Will Brain Uploading Be Possible in Our Lifetime
The Singularity Is About: Mind Uploading by 2045?
NEW YORK — Past 2045, humans volition achieve digital immortality by uploading their minds to computers — or at least that's what some futurists believe. This notion formed the basis for the Global Futurity 2045 International Congress, a futuristic briefing held here June 15-16.
The conference, which is the brainchild of Russian multimillionaire Dmitry Itskov, fell somewhere between hardcore scientific discipline and science fiction. It featured a various cast of speakers, from scientific luminaries like Ray Kurzweil, Peter Diamandis and Marvin Minsky, to Swamis and other spiritual leaders.
In the year 2045
Kurzweil — an inventor, futurist and now director of engineering at Google — predicts that by 2045, technology will have surpassed human brainpower to create a kind of superintelligence — an result known as the singularity. Other scientists have said that robots will overtake humans by 2100. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]
Co-ordinate to Moore'southward law, computing power doubles approximately every 2 years. Several technologies are undergoing similar exponential advances, from genetic sequencing to 3D press, Kurzweil told conference attendees. He illustrated the point with a series of graphs showing the inexorable upwards climb of diverse technologies.
By 2045, "based on conservative estimates of the amount of computation yous need to functionally simulate a human brain, nosotros'll be able to expand the telescopic of our intelligence a billion-fold," Kurzweil said.
Itskov and other and so-called "transhumanists" interpret this impending singularity as digital immortality. Specifically, they believe that in a few decades, humans will exist able to upload their minds to a calculator, transcending the demand for a biological body. The idea sounds similar sci-fi, and it is — at least for now. The reality, however, is that neural engineering is making significant strides toward modeling the encephalon and developing technologies to restore or replace some of its biological functions.
Brain prostheses
Substantial achievements have been made in the field of brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs (besides called brain-motorcar interfaces). The cochlear implant — in which the brain'south cochlear nerve is electronically stimulated to restore a sense of sound to someone who is difficult of hearing — was the first true BCI. Many groups are now developing BCIs to restore motor skills, following damage to the nervous organization from a stroke or spinal string injury.
José Carmena and Michel Maharbiz, electrical engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, are working to develop state-of-the-art motor BCIs. These devices consist of pill-size electrode arrays that record neural signals from the brain's motor areas, which are so decoded by a computer and used to control a reckoner cursor or prosthetic limb (such as a robotic arm). Carmena and Maharbiz spoke of the challenge of making a BCI that works stably over time and does not require being tethered to wires.
Theodore Berger, a neural engineer at the Academy of Southern California in Los Angeles, is taking BCIs to a new level past developing a memory prosthesis. Berger aims to replace office of the brain's hippocampus, the region that converts short-term memories into long-term ones, with a BCI. The device records the electrical action that encodes a simple short-term memory (such as pushing a button) and converts it to a digital signal. That signal is passed into a computer where it is mathematically transformed and and then fed back into the brain, where it gets sealed in every bit a long-term memory. He has successfully tested the device in rats and monkeys, and is now working with human patients. [Bionic Humans: Superlative 10 Technologies]
Mind uploading
The conference took a surreal turn when Martine Rothblatt — a lawyer, author and entrepreneur, and CEO of biotech company United Therapeutics Corp. — took the stage. Even the title of Rothblatt's talk was provocative: "The Purpose of Biotechnology is the End of Death."
Rothblatt introduced the concept of "mindclones" — digital versions of humans that can alive forever. She described how the mind clones are created from a "mindfile," a sort of online repository of our personalities, which she argued humans already have (in the form of Facebook, for example). This mindfile would be run on "mindware," a kind of software for consciousness. "The outset company that develops mindware will take [as much success every bit] a thousand Googles," Rothblatt said.
Simply would such a mindclone be alive? Rothblatt thinks so. She cited 1 definition of life as a self-replicating code that maintains itself against disorder. Some critics have shunned what Rothblatt called "spooky Cartesian dualism," arguing that the mind must be embedded in biology. On the contrary, software and hardware are equally proficient as wet ware, or biological materials, she argued.
Rothblatt went on to discuss the implications of creating mindclones. Continuity of the self is one event, because your persona would no longer inhabit just a biological body. And then, there are listen-clone civil rights, which would be the "crusade célèbre" for the 21st century, Rothblatt said. Fifty-fifty mindclone procreation and reanimation after decease were mentioned.
The quantum world
In parallel with the talk of brain technologies and mind-uploading, much was said almost the nature of consciousness in the universe. Physicist Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford and others disagree with the interpretation of the encephalon as a mere computer. Penrose argued that consciousness is a quantum mechanical miracle arising from the textile of the universe. Those of the "Penrose school" think uploading the brain would have to involve quantum computers — a development unlikely to happen by 2045.
But Itskov thinks otherwise. The 32-twelvemonth-old president of the Global Future 2045 Congress is dead assault living forever.
Editor's Note : This article was updated on June nineteen, 2013, to correct the dates of the Global Time to come 2045 International Congress (information technology was held June 15-16, not June fourteen-15, as previously stated.)
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