what will we use to upload our minds
- The US startup Nectome wants to upload your mind to the deject
- The 2045 Initiative promises to help humanity achieve immortality by 2045
- Current evidence suggests that listen uploading is theoretically possible
- The applied and ethical bug of mind uploading
Achieving immortality has long been humanity's holy grail. E'er since we start became aware of the fragility of our own existence, we've been looking for ways to cheat death and prolong our lives indefinitely. Although advancements in medicine have enabled us to significantly increase our lifespan, truthful immortality has remained out of reach. Achieving physical immortality may very well prove to exist across our capabilities, only what about digital immortality?
The United states of america startup Nectome wants to upload your heed to the deject
A US startup called Nectome recently unveiled plans to assist humanity achieve digital immortality by preserving the encephalon – using a revolutionary new embalming technique – and subsequently uploading it to the cloud. The process is called vitrifixation, or Aldehyde-Stabilised Cryopreservation. It involves replacing the blood flow in the brain with embalming chemicals that preserve its neuronal construction in microscopic detail, basically by turning it into 'frozen glass'. "You tin can call back of what nosotros do as a fancy class of embalming that preserves not only the outer details but the inner details," explains Robert McIntyre, a co-founder of Nectome.
There are a couple of caveats, though. The biggest one is that yous can't actually survive the procedure. Furthermore, in order for it to work, it needs to be performed on a living brain. If the brain has been dead even for a short corporeality of fourth dimension, it volition become irreparably damaged and the procedure won't be successful. That means that it would essentially be a form of suicide, which would make it legal only in those United states of america states that allow euthanasia, such as California. Another major downside is that Nectome still isn't even close to developing a method for reviving or uploading the preserved brain to the cloud.
Even so, this uncertainty didn't end people from investing in the thought, with 25 people already having joined the waiting listing by paying a $10,000, fully-refundable deposit. One of those people is Sam Altman, the principal executive of the successful startup accelerator Y Combinator, which recently welcomed Nectome into its fold. The company managed to raise more $1 million in funding and so far and was awarded ii prizes by the Brain Preservation Foundation, every bit well as a large regime grant to collaborate with MIT. All the same, the widespread public criticism that followed the waiting list proclamation resulted in MIT cutting all ties with Nectome.
The 2045 Initiative promises to help humanity achieve immortality by 2045
Nectome isn't the only company working on uploading our minds to a figurer. In 2011, the Russian businessman and billionaire Dmitry Itskov founded the 2045 Initiative, an organisation that aims to aid humanity achieve immortality by 2045. "Within the next 30 years, I am going to make sure that we can all alive forever," claims Itskov. "The ultimate goal of my programme is to transfer someone'southward personality into a completely new torso".
The 2045 Initiative has laid out its plan in three stages. The first stage involves building a humanoid robot chosen the Avatar, and a cut-edge brain-computer interface system. The second stage consists of building a life support organisation for the human brain, and linking it with the Avatar. The third and last phase involves creating an artificial brain that would hold the original individual consciousness.
Electric current evidence suggests that mind uploading is theoretically possible
So, tin it actually exist done? Is it really possible to upload a mind to a computer? The curt respond is: yes, theoretically. "All of the bear witness seems to say in theory it'south possible – information technology's extremely difficult, but it'due south possible," says neuroscientist Randal Koene, the scientific managing director of the 2045 Initiative. The human brain is an incredibly circuitous organ, consisting of about 86 billion neurons that constantly exchange information with one some other. All of the connections between the neurons in a brain are called the connectome, and many scientists believe that this connectome actually holds the information that makes us who we are. And mapping it could potentially let the states to recreate a person'south mind.
Our current supposition is that all encephalon activity is computable. If that's true and the brain does work similar a computer, and if nosotros could detect a mode to map that activity, browse the brain at the necessary level of detail, interpret the scan in a fashion that would permit us to reconstruct the encephalon's neural network and create a faithful simulation, and if we had enough computing ability to run such a simulation, then nosotros should exist able to recreate the homo mind in a computer. That's a lot of ifs, but until we know different, it remains in the realm of possibility. However, information technology's a very remote possibility at this betoken. "We are pitifully far away from mapping a human connectome," says Dr Ken Hayworth, a neuroscientist at the Janelia Research Campus in Virginia. "To put it in perspective, to image a whole fly encephalon it is going to have u.s. approximately ane to two years. The idea of mapping a whole man brain with the existing technology that we have today is simply incommunicable."
The practical and ethical issues of mind uploading
The main trouble is that there are so many things almost the human brain we don't know yet. We don't know how the mind is created. We don't know what consciousness is or how to measure it, so fifty-fifty if we were able to create a simulation of the human brain, we wouldn't be able to determine whether that simulation actually is conscious. We don't even know exactly which brain structures and biomolecules need to be preserved to recreate a person's memory or personality, or if it'south even possible.
Many scientists are certain it can't be done. "You cannot lawmaking intuition; you cannot code aesthetic beauty; y'all cannot lawmaking love or hate," argues Dr Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University. "There is no way you will ever see a human encephalon reduced to a digital medium. It'southward simply incommunicable to reduce that complexity to the kind of algorithmic process that you will have to have to practise that."
The whole idea is likewise rife with upstanding problems, and some experts are suggesting that 'Can we do information technology?' isn't even the right question to ask. Instead, what nosotros should be request is 'Should we do it?'. Allow's say that we've successfully uploaded a human heed onto a reckoner. Does that mean that personal identity has besides transferred along with memories and that this person is still the same? Or is information technology a new person with a unlike identity that just happens to share the same memories? What rights would this digital person have? And if you could create i copy of yourself, why wouldn't you be able to create multiple copies? In that case, which i of those copies would be the 'real' you? And since you wouldn't accept a physical trunk anymore and would essentially exist reduced to a stream of data, who would that data belong to? Who would own you? How could you lot prevent major corporations from misusing your data?
Mind uploading is a fascinating concept, simply we're not sure even so whether it's fifty-fifty possible. Our existing engineering and our understanding of the human brain aren't advanced plenty to answer that question at this time. Fifty-fifty if uploading the human being mind onto a computer somewhen turns out to be impossible, the thought is still worth pursuing further, considering the technology Nectome and others are working on could have many other useful applications. For example, it could facilitate brain banking for time to come enquiry into health and disease states, help us discover new brain disorder drugs, or enhance our basic neuroscience circuit mapping.
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Source: https://blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com/en/in-a-future-of-mind-uploading-will-you-still-be-you-and-who-will-own-your-mind/
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