Mind transfer
Encyclopedia
Whole brain emulation or mind uploading (sometimes called mind transfer) is the hypothetical process of transferring or copying a conscious mind from a brain to a non-biological substrate by scanning and mapping
a biological brain in detail and copying its state into a computer system or another computational device. The computer would have to run a simulation
model so faithful to the original that it would behave in essentially the same way as the original brain, or for all practical purposes, indistinguishably. The simulated mind is assumed to be part of a virtual reality
simulated world
, supported by an anatomic 3D body simulation model. Alternatively, the simulated mind could be assumed to reside in a computer inside (or connected to) a humanoid
robot
or a biological body, replacing its brain.
Whole brain emulation is discussed by futurists as a "logical endpoint" of the topical computational neuroscience
and neuroinformatics
fields, both about brain simulation for medical research purposes. It is discussed in artificial intelligence
research publications as an approach to strong AI
. Among futurists and within the transhumanist movement it is an important proposed life extension
technology, originally suggested in biomedical literature in 1971. It is a central conceptual feature of numerous science fiction
novels and films.
Whole brain emulation is considered by some scientists as a theoretical and futuristic but possible technology, although mainstream research funders and scientific journals remain skeptical. Several contradictory predictions have been made about when a whole human brain can be emulated; some of the predicted dates have already passed. Substantial mainstream research and development are however being done in relevant areas including development of faster super computers, virtual reality
, brain-computer interface
s, animal brain mapping
and simulation, connectomics
and information extraction from dynamically functioning brains.
The question whether an emulated brain can be a human mind is debated by philosophers, and may be viewed as impossible by those who hold a dualistic
view of the world, which is common in many religions.
The human brain
contains about 100 billion nerve cells called neurons, each individually linked to other neurons by way of connectors called axon
s and dendrite
s. Signals at the junctures (synapse
s) of these connections are transmitted by the release and detection
of chemicals known as neurotransmitters. The established neuroscientific consensus is that the human mind
is largely an emergent
property of the information processing of this neural network.
Importantly, neuroscientists have stated that important functions performed by the mind, such as learning, memory, and consciousness, are due to purely physical and electrochemical processes in the brain and are governed by applicable laws. For example, Christof Koch
and Giulio Tononi
wrote in IEEE Spectrum
:
The concept of mind uploading is based on this mechanistic
view of the mind, and denies the vitalist
view of human life and consciousness.
Many eminent computer scientists and neuroscientists have predicted that computers will be capable of thought and even attain consciousness, including Koch and Tononi, Douglas Hofstadter
, Jeff Hawkins
, Marvin Minsky
, Randal A. Koene
, and Rodolfo Llinas
.
Such a machine intelligence capability might provide a computational substrate necessary for uploading.
However, even though uploading is dependent upon such a general capability it is conceptually distinct from general forms of AI in that it results from dynamic reanimation of information derived from a specific human mind so that the mind retains a sense of historical identity (other forms are possible but would compromise or eliminate the life-extension feature generally associated with uploading). The transferred and reanimated information would become a form of artificial intelligence
, sometimes called an infomorph
or "noömorph."
Many theorists have presented models of the brain and have established a range of estimates of the amount of computing power needed for partial and complete simulations. Using these models, some have estimated that uploading may become possible within decades if trends such as Moore's Law
continue.
The prospect of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many philosophical questions involving identity, individuality and if the soul and mind
can be defined as the information content of the brain, as well as numerous problems of medical ethics
and morality of the process.
of the University of Washington
.
is about 300 million meters per second, about two million times faster. Also, neurons can generate a maximum of about 200 to 1000 action potential
s or "spikes" per second, whereas the number of signals per second in modern computer chips is about 3 GHz (about 20 million times greater) and expected to increase by at least a factor 100. Therefore, even if the computer components responsible for simulating a brain were not significantly smaller than a biological brain, and even if the temperature of these components was not significantly lower, Eliezer Yudkowsky
of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence calculates a theoretical upper bound for the speed of a future artificial neural network. It could in theory run about 1 million times faster than a real brain, experiencing about a year of subjective time in only 31 seconds of real time.
However, in practice this massively parallel implementation would require separate computational units for each of the hundred billion neurons and each of the hundred trillion synapses. That requires an enormously large computer or artificial neural network in comparison with today's super-computers. In a less futuristic implementation, time-sharing
would allow several neurons to be emulated sequentially by the same computational unit. Thus the size of the computer would be restricted, but the speedup would be lower. Assuming that cortical minicolumn
s organized into hypercolumns
are the computational units, mammal brains can be emulated by today's super computers, but with slower speed than in a biological brain.
Advocates of mind uploading point to Moore's law
to support the notion that the necessary computing power is expected to become available within a few decades. However, the actual computational requirements for running an uploaded human mind are very difficult to quantify, potentially rendering such an argument specious.
Regardless of the techniques used to capture or recreate the function of a human mind, the processing demands are likely to be immense, due to the large number of neurons in the human brain along with the considerable complexity of each neuron.
In 2004, Henry Markram
, lead researcher of the "Blue Brain
Project", has stated that "it is not [their] goal to build an intelligent neural network", based solely on the computational demands such a project would have.
Five years later, after successful simulation of part of a rat brain, the same scientist was much more bold and optimistic. In 2009, when he was director of the Blue Brain Project, he claimed that
, and how it might arise from the working of the brain's neural network
, are poorly understood issues, mind uploading relies on the idea of neural network emulation
. Rather than having to understand the high-level psychological processes and large-scale structures of the brain, and model them using classical artificial intelligence
methods and cognitive psychology
models, the low-level structure of the underlying neural network is captured, mapped and emulated with a computer system. In computer science terminology, rather than analyzing and reverse engineering
the behavior of the algorithms and data structures that resides in the brain, a blueprint of its source code is translated to another programming language. The human mind and the personal identity then, theoretically, is generated by the emulated neural network in an identical fashion to it being generated by the biological neural network.
On the other hand, a molecule-scale simulation of the brain is not expected to be required, provided that the functioning of the neurons is not affected by quantum mechanical processes. The neural network emulation approach only requires that the functioning and interaction of neuron
s and synapse
s are understood. It is expected that it is sufficient with a black-box signal processing
model of how the neurons respond to nerve impulses (electrical
as well as chemical synaptic transmission
).
A sufficiently complex and accurate model of the neurons is required. A traditional artificial neural network
model, for example multi-layer perceptron network model, is not considered as sufficient. A dynamic spiking neural network
model is required, which reflects that the neuron fires only when a membrane potential reaches a certain level. It is likely that the model must include delays, non-linear functions and differential equations describing the relation between electrophysical parameters such as electrical currents, voltages, membrane states (ion channel
states) and neuromodulators.
