the world's population living on coastlines, hundreds of millions have been forced to migrate.

While many citizens have abandoned their homelands, a growing number have adopted a new means of living which does away with national boundaries altogether. This comes in the form of floating, artificial islands entirely self-sufficient and able to cruise around the world indefinitely.*

These ships provide comfort, safety and security, in stark contrast to the upheaval and chaos experienced by many land dwellers. In addition to a continuous supply of food and freshwater, various facilities are available including virtual reality suites, state-of-the-art android servants/companions, swimming pools, landing pads for anti-grav vehicles and much more. Carefully maintained arboretums with real trees can also be found on board (flora which is becoming increasingly rare these days).

Credit: Vincent Callebaut architects

These giant, amphibious ships are especially popular in Southeast Asia, which has been hit hard by the effects of climate change. Some of the largest craft house upwards of 100,000+ residents. Whole new cultures are forming on these "micro nations" often based around particular themes, lifestyles, ethics or belief systems that appeal to a specific demographic.

Seasteading in general has exploded in recent decades. In addition to city ships, permanent settlements have appeared along the flooded coasts of many regions. This often takes the form of recovered infrastructure rebuilt to accommodate rising sea levels. In the more prosperous nations, cities may be rebuilt using massive anchored pontoons or other hydrostatic devices. More commonly, entirely new cities are devised by governments to accommodate the displaced populations of coastal cities.

New, larger and more advanced versions of the Energy Islands built in earlier decades make up the majority of these settlements. Some consist of huge artificial archipelagos, stretching for tens of kilometres. Units are often covered in natural plant life, in addition to hi-tech systems for carbon sequestration.

Credit: Shimizu Corporation

As well as CO2 capture, offshore settlements play a role in scrubbing general air and water pollution, acting as giant filters that remove trash and chemicals from the ocean. These materials can then be recycled and put to new use. This is now having a significant impact in reversing the enormous damage that has accumulated over the centuries from ocean acidification, plastic debris, nitrogen and other man-made waste products.**

Needless to say, these settlements, both stationary and roaming, are entirely carbon neutral. Power is produced from a combination of OTEC plants, offshore wind farms, tidal and wave plants, solar arrays, and other means. Some even utilise fusion. Food is grown and water desalinated locally. These ocean settlements are themselves among the earliest adopters of the so-called "post-growth economy". This had emerged out of the converged crises of resource depletion and advanced automation that began during the mid-late 21st century, and seeks to minimise the impact of human economic activity on the environment.

Credit: Shimizu Corporation

Emperor Penguins face extinction

For centuries, Emperor Penguins were the best-loved and most recognised symbol of Antarctica. By the middle of this decade, their numbers have dwindled to almost nothing because of melting sea ice, depletion of krill and industrial activity.* Small populations continue to exist for several more years, by adapting their breeding habits, but even they will eventually disappear. Emperor Penguins aren't the only birds vanishing during this time: thousands of other species are disappearing too, as ecosystems around the world face collapse.*

Bernard Breton | Dreamstime.com

2110

Terraforming of Mars is underway

Although no physical processes have been introduced yet, the first serious plans are being drawn up for the planet's gradual transformation, with the ultimate goal of making it habitable for humans. Exactly who will be given control of Mars and its resources or if the planet should have complete independence is the subject of much debate and speculation around this time.

Force fields are in military use

A combination of several unique technologies, stacked together in layers, has led to a radical new form of protective shielding.* To observers from the previous century, this would resemble the "force fields" depicted in science fiction movies. When activated, it provides an instant, near-impenetrable field withstanding hits from all but the most powerful weaponry.

The outer layer consists of a supercharged plasma window, shaped into a dome or sphere by electromagnetic fields. This is hot enough to vaporize most incoming metals.

A secondary layer underneath contains millions of curved laser beams, producing a high-energy web that captures projectiles fast or powerful enough to bypass the plasma window.

A third layer consists of a "lattice" made from trillions of carbon nanotubes. These microscopic structures are woven together in an instant, forming a diamond-hard shell repelling objects missed by the other two layers. If necessary, this can be extended to cover a larger perimeter, at the cost of decreased strength. Conversely, it can be reduced in size to provide an even denser and more durable barrier.

The layers described above can protect against the majority of bullets, bombs and projectiles. However, they are almost useless against lasers. A fourth and final layer takes care of this problem. This uses photochromatic particles, which change their properties when exposed to laser light, effectively neutralising most directed-energy weapons. An early form of this technology was seen a century previously, with sunglasses that changed colour when exposed to sunlight.

In addition to warzones, these multilayered force fields are used in a range of other situations. National borders, for example, are being made more secure as are many sources of food and water production. Corporate spaces and luxury dwellings owned by the rich are also utilising them. A number of satellites are being fitted with this technology too.

Large-scale arcologies are emerging as an alternative to traditional cities

The global convergence of environmental issues and resource depletion has forced humanity to drastically readdress the way urban areas are designed. The refugee crisis that emerged in the mid-21st century has now largely subsided, with much of civilization having been relocated to the polar regions of Northern Europe, Russia, Canada and Western Antarctica. In order to accommodate so many people in such a smaller area, cities have become increasingly dense and self-contained.

However, decades of concerted geoengineering efforts have led to success in stabilising global temperatures. Combined with ongoing population pressures, this has prompted governments to begin repopulating some of the abandoned regions in more central latitudes. Despite this progress, most countries still face the problems of resettling hyper-arid, ecologically-ravaged environments. As such, long-hypothesised "arcologies" have begun to emerge as a radical departure from traditional urbanism, condensing an entire city into one massive structure.*

A precedent for these mega-structures could be seen as far back as the 2020s, with construction of the first centrally-planned, truly sustainable cities.** Later in the 21st century, these principles were adapted for the development of single structures resulting in supertall skyscrapers that combined vertical farming with residential and commercial space, recycling and production systems for energy, water and other resources.*

By the 22nd century, these towers have evolved into some of the mightiest structures ever built: of such immense volume that some cover several kilometres in girth, typically rise over 1.5 kilometres in height* and accommodate millions of people.** Some are partially or fully merged into mountainsides and other landscapes resembling enormous ant colonies, and living up to their portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology". This scale of engineering has been made possible through advances in materials science, with carbon nanotubes utilised to cope with the massive forces involved. The sheer size and strength of arcologies makes them virtually immune to earthquakes, hurricanes and other disasters.

Each of these self-contained structures holds everything it needs for human survival. Automation is ubiquitous with intelligent robots managing almost all construction and maintenance.* Highly efficient transport systems are located throughout to move travellers horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Advancements in elevator technology have made lifts capable of whisking riders up in a single trip no matter what height as opposed to changing halfway up.* This has been accomplished through improved cable design and, more recently, the use of electromagnetic propulsion.* This kind of hyper-dense urban environment allows movement around a city at speeds unheard of in previous centuries.

These radical new designs exemplify an overall trend in recent human development: low environmental impact. Globally, cities and their connecting infrastructure are slowly being retracted, giving over more land to nature. Advances in transportation and civil engineering, combined with nano-scale manufacturing, are enabling humans to operate with little or no impact on the environment. Though classically designed cities still exist, the arcology represents a fundamental shift in the balance between humans and nature.

Femtoengineering is practical

Technology on the scale of quadrillionths of a metre (10-15) has recently emerged.* This is three orders of magnitude smaller than picotechnology and six orders of magnitude smaller than nanotechnology.

Engineering at this scale involves working directly with the finest known structures of matter such as quarks and strings to manipulate the properties of atoms. This development is a further step towards macro-scale teleportation, i.e. transportation of objects visible to the naked eye. Significant breakthroughs in anti-gravity and force field generation will also result from this.

Another area that will see major progress is in materials technology. For example, metals will be produced which are capable of withstanding truly enormous pressures and tensile forces. The applications for this will be endless, but perhaps one of the most exciting areas will be in the exploration of hostile environments such as probes capable of travelling within the Sun itself, and tunnelling machines that can penetrate the Earth's crust into the layers of magma beneath. Longer term, this development will pave the way for interstellar ships and the massive forces involved in lightspeed travel.

Other more exotic materials are becoming possible including wholly transparent metals, highly luminous metals, frictionless surfaces, and ultradense but extremely lightweight structures. As with many areas of science, femtoengineering is being guided by advanced AI, which is now trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence.

Man-made control of earthquakes and tsunamis

By now, geophysicists have mapped the entirety of the Earth's crust and its faults, extending some 50 km (30 mi) below the surface. Computer simulations can forecast exactly when and where an earthquake will occur and its precise magnitude. With a "scheduling" system now in place, comprehensive preventative measures can be taken against these disasters.

For instance, people know when to stay out of the weakest buildings, away from the bridges most likely to collapse and otherwise away from anything that might harm them. Rescue and repair workers can be on duty, with vacations cancelled and extra workers brought in from other areas. Workers can be geared up with extra equipment ordered in advance to fix key structures that may fail in an earthquake. Freeways can be emptied. Dangerous chemical freight can be prevented from passing through populated areas during the quake. Aircraft can be stopped from approaching a potentially damaged runway. Weak water reservoirs can have their water levels lowered in advance. Tourists can be made to stay away. All of these measures can substantially reduce casualties and economic disruption.