Since learning and long-term memory
are believed to result from strengthening or weakening the synapses via a mechanism known as synaptic plasticity
or synaptic adaptation, the model should include this mechanism. The response of sensory receptor
s to various stimuli must also be modeled.
Furthermore, the model may have to include metabolism
, i.e. how the neurons are affected by hormone
s and other chemical substances that may cross the blood-brain barrier. It is considered likely that the model must include currently unknown neuromodulators, neurotransmitters and ion channels. It is considered unlikely that the simulation model has to include protein interaction, which would make it computationally complex.
A digital computer simulation model of an analog system such as the brain is an approximation that introduces random quantization error
s and distortion
. However, the biological neurons also suffer from randomness and limited precision, for example due to background noise
. The errors of the discrete model can be made smaller than the randomness of the biological brain by choosing a sufficiently high variable resolution and sample rate, and sufficiently accurate models of non-linearities. The computational power and computer memory must however be sufficient to run such large simulations, preferably in real time
.
, including the spinal cord
, sensory receptor
s, and muscle cells.
Destructive scanning of the human brain including synaptic details is possible as of end of 2010. A full brain map should also reflect the synaptic strength (the "weight") of each connection. It is unclear if the current technology allows that.
It is proposed that short-term memory
and working memory
is prolonged or repeated firing of neurons, as well as intra-neural dynamic processes. Since the electrical and chemical signal state of the synapses and neurons may be hard to extract, the uploading might result in that the uploaded mind perceives a memory loss
of the events immediately before the time of brain scanning.
A full brain map would occupy less than 2 x 1016 bytes (20000 TB) and would store the addresses of the connected neurons, the synapse type and the synapse "weight" for each of the brains' 1015 synapses.
A possible method for mind uploading is serial sectioning, in which the brain tissue and perhaps other parts of the nervous system are frozen and then scanned and analyzed layer by layer, thus capturing the structure of the neurons and their interconnections. The exposed surface of frozen nerve tissue would be scanned and recorded, and then the surface layer of tissue removed. While this would be a very slow and labor intensive process, research is currently underway to automate the collection and microscopy of serial sections. The scans would then be analyzed, and a model of the neural net recreated in the system that the mind was being uploaded into.
There are uncertainties with this approach using current microscopy techniques. If it is possible to replicate neuron function from its visible structure alone, then the resolution afforded by a scanning electron microscope
would suffice for such a technique. However, as the function of brain tissue is partially determined by molecular events (particularly at synapse
s, but also at other
places on the neuron's cell membrane
), this may not suffice for capturing and simulating neuron functions. It may be possible to extend the techniques of serial sectioning and to capture the internal molecular makeup of neurons, through the use of sophisticated immunohistochemistry
staining methods which could then be read via confocal laser scanning microscopy
. However, as the physiological genesis of 'mind' is not currently known, this method may not be able to access all of the necessary biochemical information to recreate a human brain with sufficient fidelity.
technology, such as functional MRI (fMRI, for mapping change in blood flow), Magnetoencephalography
(MEG, for mapping of electrical currents), or combinations of multiple methods, to build a detailed three-dimensional model of the brain using non-invasive and non-destructive methods. Today, fMRI is often combined with MEG for creating functional maps of human cortex during more complex cognitive tasks, as the methods complement each other. Even though current imaging technology lacks the spatial resolution needed to gather the information needed for such a scan, important recent and future developments are predicted to substantially improve both spatial and temporal resolutions of existing technologies.
s (BCI) (also known as neuro-computer interfaces, direct neuron interfaces or cerebral interfaces) constitute one of the hypothetical technologies for the reading of information in the dynamically functioning brain. The production of this or a similar device may be essential to the possibility of mind uploading a living human subject.
described as being "as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain" was run on an IBM blue gene
supercomputer by a University of Nevada research team in 2007. A simulated time of one second took ten seconds of computer time. The researchers said they had seen "biologically consistent" nerve impulses flowed through the virtual cortex. However, the simulation lacked the structures seen in real mice brains, and they intend to improve the accuracy of the neuron model.
Blue Brain
is a project, launched in May 2005 by IBM
and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
in Lausanne
, with the aim to create a computer simulation
of a mammalian cortical column, down to the molecular level. The project uses a supercomputer
based on IBM's Blue Gene
design to simulate the electrical behavior of neurons based upon their synaptic connectivity and complement of intrinsic membrane currents. The initial goal of the project, completed in December 2006, was the simulation of a rat neocortical column
, which can be considered the smallest functional unit of the neocortex
(the part of the brain thought to be responsible for higher functions such as conscious thought), containing 10,000 neurons (and 108 synapse
s). Between 1995 and 2005, Henry Markram
mapped the types of neurons and their connections in such a column. In November 2007, the project reported the end of the first phase, delivering a data-driven process for creating, validating, and researching the neocortical column. The project seeks to eventually reveal aspects of human cognition and various psychiatric disorders caused by malfunctioning neurons, such as autism
, and to understand how pharmacological agents affect network behavior.
An organization called the Brain Preservation Foundation was founded in 2010 and is offering a Brain Preservation Technology prize to promote exploration of brain preservation technology in service of humanity. The Prize, currently $106,000, will be awarded in two parts, 25% to the first international team to preserve a whole mouse brain, and 75% to the first team to preserve a whole large animal brain in a manner that could also be adopted for humans in a hospital or hospice setting immediately upon clinical death. Ultimately the goal of this prize is to generate a whole brain map which may be used in support of separate efforts to upload and possibly 'reboot' a mind in virtual space.
The only limited physical resource to be expected in a simulated world is the computational capacity, and thus the speed and complexity of the simulation. Wealthy or privileged individuals in a society of uploads might thus experience more subjective time than others in the same real time, or may be able to run multiple copies of themselves or others, and thus produce more service and become even more wealthy. Others may suffer from computational resource starvation and show a slow motion
behavior.
). This issue is especially complex if the original remains essentially unchanged by the procedure, thereby resulting in an obvious copy which could potentially have rights separate from the unaltered, obvious original.
Most projected brain scanning technologies, such as serial sectioning of the brain, would necessarily be destructive, and the original brain would not survive the brain scanning procedure. But if it can be kept intact, the computer-based consciousness could be a copy of the still-living biological person. It is in that case implicit that copying a consciousness could be as feasible as literally moving it into one or several copies, since these technologies generally involve simulation of a human brain in a computer of some sort, and digital files such as computer programs can be copied precisely. It is usually assumed that once the versions are exposed to different sensory inputs, their experiences would begin to diverge, but all their memories up until the moment of the copying would remain the same.