However, some nations are going one step further and creating additional systems, in the form of gigantic engineering projects. To protect the most earthquake-prone regions, a network of "lubrication wells" is being established. These man-made channels penetrate deep underground, to the very edge of the mantle. They work by injecting nanotechnology-based fluid or gel into fault lines, making it easier for rock layers to slide past each other. Explosive charges can also be dropped at strategic points, in zones where the lubrication might be less effective. Instead of sudden, huge earthquakes, the network induces a series of much smaller earthquakes. Using this method, an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 can be buffered down to magnitude 4.0 or lower, causing little or no damage to structures on the surface. In coastal locations, tsunamis can also be prevented.

This is a carefully controlled process requiring heavy use of AI and is by no means perfect. There are complex legal and liability issues in the event of accidents. For instance, damage from human-induced earthquakes cannot be excused as an "act of God."

Despite these technical and legal hurdles, it would seem that mankind is gaining the power to control even the most destructive aspects of nature.*

Our solar system is passing through a million degree cloud of gas

The Sun is approaching a boundary between the Local Cloud of interstellar gas and another cloud of extremely turbulent gas the latter is the remnants of supernova explosions that occurred millions of years ago.

The density of this medium is sufficiently low to pose no threat to Earth or any other planets. The heliosphere is reformed slightly, and the level of cosmic radiation entering the magnetosphere increases, but nothing more.

However, spacecraft and satellites may be damaged by these high energy particles unless they are upgraded.*

Credit: SRC/Tentaris,ACh/Maciej Frolow

2120

Mind uploading enters mainstream society

Adequate hardware to support human-level intelligence was available as far back as the 2020s, thanks to the exponential progress of Moore's Law.* This made it possible to form simulations of neural processes.*

However, the underlying software foundation required for mind uploading proved to be a vastly greater challenge. Full transfer of human consciousness into artificial substrates posed enormous technical difficulties, in addition to raising ethical and philosophical issues.

The sheer complexity of the brain, and its inherent fragility along with the many legislative barriers that stood in the way meant that it was nearly a century before such technology reached the mainstream.

Some breakthroughs occurred in the latter decades of the 21st century, with partial transfer of memories and thought patterns, allowing some limited experience of the mind uploading process. However, it was only through the emergence of picotechnology and strong AI that sufficiently detailed scanning methods became available. This new generation of machines, being orders of magnitude faster and more robust, finally bridged the gap between organic human brains and their synthetic equivalents.

Initially tested on monkeys, the procedure was eventually offered to certain marginalised people including death row inmates and terminally ill patients. Once it could be demonstrated as being safe and reversible, the project garnered a steady stream of free and healthy volunteers, tempted by this new form of computerised immortality.

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2100 Technology | Timeline | 22nd Century | Future ...

by Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board member Michael Anissimov. Overview Universal mind uploading, or universal uploading for short, is the concept, by no means original to me, that the technology of mind uploading will eventually become universally adopted by all who can afford it, similar to the adoption of modern agriculture, hygiene, or living in houses. The concept is rather infrequently discussed, due to a combination of 1) its supposedly speculative nature and 2) its far future time frame. Discussion Before I explore the idea, let me give a quick description of what mind uploading is and why the two roadblocks to its discussion are invalid. Mind uploading would involve simulating a human brain in a computer in enough detail that the simulation becomes, for all practical purposes, a perfect copy and experiences consciousness, just like protein-based human minds. If functionalism is true, like many cognitive scientists and philosophers correctly believe, then all the features of human consciousness that we know and love including all our memories, personality, and sexual quirks would be preserved through the transition. By simultaneously disassembling the protein brain as the computer brain is constructed, only one implementation of the person in question would exist at any one time, eliminating any unnecessary confusion. Still, even if two direct copies are made, the universe wont care you would have simply created two identical individuals with the same memories. The universe cant get confused only you can. Regardless of how perplexed one may be by contemplating this possibility for the first time from a 20th century perspective of personal identity, an upload of you with all your memories and personality intact is no different from you than the person you are today is different than the person you were yesterday when you went to sleep, or the person you were 10-30 seconds ago when quantum fluctuations momentarily destroyed and recreated all the particles in your brain. Regarding objections to talk of uploading, for anyone who 1) buys the silicon brain replacement thought experiment, 2) accepts arguments that the human brain operates at below about 1019 ops/sec, and 3) considers it plausible that 1019 ops/sec computers (plug in whatever value you believe for #2) will become manufactured this century, the topic is clearly worth broaching. Even if its 100 years off, thats just a blink of an eye relative to the entirety of human history, and universal uploading would be something more radical than anything thats occurred with life or intelligence in the entire known history of this solar system. We can afford to stop focusing exclusively on the near future for a potential event of such magnitude. Consider it intellectual masturbation, if you like, or a serious analysis of the near-term future of the human species, if you buy the three points. So, say that mind uploading becomes available as a technology sometime around 2050. If the early adopters dont go crazy and/or use their newfound abilities to turn the world into a totalitarian dictatorship, then they will concisely and vividly communicate the benefits of the technology to their non-uploaded family and friends. If affordable, others will then follow, but the degree of adoption will necessarily depend on whether the process is easily reversible or not. But suppose that millions of people choose to go for it. Effects Widespread uploading would have huge effects. Lets go over some of them in turn 1) Massive economic growth. By allowing human minds to run on substrates that can be accelerated by the addition of computing power, as well as the possibility of spinning off non-conscious daemons to accomplish rote tasks, economic growth at least insofar as it can be accelerated by intelligence and the robotics of 2050 alone will accelerate greatly. Instead of relying upon 1% per year population growth rates, humans might copy themselves or (more conducive to societal diversity) spin off already-mature progeny as quickly as available computing power allows. This could lead to growth rates in human capital of 1,000% per year or far more. More economic growth might ensue in the first year (or month) after uploading than in the entire 250,000 years between the evolution of Homo sapiens and the invention of uploading. The first country that widely adopts the technology might be able to solve global poverty by donating only 0.1% of its annual GDP. 2) Intelligence enhancement. Faster does not necessarily mean smarter. Weak superintelligence is a term sometimes used to describe accelerated intelligence that is not qualitatively enhanced, in contrast with strong superintelligence which is. The road from weak to strong superintelligence would likely be very short. By observing information flows in uploaded human brains, many of the details of human cognition would be elucidated. Running standard compression algorithms over such minds might make them more efficient than blind natural selection could manage, and this extra space could be used to introduce new information-processing modules with additional features. Collectively, these new modules could give rise to qualitatively better intelligence. At the very least, rapid trial-and-error experimentation without the risk of injury would become possible, eventually revealing paths to qualitative enhancements. 3) Greater subjective well-being. Like most other human traits, our happiness set points fall on a bell curve. No matter what happens to us, be it losing our home or winning the lottery, there is a tendency for our innate happiness level to revert back to our natural set point. Some lucky people are innately really happy. Some unlucky people have chronic depression. With uploading, we will be able to see exactly which neural features (happiness centers) correspond to high happiness set points and which dont, by combining prior knowledge with direct experimentation and investigation. This will make it possible for people to reprogram their own brains to raise their happiness set points in a way that biotechnological intervention might find difficult or dangerous. Experimental data and simple observation has shown that high happiness set-point people today dont have any mysterious handicaps, like inability to recognize when their body is in pain, or inappropriate social behavior. They still experience sadness, its just that their happiness returns to a higher level after the sad experience is over. Perennial tropes justifying the value of suffering will lose their appeal when anyone can be happier without any negative side effects. 4) Complete environmental recovery. (Im not just trying to kiss up to greens, I actually care about this.) By spending most of our time as programs running on a worldwide network, we will consume far less space and use less energy and natural resources than we would in a conventional human body. Because our food would be delicious cuisines generated only by electricity or light, we could avoid all the environmental destruction caused by clear-cutting land for farming and the ensuing agricultural runoff. People imagine dystopian futures to involve a lot of homogeneity well, were already here as far as our agriculture is concerned. Land that once had diverse flora and fauna now consists of a few dozen agricultural staples wheat, corn, oats, cattle pastures, factory farms. BORING. By transitioning from a proteinaceous to a digital substrate, well do more for our environment than any amount of conservation ever could. We could still experience this environment by inputting live-updating feeds of the biosphere into a corner of our expansive virtual worlds. Its the best of both worlds, literally virtual and natural in harmony. 5) Escape from direct governance by the laws of physics. Though this benefit sounds more abstract or philosophical, if we were to directly experience it, the visceral nature of this benefit would become immediately clear. In a virtual environment, the programmer is the complete master of everything he or she has editing rights to. A personal virtual sandbox could become ones canvas for creating the fantasy world of their choice. Today, this can be done in a very limited fashion in virtual worlds such as Second Life. (A trend which will continue to the fulfillment of everyones most escapist fantasies, even if uploading is impossible.) Worlds like Second Life are still limited by their system-wide operating rules and their low resolution and bandwidth. Any civilization that develops uploading would surely have the technology to develop virtual environments of great detail and flexibility, right up to the very boundaries of the possible. Anything that can become possible will be. People will be able to experience simulations of the past, travel to far-off stars and planets, and experience entirely novel worldscapes, all within the flickering bits of the worldwide network. 6) Closer connections with other human beings. Our interactions with other people today is limited by the very low bandwidth of human speech and facial expressions. By offering partial readouts of our cognitive state to others, we could engage in a deeper exchange of ideas and emotions. I predict that talking as communication will become pass well engage in much deeper forms of informational and emotional exchange that will make the talking and facial expressions of today seem downright empty and soulless. Spiritualists often talk a lot about connecting closer to one another are they aware that the best way they can go about that would be to contribute to researching neural scanning or brain-computer interfacing technology? Probably not. 7) Last but not least, indefinite lifespans. Here is the one that detractors of uploading are fond of targeting the fact that uploading could lead to practical immortality. Well, it really could. By being a string of flickering bits distributed over a worldwide network, killing you could become extremely difficult. The data and bits of everyone would be intertwined to kill someone, youll either need complete editing privileges of the entire worldwide network, or the ability to blow up the planet. Needless to say, true immortality would be a huge deal, a much bigger deal than the temporary fix of life extension therapies for biological bodies, which will do very little to combat infectious disease or exotic maladies such as being hit by a truck. Conclusion Its obvious that mind uploading would be incredibly beneficial. As stated near the beginning of this post, only three things are necessary for it to be a big deal 1) that you believe a brain could be incrementally replaced with functionally identical implants and retain its fundamental characteristics and identity, 2) that the computational capacity of the human brain is a reasonable number, very unlikely to be more than 1019 ops/sec, and 3) that at some point in the future well have computers that fast. Not so far-fetched. Many people consider these three points plausible, but just arent aware of their implications. If you believe those three points, then uploading becomes a fascinating goal to work towards. From a utilitarian perspective, it practically blows everything else away besides global risk mitigation, as the number of new minds leading worthwhile lives that could be created using the technology would be astronomical. The number of digital minds we could create using the matter on Earth alone would likely be over a quadrillion, more than 2,500 people for every star in the 400 billion star Milky Way. We could make a Galactic Civilization right here on Earth in the late 21st or 22nd century. I can scarcely imagine such a thing, but I can imagine that well be guffawing heartily as how unambitious most human goals were in the year 2010.

See more here:

What are the Benefits of Mind Uploading? - Lifeboat

by Dr. Randal A. Koene

SIM, the concept of substrate-independent minds. We call a mind substrate-independent when its self-same functions that carry out thinking processes can be implemented through the operations available in a number of different computational platforms. For example, if we can carry out the function of a mind both in a biological brain and in a brain that is composed of computer software or neuromorphic hardware (a hardware architecture with design principles based on biological neural systems), then that mind is substrate-independent. The mind continues to depend on a substrate to exist and to operate, but there are substrate choices.

The goal of substrate-independence is to continue personality, individual characteristics, a manner of experiencing and a personal way of processing those experiences. Your identity, your memories can then be embodied physically in many ways. They can also be backed up and operate robustly on fault-tolerant hardware with redundancy schemes. Achieving substrate-independence will allow us to optimize the operational framework (i.e., the hardware) to challenges posed by novel circumstances and different environments. But where did all this start? How did this particular concept of SIM and the organized efforts seeking to accomplish it come about?

The term Substrate-Independent Minds (SIM) is fairly recent. Many of the core ideas have been previously referred to by the terms mind uploading or off-loading. Unfortunately, those older terms have also led to some confusion, especially among those new to the ideas. Why "uploading", why not "downloading" or "off-loading"? I have heard all three terms used with regards to memory. And in each case, those terms really only describe the act of moving data from one storage location to another. Storage does not tell us anything about the use of that data. In this sense, taking a magnetic resonance image (MRI) of a brain could constitute "uploading". The most important part of the objective is of course that data is not simply recorded, but used to re-implement functions of mind. The objective is to carry on the functions of a specific mind. A re-implementation of functions must operate on some substrate, but when you can do this in a number of sufficiently powerful computational substrates then the mind has become substrate-independent in that way. We call that a substrate-independent mind, a SIM - which is the objective.

Mind uploading is a process, and that is what the term is now used for. By convention, we refer to mind uploading as the process by which that which constitutes a specific mind is transferred from one substrate (especially the biological brain) to another substrate (e.g., an implementation in-silico).

Beyond the process of moving to other substrates, we are especially interested in enhancement of the mind. We seek to achieve far greater adaptability and therefore greater competitive strength in a wide range of challenging circumstances. This goal is more than preservation or life-extension. I paid special attention to that aspect of SIM in "Pattern survival versus Genesurvival" (R.A. Koene, KurzweilAI.net, 2011). Enhancement or augmentation is where the multidisciplinary requirements for SIM intersect with research and development of brain-machine interfaces (BMI) or brain-computer interfaces (BCI). As a brain-machine interface, SIM enables increasingly intimate man-machine merger that integrates with us the capabilities of our creations.

There are numerous technological proposals for the accomplishment of SIM (R.A. Koene, International Journal of Machine Consciousness, 2012). At present count, there are at least six main tracks. Our understanding is still limited with regards to the manner in which fundamental computational elements of the brain participate in the vast interaction of concurrent processes from which mind emerges. For the vast majority of tasks that a mind can deal with, we do not understand the top-down set of strategies at each level of processing. For this reason, high-level approaches that begin with abstract assumptions about functions of mind and how those might be recorded and recreated are difficult to justify and validate.

Someday, extremely insightful methods of uploading from a biological mind to a SIM may be feasible and well-supported. And it may become possible to convert or compile functions of mind that were generated by processes in the neurophysiology directly into a form that is optimized to make use of the features of the target platform, while still achieving at least equivalent and satisfactory re-implementation of the specific mind. That is not yet feasible.

At present, nearly everyone who is actively working in the field of SIM and in closely related domains takes a much more conservative approach. That approach is to faithfully re-implement by emulating the basic computational functions carried out by elements of the neurophysiology, while at the same time faithfully re-implementing the connectivity as it exists between those elements in the neuroanatomy. The problem is decomposed into much smaller physical pieces for which so-called system identification must be feasibly carried out. At that level, there are still suppositions about scope and resolution that need to be tested. E.g., do ensembles of neurons, individual spiking neurons, morphologically detailed neurons, or molecular processes in synaptic channels attain the requisite resolution for emulation? Still, the acquisition and recreation of function and structure are feasible with understanding at a level within reach of current neuroscience, and with tools that we can construct today. In 2000, I named this approach descriptively as Whole Brain Emulation (WBE). The term caught on and was eventually adopted by related research aspirations, where it is sometimes abbreviated to "brain emulation" if the whole brain is not the scope of a project.

On the other tracks to SIM, significant practical work is also taking place to develop neural interfaces and brain-machine interfaces. Such interfaces, may provide a path of Augmentation up to SIM. It is an interesting possibility, because that path is highly incremental. We have always augmented ourselves with tools, and not just by relying on computer networks and smart phones. Today, we already see that a prosthesis can help an individual outperform the unaugmented. This is the case with Oscar Pistorius, the famous South African runner who has "Cheetah blades" instead of legs. As in that example, there is a case to be made for BMI as an approach that benefits from market pull.

Imagine introducing simple, non-invasive augmentative technology that lawyers can use in the court room. When that technology gives lawyers who have it an edge, there will be demand. Other professionals, such as those working on stock markets, may then notice the appeal so that the market for augmentation expands. In addition to breadth, competition in the market can lead to a need for higher bandwidth integration and interfacing. Once there, you begin to bump into the same questions that need solving for technological advances that achieve SIM.

The core idea, that the significant aspects of a person's mental life can persist when properly transferred from body to machine, from machine to machine, or from body to body has been around for a long while. In those early forms, it was a fancy and a fantasy, the purview of magical transformations. With the scientific renaissance, modern philosophy and psychology, thought experiments along the same lines became more refined, and by the middle of the 20th century, serious science fiction writers were incorporating in their stories some ideas that quite closely resemble the current conceptions of mind uploading, whole brain emulation and substrate-independent minds.

My own thinking was influenced by reading "The City and the Stars" (A.C. Clarke, 1956), a 1956 re-write by science fiction legend Arthur C. Clarke of his first novel. In the story, the inhabitants of the city Diaspar take turns having 1000 year intervals of active life between periods of stasis in which they are stored as data patterns in the city's computer. Either shortly before or shortly after I read that story, sometime in 1984, was when I decided that substrate-independent minds would be the objective I needed to achieve first. (According to my thinking at the time, the next mission would require control of matter in the fashion that is now known as nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing.) I have explained the reasons for this elsewhere (R.A. Koene & S. Olson, 2011).