The problem is made even more serious by the possibility of creating a potentially infinite number of initially identical copies of the original person, which would of course all exist simultaneously as distinct beings. The most parsimonious view of this phenomenon is that the two (or more) minds would share memories of their past but from the point of duplication would simply be distinct minds (although this is complicated by merging). Many complex variations are possible.
Depending on computational capacity, the simulation may run at faster or slower simulation time as compared to the elapsed physical time, resulting in that the simulated mind would perceive that the physical world is running in slow motion
or fast motion respectively, while biological persons will see the simulated mind in fast or slow motion respectively.
A brain simulation can be started, paused, backed-up and rerun from a saved backup state at any time. The simulated mind would in the latter case forget everything that has happened after the instant of backup, and perhaps not even be aware that it is repeating itself. An older version of a simulated mind may meet a younger version and share experiences with it.
is an upper limit on information
that can be contained within a given finite region of space which has a finite amount of energy or, conversely, the maximum amount of information required to perfectly describe a given physical system down to the quantum level.
An average human brain
has a weight of 1.5 kg
and a volume of 1260 cm3
. The energy (E = m·c2) will be 1.34813·1017 J
and if the brain is approximate to a sphere then the radius (V = 4·π·r3/3) will be 6.70030·10−2 m
.
The Bekenstein bound (I ≤ ) for an average human brain would be 2.58991·1042 bit
and represents an upper bound on the information
needed to perfectly recreate the average human brain down to the quantum level
. This implies that the number of different states (Ω=2I) of the human brain
(and of the mind
if the physicalism
is true) is at most 107.79640·1041.
However, as described above, many mind uploading advocates expect that quantum-level models and molecule-scale simulation of the neurons will not be needed, so the Bekenstein bound only represents a maximum upper limit. The Hippocampus
of a human adult brain has been estimated to store a limit of up to 2.5 petabyte
of binary data equivalent.
advocate mind uploading in the process of human cloning to achieve eternal life. Living inside of a computer is also seen by followers as an eminent possibility.
However, mind uploading is also advocated by a number of secular researchers in neuroscience and artificial intelligence, such as Marvin Minsky
. In 1993, Joe Strout created a small web site called the Mind Uploading Home Page, and began advocating the idea in cryonics
circles and elsewhere on the net. That site has not been actively updated in recent years, but it has spawned other sites including MindUploading.org, run by Randal A. Koene
, Ph.D., who also moderates a mailing list on the topic. These advocates see mind uploading as a medical procedure which could eventually save countless lives.
Many transhumanists
look forward to the development and deployment of mind uploading technology, with transhumanists such as Nick Bostrom
predicting that it will become possible within the 21st century due to technological trends such as Moore's Law
.
The book Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds by Gregory S. Paul
& Earl D. Cox, is about the eventual (and, to the authors, almost inevitable) evolution of computer
s into sentient
beings, but also deals with human mind transfer. Richard Doyle's Wetwares: Experiments in PostVital Living deals extensively with uploading from the perspective of distributed embodiment, arguing for example that humans are currently part of the "artificial life phenotype." Doyle's vision reverses the polarity on uploading, with artificial life forms such as uploads actively seeking out biological embodiment as part of their reproductive strategy.
Raymond Kurzweil
, a prominent advocate of transhumanism
and the likelihood of a technological singularity
, has suggested that the easiest path to human-level artificial intelligence
may lie in "reverse-engineering the human brain", which he usually uses to refer to the creation of a new intelligence based on the general "principles of operation" of the brain, but he also sometimes uses the term to refer to the notion of uploading individual human minds based on highly detailed scans and simulations. This idea is discussed on pp. 198–203 of his book The Singularity is Near
, for example.
Brain mapping
Brain mapping is a set of neuroscience techniques predicated on the mapping of quantities or properties onto spatial representations of the brain resulting in maps.- Overview :...
a biological brain in detail and copying its state into a computer system or another computational device. The computer would have to run a simulation
Computer simulation
A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...
model so faithful to the original that it would behave in essentially the same way as the original brain, or for all practical purposes, indistinguishably. The simulated mind is assumed to be part of a virtual reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
simulated world
Simulated reality
Simulated reality is the proposition that reality could be simulated—perhaps by computer simulation—to a degree indistinguishable from "true" reality. It could contain conscious minds which may or may not be fully aware that they are living inside a simulation....
, supported by an anatomic 3D body simulation model. Alternatively, the simulated mind could be assumed to reside in a computer inside (or connected to) a humanoid
Humanoid
A humanoid is something that has an appearance resembling a human being. The term first appeared in 1912 to refer to fossils which were morphologically similar to, but not identical with, those of the human skeleton. Although this usage was common in the sciences for much of the 20th century, it...
robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
or a biological body, replacing its brain.
Whole brain emulation is discussed by futurists as a "logical endpoint" of the topical computational neuroscience
Computational neuroscience
Computational neuroscience is the study of brain function in terms of the information processing properties of the structures that make up the nervous system...
and neuroinformatics
Neuroinformatics
Neuroinformatics is a research field concerned with the organization of neuroscience data by the application of computational models and analytical tools. These areas of research are important for the integration and analysis of increasingly large-volume, high-dimensional, and fine-grain...
fields, both about brain simulation for medical research purposes. It is discussed in artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
research publications as an approach to strong AI
Strong AI
Strong AI is artificial intelligence that matches or exceeds human intelligence — the intelligence of a machine that can successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a primary goal of artificial intelligence research and an important topic for science fiction writers and...
. Among futurists and within the transhumanist movement it is an important proposed life extension
Life extension
Life extension science, also known as anti-aging medicine, experimental gerontology, and biomedical gerontology, is the study of slowing down or reversing the processes of aging to extend both the maximum and average lifespan...
technology, originally suggested in biomedical literature in 1971. It is a central conceptual feature of numerous science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novels and films.
Whole brain emulation is considered by some scientists as a theoretical and futuristic but possible technology, although mainstream research funders and scientific journals remain skeptical. Several contradictory predictions have been made about when a whole human brain can be emulated; some of the predicted dates have already passed. Substantial mainstream research and development are however being done in relevant areas including development of faster super computers, virtual reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
, brain-computer interface
Brain-computer interface
A brain–computer interface , sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain–machine interface , is a direct communication pathway between the brain and an external device...
s, animal brain mapping
Brain mapping
Brain mapping is a set of neuroscience techniques predicated on the mapping of quantities or properties onto spatial representations of the brain resulting in maps.- Overview :...
and simulation, connectomics
Connectomics
Connectomics is a high-throughput application of neural imaging and histological techniques in order to increase the speed, efficiency, and resolution of maps of the multitude of neural connections in a nervous system...
and information extraction from dynamically functioning brains.