In the early 1990's, the rise of the Internet began to facilitate the formation of on-line interest groups and communities that would otherwise have had a very difficult time finding their peers on a global scale. One of these interest groups coalesced around the concept of mind uploading. A collection of web pages was maintained by Joe Strout, which was most notable for practical ideas about the reconstruction of brains by building compartmental models of neurons from structural scans. Joe Strout, at UCSD at the time, also established a mailing list called the mind uploading research group (MURG).

It is when I discovered and joined that mailing list in 1994 that I first realized that I was not alone. There were some early fellow travelers with the same destination, who understood the difference between impossible projects and ambitious projects, and who were willing to devise practical plans and dedicate their efforts to the necessary actions. The archives of the MURG list and some of the pages that I have retained on the site http://minduploading.org give insight to this period. It is during the early years of that web site and my tenure as curator of the MURG list that Whole Brain Emulation was coined (April 29, 1998) for clarity and in an effort to move from good ideas to feasible projects. The focus on whole brain emulation also distinguished our efforts from approaches that shared many of the same ultimate ambitions, but had different methodological philosophies or different criteria for success (e.g., the Terasem Movement).

In 2007, the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, and in particular Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg (a former computational neuroscientist) began to take a serious interest in Whole Brain Emulation. The first Whole Brain Emulation Workshop was convened at Oxford University. The result of this workshop was a technical report on the feasibility of WBE, a first attempt at a roadmap of sorts (A. Sandberg & N. Bostrom, 2008). The report already included key technologies such as the Knife-Edge Scanning Microscope (KESM), the Automatic Tape-Collecting Lathe Ultramicrotome (ATLUM, now called an ATUM) and functional recording work by Peter Passaro.

Thinkers from outside the domains of neuroscience, physics, and engineering wrote about future possibilities that included WBE from the social/philosophical (D.J. Chalmers, 2010) and economic (R. Hanson, 1994) perspectives. Around the time of the 2009 Singularity Summit in New York, I was working on the organization of systematic efforts to bring together the key pieces needed to achieve WBE and SIM. During the summit workshop, we were able to put forward WBE as a transformative technology to be considered and contrasted with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and its potential existential risks.

In 2010, WBE was for the first time included in the annual conference on Artificial General Intelligence (Lugano, Switzerland). There, I teamed up with Dr. Suzanne Gildert (D-Wave, Vancouver) and we revamped the organizational network around the multidisciplinary research and development efforts toward WBE. We introduced Substrate-Independent Minds (SIM) as a well-defined objective, employing the acronym ASIM for Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds to indicate the purpose of our new action-oriented organization carboncopies.org.

As of this writing, most of those working on SIM are focused on research and tool development aimed at the initial challenge to gain sufficient access to the biological human brain. In those efforts, we now include the world-class expertise of Jeff Lichtman, Ted Berger, Henry Markram, Sebastian Seung, Ed Boyden, George Church, Anthony Zador, Konrad Kording, Clay Reid, their laboratories and many others.

See the original post:

The History of SIM, Whole Brain Emulation and Mind Uploading

"The point is, if we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we store a man's intelligence and personality on one? So, I have the engineers figuring that one out now." Artificial intelligence is hard. Why reinvent the wheel, when you've got plenty of humans walking around? Who will miss one, right? Alternatively, you might be one of those humans looking for easy immortality. Either way, once you finish scanning the brain, you end up with a file that you run in a physics simulator, and presto, you have a computer that remembers being a human. If you do it carefully enough, the original brain won't even notice it happening. This computer has a number of advantages over a meat human. The simulation can be run many thousands of times faster than objective speed, if you've got enough computing power. It can be backed up with trivial ease. You can run multiple copies at the same time, and have them do different things, make exotic personality composites, and tinker around with the inner workings of the brain in ways that are either difficult or impossible to do with a meat brain. Additionally, there's the fact that it's impossible to kill as long as its data is backed up somewhere and there exists a computer on which to run it - you can just restart the simulation wherever you left off and the mind won't even recognize it. Critics of the concept are quick to point out that it presupposes an understanding of neurology (not just human neurology, but even the neurology of a common insect) far, far beyond what currently exists; and that without that knowledge, even the most powerful computer cannot do this. Proponents of the idea assure us that this knowledge is coming. Proponents who hope to live to see and actually benefit from it assure us that it's coming really really soon. As with The Singularity, the idea of brain uploading has inevitably taken on a quasi-religious aspect for many in recent years, since it does promise immortality of a sort (as long as your backups and the hardware to run them on are safe), and even transcendence of the body. The advantages bestowed by brain uploading are a bit overwhelming if you're trying to incorporate them into a story. It kind of kills the tension when the protagonist can restore from backup whenever the Big Bad kills them. Authors have devised a number of cop-outs, which you can recognize by asking these questions:

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Brain Uploading - TV Tropes

Stay Informed Facebook Group:carboncopies

Become amember of our carboncopies Facebook group to stay informed of our regular events, summits, and news about SIM!

Recent & interesting:

What is carboncopies.org?

is a nonprofit organisation with a goal of advancing the

of neural tissue and complete brains,

and development of

that reproduce functions of mind, creating what we call

(SIM).

SIM is a field of research which seeks to understand the brain and nervous system of a wide range of organisms, including humans, in order to facilitate emulation of these organisms in an artificial substrate, for example a computer processor.

For a more detailed description of the rationale behind carboncopies, its character and the objectives at its roots,

.

Why is carboncopies.org needed?

In order for progress to be made in the field of SIM, advancements in many key technologies and research areas are required. These include:

Nanotechnology, biotechnology, brain imaging, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, computational hardware and architectures, cognitive psychology and philosophy.

SIM sits at the confluence of many subjects, and cross-disciplinary research is a necessity. However, it can be difficult to manage and organise ideas from many different fields of expertise. SIM offers tantalizing possibilities, but they need to be understood and pursued in a structured fashion.

Carboncopies.org will help by offering a networking platform and hub around which experts in the individual fields relevant to SIM can gather and exchange ideas. It will also promote these ideas and explain the motivation behind SIM to a wider audience.

How will carboncopies.org achieve this?

Carboncopies.org organises workshops and conferences where interested parties can exchange ideas, network with others, and keep updated on the latest developments in the field. We also gather up-to-date literature and news relevant to the SIM community.

-

(Photo courtesy of Adam Falcon.)

In the News:

March 28, 2016

February 9, 2016

July 30, 2015

July 2, 2015

Re-launch of daughter-site

, a site dedicated to the concept of mind uploading.

November 25, 2014

November 18, 2014

September 27, 2014

September 19, 2014

June 17, 2014

Reading recommendation by carboncopies.org:

Chris Eliasmith,

Charles H. Anderson

See the article here:

Carboncopies.org Foundation

What is 'mind uploading' (MU)? What is a 'substrate-independent mind' (SIM)? And what is 'whole brain emulation' (WBE)?

As described in the Wikipedia entry for mind uploading (MU),

'mind uploading (sometimes called "mind copying" or "mind transfer") is the hypothetical process of copying mental content (including long-term memory and "self") from a particular brain substrate and copying it to a computational device, such as a digital, analog, quantum-based or software-based artificial neural network.'

Mind uploading implies a process by which, from a subjective perspective, a person's conscious experience (sense of 'self' or 'personal identity') continues, despite his or her neural functionality ceasing in the originating biological brain and subsequently occurring via brain-like processes in some other system (ostensibly some sort of computer). The concept of mind uploading therefore relies on the stance that all experience (sensory perception, conscious introspection, learning and memory, etc.) is an emergent function of neural-like processes. The biological brain is in that sense a device or machine, and as such utilizes functions which can be confidently replicated by properly arranged alternate systems, including nonbiological systems (once again, by this we imply something akin to a conventional computer).

A crucial component of mind uploading is that the process does not merely transfer or duplicate neurological or cognitive functions. Rather, it implies that a person's subjective experience (their identity) also comes to be associated with the emergent functionality arising from the activity of the new brain-like substrate. This concept is referred to as preserving personal identity in the new substrate. Recent work has addressed the question of whether the particulars of the method used to achieve mind uploading would lead to different outcomes (Wiley & Koene, The Fallacy of Favoring Gradual Replacement Mind Uploading Over Scan-and-Copy)

The concept of mind uploading, in its full meaning, has been used in science fiction at least since the mid 1950s (e.g. Frederick Pohl, The Tunnel Under the World; Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars), and has also been used as a tool for thought experiments in philosophy. Mind uploading became a topic of considered scientific interest in the mid 1990s (e.g. the Mind Uploading Research Group).

A substrate-independent mind (SIM) is the method-agnostic term for the concept of a mind that can operate on many different types of underlying functional processing substrates, e.g. a biological brain, a special 'neuromorphic' device, software executed in a digital computer, etc. SIM is the desired result, the goal or objective of efforts to achieve mind uploading. The objective is to be able to sustain person-specific functions of mind and experience in many different operational substrates. A mind is then considered substrate-independent in a manner analogous to a programmer's understanding of platform-independent computer code, which can be compiled to run on many different computing platforms.

Whole brain emulation (WBE) is the principal method proposed by which to accomplish SIM for mind uploading and many other purposes (e.g. general brain research, research into clinical neural prostheses, research into artificial general intelligence, etc). In academic research, the shorter term 'brain emulation' is sometimes used, and terms such as 'whole-brain activity mapping' are used to describe data acquisition tools developed and used in closely related fields of neuroscience. Whole brain emulation uses high resolution data about specific brain structure (e.g. the connectome) and specific brain activity (e.g. electrophysiology).

The term 'emulation' is used, specifically, to underline the distinction when compared with investigative simulations carried out in computational neuroscience. Simulations are generally built to study system or mechanism principles derived and abstracted through the study of brain function in many animal or human subjects. While the principles learned there are important for WBE, the emulation aims to match the characteristics of mental function specific to an individual brain. When a smaller piece of a brain is emulated this is also known as a neural prostheses or neuroprosthetic (e.g. Berger et al and the hippocampal neural prosthesis).

Whole brain emulation can therefore also be thought of as applying neural prostheses to all parts of a person's brain. Emulation, as a means to match a whole collection of target characteristics of a processing platform is also a well-known term in computing, where an emulator enables one computer system to behave like another one (e.g. emulating the old Commodore 64 on a modern computer). In engineering, the reverse engineering of a system for purposes such as emulation is known as system identification (as applied, for example, by Berger et al for the hippocampal prosthesis).

The site minduploading.org is dedicated to interest in the broader concept and goal of mind uploading. The site aims to serve general public and specialists alike, providing news, answers to questions and background information.

The minduploading.org site is closely affiliated with carboncopies.org, the non-profit organization operating as a nexus for activity and interest in the objective of substrate-independent minds (SIM). Carboncopies.org explains fundamental concepts of SIM and maintains the research roadmap and network. A Facebook carboncopies group carries on public discussions with contributed posts and updates about topical events and news.

The research site wholebrainemulation.org links to activities, labs and contacts in the fields of connectome research (e.g. high-throughput microscopy), neural prosthetics, neural interfacing, large-scale computational neuroscience and more.

Read the original here:

Mind Uploading FAQs

Mind uploading is a science fictional trope and popular desired actualization among transhumanists. It's also one of the hypothesised solutions to bringing people back from cryonics.

It is necessary to separate reasonable extrapolations and speculation about mind uploading from the magical thinking surrounding it. Several metaphysical questions are brought up by the prospect of mind uploading. Like many such questions, these may not be objectively answerable, and philosophers will no doubt continue to debate them long after uploading has become commonplace.

The first major question about the plausibility of mind uploading is more or less falsifiable: whether consciousness is artificially replicable in its entirety. In other words, assuming that consciousness is not magic, and that the brain is the seat of consciousness, does it depend on any special functions or quantum mechanical effects that cannot ever be replicated on another substrate? This question, of course, remains unanswered although, considering the current state of cognitive science, it is not unreasonable to think that consciousness will be found to be replicable in the future.

Assuming that consciousness is proven to be artificially replicable, the second question is whether the "strong AI hypothesis" is justified or not: if a machine accurately replicates consciousness, such that it passes a Turing Test or is otherwise indistinguishable from a natural human being, is the machine really conscious, or is it a soulless mechanism that merely imitates consciousness?

Third, assuming that a machine can actually be conscious (which is no great stretch of the imagination, considering that the human brain is essentially a biological machine), is a copy of your consciousness really you? Is it even possible to copy consciousness? Is mind uploading really a ticket to immortality, in that "you" or your identity can be "uploaded"?

Advocates of mind uploading take the functionalist/reductionist approach of defining human existence as the identity, which is based on memories and personalities rather than physical substrates or subjectivity.[1] They believe that the identity is essential; the copy of the mind holds just as much claim to being that person as the original, even if both were to exist simultaneously. When the physical body of a copied person dies, nothing that defines the person as an individual has been lost. In this context, all that matters is that the memories and personality of the individual are preserved. As the recently murdered protagonist states in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, "I feel like me and no one else is making that claim. Who cares if I've been restored from a backup?"

Skeptics of mind uploading[2] question if it's possible to transfer a consciousness from one substrate to another, and hold that this is critical to the life-extension application of mind uploading. The transfer of identity is similar to the process of transferring data from one computer hard drive to another. The new person would be a copy of the original; a new consciousness with the same identity. With this approach, mind uploading would simply create a "mind-clone"[3] an artificial person with an identity gleaned from another. The philosophical problem with uploading "yourself" to a computer is very similar to the "swamp man" thought experiment in which a clone is made of a man while the "original" is killed, or the very similar teleportation thought experiment.[4] This is one reason that has led critics to say it's not at all clear that the concept mind uploading is even meaningful. For the skeptic, the thought of permanently losing subjective consciousness (death), while another consciousness that shares their identity lives on yields no comfort.

Consciousness is currently (poorly) understood to be an epiphenomenon of brain activity specifically of the cerebral cortex[5]. Identity and consciousness are distinct from one another though presumably the former could not exist without the latter. Unlike an identity, which is a composition of information stored within a brain it is reasonable to assume that a particular subjective consciousness is an intrinsic property of a particular physical brain. Thus, even a perfect physical copy of that brain would not share the subjective consciousness of that brain. This holds true of all 'brains' (consciousness-producing machines), biological or otherwise. When/if non-biological brains are ever developed/discovered it would be reasonable to assume that each would have its own intrinsic, non-transferable subjective consciousness, independent of its identity. It is likely that mind uploading would preserve an identity, if not the subjective consciousness that begot it. If identity rather than subjective consciousness is taken to be the essential, mind uploading succeeds in the opinion of mind-uploading-immortalist advocates.

Believing that there is some mystical "essence" to consciousness that isn't preserved by copying is ultimately a form of dualism, however. Humans lose consciousness at least daily, yet still remain the same person in the morning. In the extreme, humans completely cease all activity, brain or otherwise, during deep hypothermic circulatory arrest, yet still remain the same person on resuscitation,[6] demonstrating that continuity of consciousness is not necessary for identity or personhood. Rather, the properties that make us identifiable as individuals are stored in the physical structure of the brain.

Ultimately, this is a subjective problem, not an objective one: If a copy is made of a book, is it still the same book? It depends if you subjectively consider "the book" to be the physical artifact or the information contained within. Is it the same book that was once held by Isaac Newton? No. Is it the same book that was once read by Isaac Newton? Yes.

See the rest here:

Mind uploading - RationalWiki

Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera.

Il trasferimento della mente o mind uploading (in lingua inglese letteralmente "caricamento della mente") o emulazione del cervello l'ipotetico processo del trasferimento o della copia di una mente cosciente da un cervello a un substrato non biologico. Il processo prevede la scansione e la mappatura dettagliata del cervello biologico e la copia del suo stato in un sistema informatico o altro dispositivo di calcolo.[1] Il computer eseguirebbe una simulazione del modello cos fedele all'originale che la mente simulata si comporterebbe, in sostanza, allo stesso modo del cervello originale, o per tutti gli scopi pratici, in maniera indistinguibile.[2] La mente simulata verrebbe considerata parte della realt virtuale del mondo simulato e potrebbe essere supportata da un modello anatomico tridimensionale che simula il corpo. In alternativa, la mente simulata potrebbe risiedere in un computer (o connessa ad esso) innestato all'interno di un robot umanoide o di un corpo biologico sostituendone il cervello.

L'emulazione di un intero cervello viene considerata dai futurologi come il punto logico finale[2] nei campi della neuroscienza computazionale e della neuroinformatica, ossia nella simulazione del cervello per scopi di ricerca medica. Essa viene trattata in pubblicazioni di ricerca riguardanti l'intelligenza artificiale[3] come un approccio all'intelligenza artificiale forte. Secondo i futurologi e per i movimenti transumanisti il mind uploading una tecnologia che rappresenta un'importante possibilit di estensione della vita, originariamente suggerita dalla letteratura biomedica gi nel 1971.[4] Il mind uploading rappresenta, inoltre, un elemento centrale in numerose opere di fantascienza, quali romanzi e film, come, ad esempio Transcendence.

Il mind uploading viene considerato da alcuni scienziati come una tecnologia teorica e futuribile ma possibile,[2] sebbene i principali finanziatori della ricerca e le principali riviste scientifiche rimangano scettici. Diverse previsioni contraddittorie sono state formulate riguardo a quando un cervello umano potr essere interamente emulato e alcune delle previsioni fatte in passato sono risultate troppo ottimistiche. Gi nel 1950 uno dei padri fondatori della cibernetica, Norbert Wiener, predisse che un giorno si sarebbe potuta trasferire una mente attraverso i fili di un telegrafo.[1] Una ricerca tradizionale nel campo comunque in corso in settori pertinenti, compresi campi quali lo sviluppo di supercomputer sempre pi veloci, la realt virtuale, le interfacce neurali, la mappatura e la simulazione di cervelli di animali, la connettomica e l'estrazione di informazioni da un cervello in funzione.[5] La questione del trasferimento dei dati e dell'intera struttura funzionale di un cervello tramite un processo tecnologico un argomento discusso anche dai filosofi, e la possibilit di una reale attuazione del processo pu essere vista come impossibile o inaccettabile da coloro che possiedono una visione dualistica del mondo, che comune a molte religioni.