The question whether an emulated brain can be a human mind is debated by philosophers, and may be viewed as impossible by those who hold a dualistic
Dualism (philosophy of mind)
In philosophy of mind, dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical....
view of the world, which is common in many religions.
Overview
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
contains about 100 billion nerve cells called neurons, each individually linked to other neurons by way of connectors called axon
Axon
An axon is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, that conducts electrical impulses away from the neuron's cell body or soma....
s and dendrite
Dendrite
Dendrites are the branched projections of a neuron that act to conduct the electrochemical stimulation received from other neural cells to the cell body, or soma, of the neuron from which the dendrites project...
s. Signals at the junctures (synapse
Synapse
In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another cell...
s) of these connections are transmitted by the release and detection
Receptor (biochemistry)
In biochemistry, a receptor is a molecule found on the surface of a cell, which receives specific chemical signals from neighbouring cells or the wider environment within an organism...
of chemicals known as neurotransmitters. The established neuroscientific consensus is that the human mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
is largely an emergent
Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems....
property of the information processing of this neural network.
Importantly, neuroscientists have stated that important functions performed by the mind, such as learning, memory, and consciousness, are due to purely physical and electrochemical processes in the brain and are governed by applicable laws. For example, Christof Koch
Christof Koch
Christof Koch is an American neuroscientist working on the neural basis of consciousness. He is the Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology at California Institute of Technology, where he has been since 1986...
and Giulio Tononi
Giulio Tononi
Giulio Tononi is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin. He is an authority on sleep, and in particular the genetics and etiology of sleep.He is also interested in the nature of consciousness,...
wrote in IEEE Spectrum
IEEE Spectrum
IEEE Spectrum is a magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The IEEE's description of it is:IEEE Spectrum began publishing in January 1964 as a successor to Electrical Engineering...
:
The concept of mind uploading is based on this mechanistic
Mechanism (philosophy)
Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes are like machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other, and with their order imposed from without. Thus, the source of an apparent thing's activities is not the whole itself, but its parts or an external...
view of the mind, and denies the vitalist
Vitalism
Vitalism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is#a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from biochemical reactions...
view of human life and consciousness.
Many eminent computer scientists and neuroscientists have predicted that computers will be capable of thought and even attain consciousness, including Koch and Tononi, Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
, Jeff Hawkins
Jeff Hawkins
Jeffrey Hawkins is the founder of Palm Computing and Handspring...
, Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
, Randal A. Koene
Randal A. Koene
Randal A. Koene is a Dutch neuroscientist and neuroengineer, and co-founder of carboncopies.org, the outreach and roadmapping organization for Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds . He is currently directing the Analysis team at the nanotechnology company Halcyon Molecular...
, and Rodolfo Llinas
Rodolfo Llinás
Rodolfo R. Llinás PhD is a neuroscientist. He is presently the Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience and Chairman of the department of Physiology & Neuroscience at the NYU School of Medicine...
.
Such a machine intelligence capability might provide a computational substrate necessary for uploading.
However, even though uploading is dependent upon such a general capability it is conceptually distinct from general forms of AI in that it results from dynamic reanimation of information derived from a specific human mind so that the mind retains a sense of historical identity (other forms are possible but would compromise or eliminate the life-extension feature generally associated with uploading). The transferred and reanimated information would become a form of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, sometimes called an infomorph
Infomorph
The term Infomorph refers to a consciousness uploaded or downloaded into a computer from a biological entity. A concept primarily used in science fiction, it has appeared in various guises:...
or "noömorph."
Many theorists have presented models of the brain and have established a range of estimates of the amount of computing power needed for partial and complete simulations. Using these models, some have estimated that uploading may become possible within decades if trends such as Moore's Law
Moore's Law
Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years....
continue.
The prospect of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many philosophical questions involving identity, individuality and if the soul and mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
can be defined as the information content of the brain, as well as numerous problems of medical ethics
Medical ethics
Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology.-History:Historically,...
and morality of the process.
Immortality/Backup
In theory, if the information and processes of the mind can be disassociated from the biological body, they are no longer tied to the individual limits and lifespan of that body. Furthermore, information within a brain could be partly or wholly copied or transferred to one or more other substrates (including digital storage or another brain), thereby reducing or eliminating mortality risk. This general proposal appears to have been first made in the biomedical literature in 1971 by biogerontologist George M. MartinGeorge M. Martin
George M. Martin, M.D. is an American biogerontologist. He received both his B.S. in Chemistry and his M.D. from the University of Washington and has been a member of its faculty since 1957. Dr...
of the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
.
Speedup
A computer-based intelligence such as an upload could potentially think much faster than a human even if it were no more intelligent. Human neurons exchange electrochemical signals with a maximum speed of about 150 meters per second, whereas the speed of lightSpeed of light
The speed of light in vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its value is 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact since the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time...
is about 300 million meters per second, about two million times faster. Also, neurons can generate a maximum of about 200 to 1000 action potential
Action potential
In physiology, an action potential is a short-lasting event in which the electrical membrane potential of a cell rapidly rises and falls, following a consistent trajectory. Action potentials occur in several types of animal cells, called excitable cells, which include neurons, muscle cells, and...
s or "spikes" per second, whereas the number of signals per second in modern computer chips is about 3 GHz (about 20 million times greater) and expected to increase by at least a factor 100. Therefore, even if the computer components responsible for simulating a brain were not significantly smaller than a biological brain, and even if the temperature of these components was not significantly lower, Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky is an American artificial intelligence researcher concerned with the singularity and an advocate of friendly artificial intelligence, living in Redwood City, California.- Biography :...
of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence calculates a theoretical upper bound for the speed of a future artificial neural network. It could in theory run about 1 million times faster than a real brain, experiencing about a year of subjective time in only 31 seconds of real time.
However, in practice this massively parallel implementation would require separate computational units for each of the hundred billion neurons and each of the hundred trillion synapses. That requires an enormously large computer or artificial neural network in comparison with today's super-computers. In a less futuristic implementation, time-sharing
Time-sharing
Time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking. Its introduction in the 1960s, and emergence as the prominent model of computing in the 1970s, represents a major technological shift in the history of computing.By allowing a large...
would allow several neurons to be emulated sequentially by the same computational unit. Thus the size of the computer would be restricted, but the speedup would be lower. Assuming that cortical minicolumn
Cortical minicolumn
A cortical minicolumn is a vertical column through the cortical layers of the brain, comprising perhaps 80–120 neurons, except in the primate primary visual cortex , where there are typically more than twice the number. There are about 2×108 minicolumns in humans...
s organized into hypercolumns
Cortical column
A cortical column, also called hypercolumn or sometimes cortical module, is a group of neurons in the brain cortex which can be successively penetrated by a probe inserted perpendicularly to the cortical surface, and which have nearly identical receptive fields...
are the computational units, mammal brains can be emulated by today's super computers, but with slower speed than in a biological brain.
Multiple/parallel existence
Another concept explored in science fiction is the idea of more than one running "copy" of a human mind existing at once. Such copies could potentially allow an "individual" to experience many things at once, and later integrate the experiences of all copies into a central mentality at some point in the future, effectively allowing a single sentient being to "be many places at once" and "do many things at once"; this concept has been explored in fiction. Such partial and complete copies of a sentient being raise interesting questions regarding identity and individuality.Computational capacity
Moore's Law
Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years....
to support the notion that the necessary computing power is expected to become available within a few decades. However, the actual computational requirements for running an uploaded human mind are very difficult to quantify, potentially rendering such an argument specious.
Regardless of the techniques used to capture or recreate the function of a human mind, the processing demands are likely to be immense, due to the large number of neurons in the human brain along with the considerable complexity of each neuron.
In 2004, Henry Markram
Henry Markram
Henry Markram is Director of the Blue Brain Project at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne .He obtained his B.Sc. from Cape Town University, South Africa under the supervision of Rodney Douglas and his Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, under the supervision of Menahem...
, lead researcher of the "Blue Brain
Blue Brain
The Blue Brain Project is an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level.The aim of the project, founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne is to study the brain's architectural...
Project", has stated that "it is not [their] goal to build an intelligent neural network", based solely on the computational demands such a project would have.
It will be very difficult because, in the brain, every molecule is a powerful computer and we would need to simulate the structure and function of trillions upon trillions of molecules as well as all the rules that govern how they interact. You would literally need computers that are trillions of times bigger and faster than anything existing today.
Five years later, after successful simulation of part of a rat brain, the same scientist was much more bold and optimistic. In 2009, when he was director of the Blue Brain Project, he claimed that
A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years
Simulation model scale
Since the function of the human mindMind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
, and how it might arise from the working of the brain's neural network
Neural network
The term neural network was traditionally used to refer to a network or circuit of biological neurons. The modern usage of the term often refers to artificial neural networks, which are composed of artificial neurons or nodes...
, are poorly understood issues, mind uploading relies on the idea of neural network emulation
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
. Rather than having to understand the high-level psychological processes and large-scale structures of the brain, and model them using classical artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
methods and cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
models, the low-level structure of the underlying neural network is captured, mapped and emulated with a computer system. In computer science terminology, rather than analyzing and reverse engineering
Reverse engineering
Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation...
the behavior of the algorithms and data structures that resides in the brain, a blueprint of its source code is translated to another programming language. The human mind and the personal identity then, theoretically, is generated by the emulated neural network in an identical fashion to it being generated by the biological neural network.
On the other hand, a molecule-scale simulation of the brain is not expected to be required, provided that the functioning of the neurons is not affected by quantum mechanical processes. The neural network emulation approach only requires that the functioning and interaction of neuron
Neuron
A neuron is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information by electrical and chemical signaling. Chemical signaling occurs via synapses, specialized connections with other cells. Neurons connect to each other to form networks. Neurons are the core components of the nervous...
s and synapse
Synapse
In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another cell...
s are understood. It is expected that it is sufficient with a black-box signal processing
Signal processing
Signal processing is an area of systems engineering, electrical engineering and applied mathematics that deals with operations on or analysis of signals, in either discrete or continuous time...
model of how the neurons respond to nerve impulses (electrical
Electrical synapse
An electrical synapse is a mechanical and electrically conductive link between two abutting neurons that is formed at a narrow gap between the pre- and postsynaptic neurons known as a gap junction. At gap junctions, such cells approach within about 3.5 nm of each other, a much shorter...
as well as chemical synaptic transmission
Chemical synapse
Chemical synapses are specialized junctions through which neurons signal to each other and to non-neuronal cells such as those in muscles or glands. Chemical synapses allow neurons to form circuits within the central nervous system. They are crucial to the biological computations that underlie...
).
A sufficiently complex and accurate model of the neurons is required. A traditional artificial neural network
Artificial neural network
An artificial neural network , usually called neural network , is a mathematical model or computational model that is inspired by the structure and/or functional aspects of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of an interconnected group of artificial neurons, and it processes...
model, for example multi-layer perceptron network model, is not considered as sufficient. A dynamic spiking neural network
Spiking neural network
Spiking neural networks fall into the third generation of neural network models, increasing the level of realism in a neural simulation. In addition to neuronal and synaptic state, SNNs also incorporate the concept of time into their operating model...
model is required, which reflects that the neuron fires only when a membrane potential reaches a certain level. It is likely that the model must include delays, non-linear functions and differential equations describing the relation between electrophysical parameters such as electrical currents, voltages, membrane states (ion channel
Ion channel
Ion channels are pore-forming proteins that help establish and control the small voltage gradient across the plasma membrane of cells by allowing the flow of ions down their electrochemical gradient. They are present in the membranes that surround all biological cells...
states) and neuromodulators.
Since learning and long-term memory
Long-term memory
Long-term memory is memory in which associations among items are stored, as part of the theory of a dual-store memory model. According to the theory, long term memory differs structurally and functionally from working memory or short-term memory, which ostensibly stores items for only around 20–30...
are believed to result from strengthening or weakening the synapses via a mechanism known as synaptic plasticity
Synaptic plasticity
In neuroscience, synaptic plasticity is the ability of the connection, or synapse, between two neurons to change in strength in response to either use or disuse of transmission over synaptic pathways. Plastic change also results from the alteration of the number of receptors located on a synapse...
or synaptic adaptation, the model should include this mechanism. The response of sensory receptor
Sensory receptor
In a sensory system, a sensory receptor is a sensory nerve ending that responds to a stimulus in the internal or external environment of an organism...
s to various stimuli must also be modeled.
Furthermore, the model may have to include metabolism
Metabolism
Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in the cells of living organisms to sustain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories...
, i.e. how the neurons are affected by hormone
Hormone
A hormone is a chemical released by a cell or a gland in one part of the body that sends out messages that affect cells in other parts of the organism. Only a small amount of hormone is required to alter cell metabolism. In essence, it is a chemical messenger that transports a signal from one...
s and other chemical substances that may cross the blood-brain barrier. It is considered likely that the model must include currently unknown neuromodulators, neurotransmitters and ion channels. It is considered unlikely that the simulation model has to include protein interaction, which would make it computationally complex.