Il cervello dell'essere umano contiene circa 86 miliardi di cellule nervose, chiamate neuroni, ciascuna singolarmente legata ad altri neuroni per mezzo di connettori chiamati assoni e dendriti. I segnali che percorrono le giunture (sinapsi) di queste connessioni vengono trasmessi tramite il rilascio e il rilevamento di sostanze chimiche note come neurotrasmettitori. Si concordi nel credere che la mente umana sia in gran parte una propriet emergente dell'elaborazione delle informazioni di questa rete neurale.

I neuroscienziati hanno dichiarato che importanti funzioni svolte dalla mente, come l'apprendimento, la memoria e la coscienza, sono dovuti a processi puramente fisici ed elettrochimici nel cervello e sono regolati da leggi vigenti. Christof Koch e Giulio Tononi hanno scritto nell'IEEE Spectrum:

Il concetto di mind uploading si basa su questa visione meccanicistica della mente, e nega la visione vitalista della vita umana e della coscienza. Molti eminenti scienziati, informatici e neuroscienziati hanno previsto che i computer saranno in grado di pensare e persino di raggiungere il livello di coscienza, inclusi Koch e Tononi,[6]Douglas Hofstadter,[7]Jeff Hawkins,[7]Marvin Minsky,[8]Randal A. Koene,[9] e Rodolfo Llins.[10]

Tale capacit di intelligenza delle macchine potrebbe fornire il substrato computazionale necessario per il caricamento della mente. Tuttavia, anche se il mind uploading dipende da una tale capacit generale, concettualmente distinto dalle forme generali di intelligenza artificiale in quanto il risultato di una rianimazione dinamica di informazioni derivanti da una mente umana in modo che la mente conservi un senso di identit storica (altre forme sono possibili ma comprometterebbero o eliminerebbero la caratteristica dell'estensione della vita generalmente associata con il mind uploading). Le informazioni trasferite e rianimate diverrebbero una forma di intelligenza artificiale, talvolta chiamata anche infomorfo o "nomorph".

Molti teorici hanno presentato modelli del cervello e hanno stabilito una serie di stime della quantit di potenza di calcolo necessaria per simulazioni parziali e complete. Secondo questi modelli, il mind uploading pu diventare possibile entro qualche decennio, se le tendenze nel progresso tecnologico, come quelle rappresentate dalla legge di Moore, continuassero allo stesso ritmo esponenziale.[11]

La prospettiva di caricare la coscienza umana in questo modo solleva molte questioni filosofiche che coinvolgono l'identit, l'individualit e questioni riguardanti l'anima e la mente definite come il contenuto informativo del cervello, cos come numerosi problemi di etica medica e moralit alla base processo.

In teoria, se le informazioni e i processi della mente possono essere dissociati dal corpo biologico, essi non sono pi legate ai limiti fisici individuali di quel corpo. Inoltre, le informazioni all'interno di un cervello potrebbero essere in parte o interamente copiate o trasferite a una o pi altri substrati (come una memorizzazione di tipo digitale o un altro cervello), riducendo o eliminando il rischio di mortalit. Questa lettura del processo fu proposta per la prima volta nella letteratura biomedica nel 1971 dal biogerontologo George M. Martin dell'Universit di Washington.[4]

Una intelligenza basata su computer, come quella risultante da un mind uploading, potrebbe pensare molto pi velocemente di un essere umano. I neuroni umani scambiano i segnali elettrochimici con una velocit massima di circa 150 metri al secondo, mentre la velocit della luce di circa 300 milioni di metri al secondo, circa due milioni di volte pi veloce. Inoltre, i neuroni possono generare un massimo di circa 200-1000 potenziali d'azione o "picchi" al secondo, mentre il numero di segnali al secondo nei moderni chip per computer di circa 3GHz (circa 20 milioni di volte maggiore) e dovrebbe aumentare di almeno un fattore 100. Pertanto, anche se i componenti del computer responsabile della simulazione di un cervello non sono significativamente pi piccoli rispetto a quelli di un cervello biologico, e anche se la temperatura di questi componenti non significativamente pi bassa, Eliezer Yudkowsky del Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence calcola un limite massimo teorico per la velocit di una futura rete neurale artificiale. La rete potrebbe in teoria funzionare circa un milione di volte pi velocemente di un vero cervello, sperimentando un anno di tempo soggettivo in soli 31 secondi di tempo reale.[12][13][14]

Tuttavia, ne
lla pratica questa implementazione in parallelo richiederebbe entit computazionali per ciascuno dei cento miliardi di neuroni e ciascuna delle 100.000 miliardi di sinapsi. Ci richiede un computer o reti neurali artificiali dalle potenzialit enormi, molto pi grandi anche degli attuali supercomputer.[13] In un'implementazione meno futuristica, il time-sharing permetterebbe l'emulazione sequenziale di diversi neuroni con la stessa unit di calcolo. Cos le dimensioni del computer potrebbero essere pi limitate, anche se l'aumento di velocit potrebbe essere minore. Supponendo che le minicolonne corticali raggruppate in ipercolonne siano le unit di calcolo, il cervello di un mammifero pu essere emulato da un supercomputer di oggi, ma risulterebbe operante a una velocit inferiore rispetto a quella del cervello biologico.[15]

Il mind uploading pone potenziali benefici per i viaggi nello spazio interstellare perch consentirebbe ad esseri immortali di viaggiare per il cosmo senza soffrire di accelerazione estrema oltre che delle limitazioni intrinseche di un corpo biologico. Una societ intera di menti processate con un mind uploading pu essere emulata da un computer su una nave spaziale dalle dimensioni estremamente limitate, che consuma molta meno energia rispetto a quella utilizzata per i viaggi spaziali tradizionali.

Le menti digitalizzate avrebbero il controllo della nave e sarebbero in grado di prendere decisioni sul viaggio in tempo reale, indipendentemente da eventuali segnali provenienti dalla Terra, che potrebbero eventualmente richiedere mesi o anni per raggiungere l'astronave. Inoltre una coscienza virtuale pu essere posta in uno stato di ibernazione, o le sue attivit rallentate; le menti virtuali non dovrebbero quindi essere costrette a sperimentare la noia infinita di un viaggio che potrebbe richiedere anche migliaia di anni. Le menti potrebbero essere risvegliate solo quando il computer di bordo rileva che la destinazione stata raggiunta.

Un'altra possibilit per il viaggio sarebbe quella di trasmettere una mente tramite un laser, o via radio, tra due localit gi colonizzate. Il viaggio richiederebbe solo l'energia per trasmettere i segnali con la potenza necessaria per la destinazione.

Un altro concetto collegato al mind uploading, esplorato pi nella fantascienza che nella speculazione scientifica, la possibilit di ottenere diverse copie speculari di una sola mente umana. Tali copie potrebbero consentire a un "individuo" di provare pi cose in una volta, reintegrando le esperienze di tutte le copie in una mente centrale in un certo momento del futuro, di fatto permettendo a un singolo essere senziente di vivere in molti luoghi e fare pi cose contemporaneamente; questo concetto stato esplorato in particolare nella narrativa. Tali copie parziali e complete di un essere senziente sollevano questioni interessanti per quanto riguarda l'identit e l'individualit.

I sostenitori del mind uploading puntano alla legge di Moore per sostenere l'idea secondo cui la potenza di calcolo necessaria potrebbe essere disponibile in pochi decenni. Tuttavia, le effettive esigenze di calcolo per l'esecuzione di una mente umana caricata in un supporto tecnologico sono molto difficili da quantificare, rendendo altamente speculativo tale argomento. Indipendentemente dalla tecnica utilizzata per acquisire o ricreare la funzione di una mente umana, le esigenze di elaborazione possono essere immense, a causa del gran numero di neuroni presenti nel cervello umano e della notevole complessit di ogni neurone.

Nel 2004 Henry Markram, ricercatore capo del "Blue Brain Project", ha dichiarato che "non il loro obiettivo costruire una rete intelligente neurale", basata esclusivamente sulle esigenze computazioni che un tale progetto richiederebbe:[16]

Cinque anni pi tardi, dopo la riuscita simulazione di una parte di cervello di un ratto, lo stesso scienziato si rivelato molto pi ottimista al riguardo. Nel 2009, quando era direttore del progetto Blue Brain, aveva affermato che "Un dettagliato e funzionale cervello umano artificiale pu essere costruito entro i prossimi 10 anni".[18]

Poich la funzione della mente umana, e i suoi collegamenti con il funzionamento della rete neurale del cervello, sono questioni poco conosciute, il mind uploading si basa sul concetto di emulazione della rete neurale. Invece di dover comprendere i processi psicologici di alto livello e le grandi strutture del cervello, e di costruire su di essi un modello utilizzando l'intelligenza artificiale classica e i modelli della psicologia cognitiva, viene scansionato il basso livello di struttura della rete neurale sottostante, mappato e quindi emulato con un sistema informatico. Per dirla con la terminologia informatica, piuttosto che fare un'analisi e un reverse engineering del comportamento degli algoritmi e delle strutture dei dati che risiedono nel cervello, uno schema del suo codice sorgente viene ricompilato in un altro linguaggio di programmazione. La mente umana e l'identit personale verrebbero poi, in teoria, generati dalla rete neurale emulata nello stesso modo in cui vengono generati dalla rete neurale biologica.