A digital computer simulation model of an analog system such as the brain is an approximation that introduces random quantization error
Quantization error
In analog-to-digital conversion, the difference between the actual analog value and quantized digital value is called quantization error or quantization distortion. This error is either due to rounding or truncation...
s and distortion
Distortion
A distortion is the alteration of the original shape of an object, image, sound, waveform or other form of information or representation. Distortion is usually unwanted, and often many methods are employed to minimize it in practice...
. However, the biological neurons also suffer from randomness and limited precision, for example due to background noise
Background noise
In acoustics and specifically in acoustical engineering, background noise or ambient noise is any sound other than the sound being monitored. Background noise is a form of noise pollution or interference. Background noise is an important concept in setting noise regulations...
. The errors of the discrete model can be made smaller than the randomness of the biological brain by choosing a sufficiently high variable resolution and sample rate, and sufficiently accurate models of non-linearities. The computational power and computer memory must however be sufficient to run such large simulations, preferably in real time
Real-time computing
In computer science, real-time computing , or reactive computing, is the study of hardware and software systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"— e.g. operational deadlines from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within strict time constraints...
.
Scanning and mapping scale of an individual
When modelling and simulating the brain of a specific individual, a brain map or connectivity database showing the connections between the neurons must be extracted from an anatomic model of the brain. This network map should show the connectivity of the whole nervous systemNervous system
The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral. The central nervous...
, including the spinal cord
Spinal cord
The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular bundle of nervous tissue and support cells that extends from the brain . The brain and spinal cord together make up the central nervous system...
, sensory receptor
Sensory receptor
In a sensory system, a sensory receptor is a sensory nerve ending that responds to a stimulus in the internal or external environment of an organism...
s, and muscle cells.
Destructive scanning of the human brain including synaptic details is possible as of end of 2010. A full brain map should also reflect the synaptic strength (the "weight") of each connection. It is unclear if the current technology allows that.
It is proposed that short-term memory
Short-term memory
Short-term memory is the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time. The duration of short-term memory is believed to be in the order of seconds. A commonly cited capacity is 7 ± 2 elements...
and working memory
Working memory
Working memory has been defined as the system which actively holds information in the mind to do verbal and nonverbal tasks such as reasoning and comprehension, and to make it available for further information processing...
is prolonged or repeated firing of neurons, as well as intra-neural dynamic processes. Since the electrical and chemical signal state of the synapses and neurons may be hard to extract, the uploading might result in that the uploaded mind perceives a memory loss
Memory loss
Memory loss can be partial or total and it is normal when it comes with aging. Sudden memory loss is usually a result of brain trauma and it may be permanent or temporary. When it is caused by medical conditions such as Alzheimers, the memory loss is gradual and tends to be permanent.Brain trauma...
of the events immediately before the time of brain scanning.
A full brain map would occupy less than 2 x 1016 bytes (20000 TB) and would store the addresses of the connected neurons, the synapse type and the synapse "weight" for each of the brains' 1015 synapses.
Serial sectioning
There are uncertainties with this approach using current microscopy techniques. If it is possible to replicate neuron function from its visible structure alone, then the resolution afforded by a scanning electron microscope
Scanning electron microscope
A scanning electron microscope is a type of electron microscope that images a sample by scanning it with a high-energy beam of electrons in a raster scan pattern...
would suffice for such a technique. However, as the function of brain tissue is partially determined by molecular events (particularly at synapse
Synapse
In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another cell...
s, but also at other
Ion channel
Ion channels are pore-forming proteins that help establish and control the small voltage gradient across the plasma membrane of cells by allowing the flow of ions down their electrochemical gradient. They are present in the membranes that surround all biological cells...
places on the neuron's cell membrane
Membrane potential
Membrane potential is the difference in electrical potential between the interior and exterior of a biological cell. All animal cells are surrounded by a plasma membrane composed of a lipid bilayer with a variety of types of proteins embedded in it...
), this may not suffice for capturing and simulating neuron functions. It may be possible to extend the techniques of serial sectioning and to capture the internal molecular makeup of neurons, through the use of sophisticated immunohistochemistry
Immunohistochemistry
Immunohistochemistry or IHC refers to the process of detecting antigens in cells of a tissue section by exploiting the principle of antibodies binding specifically to antigens in biological tissues. IHC takes its name from the roots "immuno," in reference to antibodies used in the procedure, and...
staining methods which could then be read via confocal laser scanning microscopy
Confocal laser scanning microscopy
Confocal laser scanning microscopy is a technique for obtaining high-resolution optical images with depth selectivity. The key feature of confocal microscopy is its ability to acquire in-focus images from selected depths, a process known as optical sectioning...
. However, as the physiological genesis of 'mind' is not currently known, this method may not be able to access all of the necessary biochemical information to recreate a human brain with sufficient fidelity.
Brain imaging
It may also be possible to create functional 3D maps of the brain activity, using advanced neuroimagingNeuroimaging
Neuroimaging includes the use of various techniques to either directly or indirectly image the structure, function/pharmacology of the brain...
technology, such as functional MRI (fMRI, for mapping change in blood flow), Magnetoencephalography
Magnetoencephalography
Magnetoencephalography is a technique for mapping brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electrical currents occurring naturally in the brain, using arrays of SQUIDs...
(MEG, for mapping of electrical currents), or combinations of multiple methods, to build a detailed three-dimensional model of the brain using non-invasive and non-destructive methods. Today, fMRI is often combined with MEG for creating functional maps of human cortex during more complex cognitive tasks, as the methods complement each other. Even though current imaging technology lacks the spatial resolution needed to gather the information needed for such a scan, important recent and future developments are predicted to substantially improve both spatial and temporal resolutions of existing technologies.
Brain-computer interfaces
Brain-computer interfaceBrain-computer interface
A brain–computer interface , sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain–machine interface , is a direct communication pathway between the brain and an external device...
s (BCI) (also known as neuro-computer interfaces, direct neuron interfaces or cerebral interfaces) constitute one of the hypothetical technologies for the reading of information in the dynamically functioning brain. The production of this or a similar device may be essential to the possibility of mind uploading a living human subject.
Current research
An artificial neural networkArtificial neural network
An artificial neural network , usually called neural network , is a mathematical model or computational model that is inspired by the structure and/or functional aspects of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of an interconnected group of artificial neurons, and it processes...
described as being "as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain" was run on an IBM blue gene
Blue Gene
Blue Gene is a computer architecture project to produce several supercomputers, designed to reach operating speeds in the PFLOPS range, and currently reaching sustained speeds of nearly 500 TFLOPS . It is a cooperative project among IBM Blue Gene is a computer architecture project to produce...
supercomputer by a University of Nevada research team in 2007. A simulated time of one second took ten seconds of computer time. The researchers said they had seen "biologically consistent" nerve impulses flowed through the virtual cortex. However, the simulation lacked the structures seen in real mice brains, and they intend to improve the accuracy of the neuron model.
Blue Brain
Blue Brain
The Blue Brain Project is an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level.The aim of the project, founded in May 2005 by the Brain and Mind Institute of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne is to study the brain's architectural...
is a project, launched in May 2005 by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology and is located in Lausanne, Switzerland.The school was founded by the Swiss Federal Government with the stated mission to:...
in Lausanne
Lausanne
Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...
, with the aim to create a computer simulation
Computer simulation
A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...
of a mammalian cortical column, down to the molecular level. The project uses a supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
based on IBM's Blue Gene
Blue Gene
Blue Gene is a computer architecture project to produce several supercomputers, designed to reach operating speeds in the PFLOPS range, and currently reaching sustained speeds of nearly 500 TFLOPS . It is a cooperative project among IBM Blue Gene is a computer architecture project to produce...
design to simulate the electrical behavior of neurons based upon their synaptic connectivity and complement of intrinsic membrane currents. The initial goal of the project, completed in December 2006, was the simulation of a rat neocortical column
Cortical column
A cortical column, also called hypercolumn or sometimes cortical module, is a group of neurons in the brain cortex which can be successively penetrated by a probe inserted perpendicularly to the cortical surface, and which have nearly identical receptive fields...
, which can be considered the smallest functional unit of the neocortex
Neocortex
The neocortex , also called the neopallium and isocortex , is a part of the brain of mammals. It is the outer layer of the cerebral hemispheres, and made up of six layers, labelled I to VI...
(the part of the brain thought to be responsible for higher functions such as conscious thought), containing 10,000 neurons (and 108 synapse
Synapse
In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another cell...
s). Between 1995 and 2005, Henry Markram
Henry Markram
Henry Markram is Director of the Blue Brain Project at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne .He obtained his B.Sc. from Cape Town University, South Africa under the supervision of Rodney Douglas and his Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, under the supervision of Menahem...
mapped the types of neurons and their connections in such a column. In November 2007, the project reported the end of the first phase, delivering a data-driven process for creating, validating, and researching the neocortical column. The project seeks to eventually reveal aspects of human cognition and various psychiatric disorders caused by malfunctioning neurons, such as autism
Autism
Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...
, and to understand how pharmacological agents affect network behavior.
An organization called the Brain Preservation Foundation was founded in 2010 and is offering a Brain Preservation Technology prize to promote exploration of brain preservation technology in service of humanity. The Prize, currently $106,000, will be awarded in two parts, 25% to the first international team to preserve a whole mouse brain, and 75% to the first team to preserve a whole large animal brain in a manner that could also be adopted for humans in a hospital or hospice setting immediately upon clinical death. Ultimately the goal of this prize is to generate a whole brain map which may be used in support of separate efforts to upload and possibly 'reboot' a mind in virtual space.
Legal, political and economical issues
It may be difficult to ensure the protection of human rights in simulated worlds. For example, social science researchers might be tempted to expose simulated minds, or whole isolated societies of simulated minds, to controlled experiments in which many copies of the same minds are exposed (serially or simultaneously) to different test conditions.The only limited physical resource to be expected in a simulated world is the computational capacity, and thus the speed and complexity of the simulation. Wealthy or privileged individuals in a society of uploads might thus experience more subjective time than others in the same real time, or may be able to run multiple copies of themselves or others, and thus produce more service and become even more wealthy. Others may suffer from computational resource starvation and show a slow motion
Slow motion
Slow motion is an effect in film-making whereby time appears to be slowed down. It was invented by the Austrian priest August Musger....
behavior.
Copying vs. moving
Another philosophical issue with mind uploading is whether an uploaded mind is really the "same" sentience, or simply an exact copy with the same memories and personality; or, indeed, what the difference could be between such a copy and the original (see the Swampman thought experimentSwampman
Swampman is the subject of a philosophical thought experiment introduced by Donald Davidson, in his 1987 paper "Knowing One's Own Mind". The experiment runs as follows:...
). This issue is especially complex if the original remains essentially unchanged by the procedure, thereby resulting in an obvious copy which could potentially have rights separate from the unaltered, obvious original.
Most projected brain scanning technologies, such as serial sectioning of the brain, would necessarily be destructive, and the original brain would not survive the brain scanning procedure. But if it can be kept intact, the computer-based consciousness could be a copy of the still-living biological person. It is in that case implicit that copying a consciousness could be as feasible as literally moving it into one or several copies, since these technologies generally involve simulation of a human brain in a computer of some sort, and digital files such as computer programs can be copied precisely. It is usually assumed that once the versions are exposed to different sensory inputs, their experiences would begin to diverge, but all their memories up until the moment of the copying would remain the same.
The problem is made even more serious by the possibility of creating a potentially infinite number of initially identical copies of the original person, which would of course all exist simultaneously as distinct beings. The most parsimonious view of this phenomenon is that the two (or more) minds would share memories of their past but from the point of duplication would simply be distinct minds (although this is complicated by merging). Many complex variations are possible.
Depending on computational capacity, the simulation may run at faster or slower simulation time as compared to the elapsed physical time, resulting in that the simulated mind would perceive that the physical world is running in slow motion
Slow motion
Slow motion is an effect in film-making whereby time appears to be slowed down. It was invented by the Austrian priest August Musger....
or fast motion respectively, while biological persons will see the simulated mind in fast or slow motion respectively.
A brain simulation can be started, paused, backed-up and rerun from a saved backup state at any time. The simulated mind would in the latter case forget everything that has happened after the instant of backup, and perhaps not even be aware that it is repeating itself. An older version of a simulated mind may meet a younger version and share experiences with it.
Bekenstein bound
The Bekenstein boundBekenstein bound
In physics, the Bekenstein bound is an upper limit on the entropy S, or information I, that can be contained within a given finite region of space which has a finite amount of energy—or conversely, the maximum amount of information required to perfectly describe a given physical system down to the...
is an upper limit on information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
that can be contained within a given finite region of space which has a finite amount of energy or, conversely, the maximum amount of information required to perfectly describe a given physical system down to the quantum level.
An average human brain
Human brain
The human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times larger than the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Estimates for the number of neurons in the human brain range from 80 to 120 billion...
has a weight of 1.5 kg
Kilogram
The kilogram or kilogramme , also known as the kilo, is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units and is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram , which is almost exactly equal to the mass of one liter of water...
and a volume of 1260 cm3
Cubic centimetre
A cubic centimetre is a commonly used unit of volume extending the derived SI-unit cubic metre, and corresponds to the volume of a cube measuring 1 cm × 1 cm × 1 cm...