D'altra parte, una simulazione a scala molecolare del cervello potrebbe non essere necessaria, a condizione che il funzionamento dei neuroni non sia influenzato da processi della meccanica quantistica. L'approccio all'emulazione della rete neurale richiede solo che siano compresi il funzionamento e l'interazione dei neuroni e delle sinapsi. Si prevede che possa essere sufficiente un modello black box dell'elaborazione del segnale con il quale i neuroni rispondono agli impulsi nervosi (elettrici e trasmissione sinaptica chimica).

richiesto un modello sufficientemente complesso e accurato dei neuroni. Un tradizionale modello artificiale di una rete neurale, ad esempio un modello di rete multi-livello di tipo perceptron, non considerato sufficiente. richiesto il modello di una rete neuronale di impulsi (SNN, Spiking Neural Network), che rifletterebbe la propriet del neurone che spara impulsi solo quando un potenziale di membrana raggiunge un certo livello. probabile che il modello debba includere delay (ritardi nella risposta), funzioni non lineari ed equazioni differenziali che descrivono il rapporto tra i parametri elettrofisiologici come correnti elettriche, tensioni, stati di membrane (stati dei canali ionici) e neuromodulatori.

Dal momento che si ritiene che l'apprendimento e la memoria a lungo termine siano il risultato del rafforzamento o dell'indebolimento delle sinapsi attraverso un meccanismo noto come plasticit sinaptica o adattamento sinaptico, il modello dovrebbe comprendere questo meccanismo. Dovrebbero essere inseriti nel modello anche le risposte dei recettori sensoriali ai vari stimoli.

Inoltre, il modello dovrebbe includere necessariamente il metabolismo del cervello, ossia le modalit con le quali i neuroni sono affetti dagli ormoni e da altre sostanze chimiche che possono attraversare la barriera emato-encefalica. Si ritiene probabile che il modello debba includere anche neuromodulatori, neurotrasmettitori e canali ionici al momento sconosciuti. Si ritiene improbabile che il modello di simulazione debba includere anche l'interazione delle proteine, il che renderebbe il tutto computazionalmente molto pi complesso.[2]

Un modello di simulazione digitale al computer di un sistema analogico come il cervello un'approssimazione che pu comportare casuali errori di quantizzazione e di distorsione. Tuttavia, i neuroni biologici soffrono anche di casualit e di precisione limitata, per esempio a causa di rumori di fondo (informazioni irri
levanti, non corrette o duplicate). Gli errori del modello possono essere ridotti, rispetto a quelli del cervello biologico, scegliendo risoluzioni e frequenza di campionamento sufficientemente variabili e modelli sufficientemente accurati di non linearit. La potenza di calcolo e di memoria del computer deve comunque essere sufficiente per eseguire tali simulazioni di grandi dimensioni, preferibilmente in tempo reale.

Durante la modellazione e la simulazione del cervello di un individuo, una mappa del cervello o un database delle varie connessioni tra i neuroni devono essere estratti da un modello anatomico del cervello. Questa mappatura della rete dovrebbe mostrare la connettivit di tutto il sistema nervoso umano, tra cui il midollo spinale, i recettori sensoriali e le cellule muscolari. Una scansione di tipo distruttivo del cervello umano, compresi i dettagli sinaptici, possibile dalla fine del 2010.[19] Una mappa completa del cervello dovrebbe anche riflettere la forza sinaptica (il "peso") di ciascuna connessione. Non chiaro se questo sia possibile con la tecnologia attuale.

stato proposto che la memoria a breve termine e la memoria di lavoro possano essere una prolungata o ripetuta azione dei neuroni, cos come i processi dinamici intra-neurali. Poich lo stato del segnale elettrico e chimico delle sinapsi e dei neuroni pu essere difficile da estrarre, l'uploading potrebbe comportare per la mente caricata una perdita di memoria degli eventi immediatamente prima della scansione del cervello. Una completa mappatura del cervello occuperebbe meno di 2 x 1016 byte (20.000 terabyte) e memorizzerebbe gli indirizzi dei neuroni connessi, il tipo di sinapsi e il "peso" delle sinapsi per ciascuna delle 1015 sinapsi del cervello.

Un possibile metodo per il mind uploading il sezionamento seriale del cervello, processo in cui il tessuto cerebrale e forse altre parti del sistema nervoso sono congelati e poi scansionati e analizzati strato per strato, in modo da catturare la struttura dei neuroni e delle loro interconnessioni.[20] La struttura della superficie esposta del tessuto nervoso congelato verrebbe acquisita e registrata, e poi lo strato superficiale di tessuto asportato. Anche se questo sarebbe un processo molto lento e laborioso, la ricerca attualmente in corso per automatizzare la raccolta e la microscopia di sezioni seriali.[21] Le scansioni sarebbero quindi analizzate e verrebbe ricreato un modello della rete neurale nel sistema in cui la mente stata caricata.

Ci sono diverse incertezze riguardo a questo approccio che utilizza le attuali tecniche di microscopia. Se possibile replicare la funzione dei neuroni solo visualizzandone la struttura visibile, la risoluzione offerta da un microscopio elettronico a scansione sarebbe sufficiente per una tale tecnica.[21] Tuttavia, dato che la funzione del tessuto cerebrale in parte determinata da eventi molecolari, questo potrebbe non bastare per la cattura e la simulazione delle funzioni dei neuroni. possibile estendere le tecniche di sezionamento seriale e catturare la composizione molecolare interna dei neuroni, attraverso l'utilizzo di sofisticati metodi di colorazione immunoistochimica che potrebbero poi essere letti attraverso la microscopia confocale a scansione laser. Tuttavia, dato che la genesi fisiologica della mente non attualmente nota, questo metodo non pu essere in grado di accedere a tutte le informazioni biochimiche necessarie per ricreare un cervello umano con una sufficiente fedelt.

Pu anche essere possibile creare mappe 3D funzionali dell'attivit cerebrale, utilizzando avanzate tecnologie di neuroimaging, come la risonanza magnetica funzionale (fMRI, per mappare il cambiamento del flusso sanguigno), magnetoencefalografia (MEG, per la mappatura delle correnti elettriche), o combinazioni di pi metodi, per costruire un dettagliato modello tridimensionale del cervello con metodi non invasivi e non distruttivi. Oggi, la fMRI spesso combinata con la magnetoencefalografia per la creazione di mappe funzionali della corteccia cerebrale umana durante i compiti cognitivi pi complessi, dato che due metodi sono complementari. Anche se la tecnologia di imaging attuale manca della risoluzione spaziale necessaria per raccogliere le informazioni necessarie per una simile scansione, importanti sviluppi recenti e futuri sono previsti atti a migliorare sostanzialmente sia la risoluzione spaziale che quella temporale delle tecnologie esistenti.[22]

Processo di acquisizione da una risonanza magnetica della intera rete strutturale di un cervello.

Le interfacce neurali (BCI, Brain-Computer Interface; note anche come interfacce neuro-computer o interfacce cerebrali) costituiscono una delle tecnologie ipotetiche per la lettura delle informazioni di un cervello funzionante. La produzione di questo dispositivo o di uno simile potrebbe rivelarsi basilare nel processo di mind uploading di un soggetto umano vivente.

Una rete neurale artificiale, descritta come "grande e complessa quanto la met del cervello di un topo", stato eseguita su un supercomputer IBM Blue Gene da un gruppo di ricerca dell'Universit del Nevada nel 2007. Per simulare il tempo di un secondo ci sono voluti dieci secondi di tempo di esecuzione del computer. I ricercatori hanno riferito di aver constatato impulsi nervosi "biologicamente coerenti" attraverso la corteccia virtuale. Tuttavia, nella simulazione mancavano le strutture cerebrali in tempo reale del cervello dei topi, e i ricercatori hanno riferito che intendono migliorare in tal senso l'accuratezza del modello dei neuroni.[23]

Blue Brain un progetto, lanciato nel maggio 2005 da IBM e dall'cole polytechnique fdrale di Losanna, che ha l'obiettivo di creare una simulazione al computer di una colonna corticale dei mammiferi a livello molecolare.[24] Il progetto utilizza un supercomputer su base Blue Gene per simulare il comportamento elettrico dei neuroni in base alla loro connessione sinaptica e sulle relative correnti di membrana. L'obiettivo iniziale del progetto, completato nel dicembre 2006,[25] era la simulazione della colonna neocorticale di un topo, che pu essere considerata la pi piccola unit funzionale della corteccia cerebrale (la parte del cervello ritenuta responsabile delle funzioni superiori, come il pensiero cosciente), contenente 10.000 neuroni (e 108 sinapsi). Tra il 1995 e il 2005, Henry Markram mapp i tipi di neuroni e le loro connessioni in una colonna. Nel novembre 2007,[26] il progetto arriv al termine della prima fase, durante la quale erano stati raccolti i dati per il processo di creazione, validazione e ricerca della colonna neocorticale. Il progetto si propone di rivelare alla fine gli aspetti della cognizione umana e di vari disturbi psichiatrici causati dal malfunzionamento dei neuroni, come l'autismo, e di capire come gli agenti farmacologici influenzano il comportamento della rete neurale.

Un'organizzazione chiamata Brain Preservation Foundation[27] stata fondata nel 2010 e offre un premio Brain Preservation Technology al fine di promuovere le ricerche nel campo della preservazione del cervello. Il premio viene assegnato in due parti: il 25% verr assegnato al primo team internazionale che riuscir a preservare l'intero cervello di un topo, il 75% al team che riuscir per primo a preservare l'intero cervello di un animale di grandi dimensioni in un modo che possa essere adottato anche per gli esseri umani dopo la morte clinica. In definitiva l'obiettivo di questo premio quello di generare una intera mappa del cervello che possa essere utilizzata a sostegno degli sforzi separati per fare l'uploading e possibilment
e "rivitalizzare" una mente in uno spazio virtuale.

Pu essere difficile garantire la tutela dei diritti umani in mondi simulati. Per esempio, i ricercatori delle scienze sociali potrebbero essere tentati di utilizzare le menti simulate, o intere societ di menti simulate, per esperimenti controllati in cui sono esposte molte copie delle stesse menti (in serie o contemporaneamente) in condizioni di prova diverse.

L'unica risorsa fisica limitata a cui necessariamente attenersi in un mondo simulato la capacit di calcolo, e quindi la velocit e la complessit della simulazione. Individui ricchi o privilegiati in una societ di menti emulate potrebbero cos fare un'esperienza soggettiva del tempo ben maggiore rispetto ad altre nello stesso tempo reale, o potrebbero essere in grado di eseguire pi copie di loro stessi o di altri, e quindi produrre pi servizi e diventare ancora pi ricchi. Altri potrebbero soffrire della mancanza di risorse computazionali (starvation) e mostrare un comportamento al rallentatore.

Un altro problema filosofico derivante dal mind uploading ruota intorno all'individualit della mente caricata: pu essere considerata la stessa dell'originale, dotata della stessa coscienza, o semplicemente una copia esatta con gli stessi ricordi e la personalit? E se invece risultassero differenti, quali sarebbero le differenze tra la copia e l'originale?

Le principali tecnologie di scansione del cervello prese in considerazione, come il sezionamento seriale, risulterebbero necessariamente distruttive e il cervello originale non sopravviverebbe alla procedura di scansione. Ma se l'originale pu essere mantenuto intatto, la coscienza emulata potrebbe essere una copia esatta e speculare della persona biologica. In questo caso diverrebbe implicita la possibilit di copie multiple di una singola coscienza originale che pu letteralmente "entrare" in una o pi copie, dal momento che queste tecnologie comportano generalmente la simulazione di un cervello umano in un computer di qualche tipo, tramite file digitali che possono essere copiati all'infinito (storage permettendo) con assoluta precisione. Il problema infatti reso ancora pi complesso proprio da questa possibilit di creare un numero potenzialmente infinito di copie inizialmente identiche del soggetto originale che sarebbero ovviamente tutte presenti, allo stesso tempo, come esseri distinti. Si suppone che una volta che le varie versioni vengono poi esposte, dopo l'uploading, a diversi input sensoriali, le loro esperienze comincerebbero a divergere, rendendole semplicemente menti distinte, anche se tutti i loro ricordi fino al momento della copia resterebbero gli stessi. Ma molte varianti, pi o meno complesse, sono possibili. A seconda della capacit di calcolo, la simulazione pu essere eseguita con un tempo pi veloce o pi lento rispetto al tempo fisico, con ovvie conseguenze per l'interazione tra una mente biologica e una mente simulata. Un cervello emulato pu essere inoltre avviato, messo in pausa per un backup e riavviato di nuovo da uno stato di backup salvato in qualsiasi momento. La mente simulata in quest'ultimo caso, necessariamente non ricorderebbe tutto ci che successo dopo l'istante della messa in pausa e forse non potrebbe nemmeno essere consapevole che un duplicato appena avviato. Risulterebbero diverse le interazioni possibili tra copie di cervelli emulati; una versione precedente di una mente simulata pu interagire con una versione pi "giovane" e condividere esperienze con essa.

Il limite di Bekenstein il limite superiore delle informazioni che possono essere contenute all'interno di una regione finita di spazio che ha una quantit finita di energia o, al contrario, la quantit massima di informazioni necessarie a descrivere perfettamente un dato sistema fisico fino al livello quantistico.[28]

Un cervello umano medio ha un peso di 1,5kg e un volume di 1260cm. L'energia (E=mc) sar 1.348131017J e se si considera il cervello una sfera il raggio sar 6.70030102metri.

Il limite di Bekenstein per un cervello umano medio sarebbe 2.589911042bit che rappresenta il limite superiore delle informazioni necessarie per ricreare perfettamente un cervello umano medio fino al livello quantico. Ci implica che il numero dei diversi stati (=2I) del cervello umano (e della mente se si considera il fisicalismo) almeno 107.796401041.

Tuttavia, come descritto sopra, secondo molti sostenitori del mind uploading i modelli a livello quantistico e la simulazione dei neuroni a scala molecolare non saranno necessari, quindi il limite di Bekenstein rappresenta solo un limite massimo. Si stima che l'ippocampo di un cervello umano adulto possa memorizzare dati fino a un limite equivalente a 2,5 petabyte in campo binario.[29]

I seguaci del Movimento Raeliano sostengono il mind uploading nel processo di clonazione umana per raggiungere la vita eterna. Vivere all'interno di un computer viene vista come una delle principali possibilit.[30] Il mind uploading viene sostenuto anche da diversi ricercatori nel campo delle neuroscienze e dell'intelligenza artificiale, come Marvin Minsky. Nel 1993, Joe Strout cre un piccolo sito web chiamato Mind Uploading Home Page, e cominci a sostenere l'idea della creazione di circoli sulla crionica in rete. Molti transumanisti credono allo sviluppo e all'implementazione del mind uploading e alcuni di essi, tra cui Nick Bostrom, prevedono che sar possibile entro il XXI secolo considerando le tendenze tecnologiche, come la legge di Moore.[2]

Il libro Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds di Gregory S. Paul & Earl D. Cox,, tratta dell'eventualit (per gli autori, quasi inevitabile) dell'evoluzione dei computer in esseri senzienti, ma si occupa anche di mind uploading. Wetwares: Experiments in PostVital Living, di Richard Doyle Wetwares, tratta ampiamente il mind uploading e sostiene che gli esseri umani sono parte di un "fenotipo di vita artificiale". La visione di Doyle inverte il processo del mind uploading introducendo forme di vita artificiali attivamente alla ricerca di incarnazioni biologiche come parte della loro strategia riproduttiva. Raymond Kurzweil, esponente di rilievo del transumanesimo e convinto sostenitore della probabilit di una singolarit tecnologica, ha suggerito che il percorso pi facile per arrivare a un livello umano di intelligenza artificiale potrebbe trovarsi nel reverse-engineering del cervello umano, argomento che usa di solito per riferirsi alla creazione di una nuova intelligenza in base ai principi di funzionamento del cervello e all'uploading di singole menti umane sulla base di scansioni e simulazioni estremamente dettagliate. L'idea discussa anche nel suo libro La singolarit vicina.

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Trasferimento della mente - Wikipedia

Welcome

Minduploading.org is a collection of pages and articles designed to explore the concepts underlying mind uploading. The articles are intended to be a readable introduction to the basic technical and philosophical topics covering mind uploading and substrate-independent minds. The focus is on careful definitions of the common terms and what the implications are if mind uploading becomes possible.

Mind uploading is an ongoing area of active research, bringing together ideas from neuroscience, computer science, engineering, and philosophy. This site refers to a number of participants and researchers who are helping to make mind uploading possible.

Realistically, mind uploading likely lies many decades in the future, but the short-term offers the possibility of advanced neural prostheses that may benefit us.

Mind uploading is a popular term for a process by which the mind, a collection of memories, personality, and attributes of a specific individual, is transferred from its original biological brain to an artificial computational substrate. Alternative terms for mind uploading have appeared in fiction and non-fiction, such as mind transfer, mind downloading, off-loading, side-loading, and several others. They all refer to the same general concept of transferring the mind to a different substrate.

Once it is possible to move a mind from one substrate to another, it is then called a substrate-independent mind (SIM). The concept of SIM is inspired by the idea of designing software that can run on multiple computers with different hardware without needing to be rewritten. For example, Javas design principle write once, run everywhere makes it a platform independent system. In this context, substrate is a term referring to a generalized concept of any computational platform that is capable of universal computation.

We take the materialist position that the human mind is solely generated by the brain and is a function of neural states. Additionally, we assume that the neural states are computational processes and devices capable of universal computing are sufficient to generate the same kind of computational processes found in a brain.

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Mind Uploading