. The energy (E = m·c2) will be 1.34813·1017 J
Joule
The joule ; symbol J) is a derived unit of energy or work in the International System of Units. It is equal to the energy expended in applying a force of one newton through a distance of one metre , or in passing an electric current of one ampere through a resistance of one ohm for one second...
and if the brain is approximate to a sphere then the radius (V = 4·π·r3/3) will be 6.70030·10−2 m
Metre
The metre , symbol m, is the base unit of length in the International System of Units . Originally intended to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Earth's equator to the North Pole , its definition has been periodically refined to reflect growing knowledge of metrology...
.
The Bekenstein bound (I ≤ ) for an average human brain would be 2.58991·1042 bit
Bit
A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...
and represents an upper bound on the information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
needed to perfectly recreate the average human brain down to the quantum level
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
. This implies that the number of different states (Ω=2I) of the human brain
Human brain
The human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times larger than the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Estimates for the number of neurons in the human brain range from 80 to 120 billion...
(and of the mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
if the physicalism
Physicalism
Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things...
is true) is at most 107.79640·1041.
However, as described above, many mind uploading advocates expect that quantum-level models and molecule-scale simulation of the neurons will not be needed, so the Bekenstein bound only represents a maximum upper limit. The Hippocampus
Hippocampus
The hippocampus is a major component of the brains of humans and other vertebrates. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial navigation. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in...
of a human adult brain has been estimated to store a limit of up to 2.5 petabyte
Petabyte
A petabyte is a unit of information equal to one quadrillion bytes, or 1000 terabytes. The unit symbol for the petabyte is PB...
of binary data equivalent.
Mind uploading advocates
Followers of the Raëlian religionRaëlism
Raëlism is a UFO religion that was founded in 1974 by Claude Vorilhon, now known as Raël.The Raëlian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials, which they call the Elohim...
advocate mind uploading in the process of human cloning to achieve eternal life. Living inside of a computer is also seen by followers as an eminent possibility.
However, mind uploading is also advocated by a number of secular researchers in neuroscience and artificial intelligence, such as Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
. In 1993, Joe Strout created a small web site called the Mind Uploading Home Page, and began advocating the idea in cryonics
Cryonics
Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals who can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. Cryopreservation of people or large animals is not reversible with current technology...
circles and elsewhere on the net. That site has not been actively updated in recent years, but it has spawned other sites including MindUploading.org, run by Randal A. Koene
Randal A. Koene
Randal A. Koene is a Dutch neuroscientist and neuroengineer, and co-founder of carboncopies.org, the outreach and roadmapping organization for Advancing Substrate-Independent Minds . He is currently directing the Analysis team at the nanotechnology company Halcyon Molecular...
, Ph.D., who also moderates a mailing list on the topic. These advocates see mind uploading as a medical procedure which could eventually save countless lives.
Many transhumanists
Transhumanism
Transhumanism, often abbreviated as H+ or h+, is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human...
look forward to the development and deployment of mind uploading technology, with transhumanists such as Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk and the anthropic principle. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics...
predicting that it will become possible within the 21st century due to technological trends such as Moore's Law
Moore's Law
Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years....
.
The book Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds by Gregory S. Paul
Gregory S. Paul
Gregory Scott Paul is a freelance researcher, author and illustrator who works in paleontology, and more recently has examined sociology and theology. He is best known for his work and research on theropod dinosaurs and his detailed illustrations, both live and skeletal...
& Earl D. Cox, is about the eventual (and, to the authors, almost inevitable) evolution of computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
s into sentient
Sentience
Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think from the ability to feel . In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences...
beings, but also deals with human mind transfer. Richard Doyle's Wetwares: Experiments in PostVital Living deals extensively with uploading from the perspective of distributed embodiment, arguing for example that humans are currently part of the "artificial life phenotype." Doyle's vision reverses the polarity on uploading, with artificial life forms such as uploads actively seeking out biological embodiment as part of their reproductive strategy.
Raymond Kurzweil
Raymond Kurzweil
Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil is an American author, inventor and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition , text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments...
, a prominent advocate of transhumanism
Transhumanism
Transhumanism, often abbreviated as H+ or h+, is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human...
and the likelihood of a technological singularity
Technological singularity
Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...
, has suggested that the easiest path to human-level artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
may lie in "reverse-engineering the human brain", which he usually uses to refer to the creation of a new intelligence based on the general "principles of operation" of the brain, but he also sometimes uses the term to refer to the notion of uploading individual human minds based on highly detailed scans and simulations. This idea is discussed on pp. 198–203 of his book The Singularity is Near
The Singularity Is Near
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is a 2005 update of Raymond Kurzweil's 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines and his 1990 book The Age of Intelligent Machines. In it, as in the two previous versions, Kurzweil attempts to give a glimpse of what awaits us in the near future...
, for example.
See also
- Blue Brain Project
- Brain-readingBrain-readingBrain-reading uses the responses of multiple voxels in the brain evoked by stimulus and then detected by fMRI in order to decode the original stimulus...
- Brain transplant
- CyborgCyborgA cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. D. S...
- Democratic transhumanismDemocratic transhumanismDemocratic transhumanism, a term coined by Dr. James Hughes in 2002, refers to the stance of transhumanists who espouse liberal, social and/or radical democratic political views....
- ExocortexExocortexAn exocortex is a theoretical artificial external information processing system that would augment a brain's biological high-level cognitive processes....
- Immortality testImmortality testThe Immortality test is a variation of the Turing test. It tests to see if the essential data elements of a person could be extracted and restored into a recreation of the original person...
- Isolated brainIsolated brainIsolated brain refers to keeping a brain alive in-vitro. This is done either by perfusion by a blood substitute, often an oxygenated solution of various salts, or by submerging the brain in oxygenated artificial cerebrospinal fluid . It is the biological counterpart of brain in a vat...
- Simulated realitySimulated realitySimulated reality is the proposition that reality could be simulated—perhaps by computer simulation—to a degree indistinguishable from "true" reality. It could contain conscious minds which may or may not be fully aware that they are living inside a simulation....
- Simulation hypothesisSimulation hypothesisThe Simulation Hypothesis proposes that reality is a simulation and those affected are generally unaware of this. The concept is reminiscent of René Descartes' Evil Genius but posits a more futuristic simulated reality...
- Simulism
- Technologically enabled telepathy
- Turing testTuring testThe Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour. In Turing's original illustrative example, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All...
External links
- Blue Brain Project
- The mind uploading OpenCourseWare course at the Bibioversity
- Reverse Engineering The Brain from IEEE SpectrumIEEE SpectrumIEEE Spectrum is a magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The IEEE's description of it is:IEEE Spectrum began publishing in January 1964 as a successor to Electrical Engineering...
- Reverse-engineer the brain from National Academy of EngineeringNational Academy of EngineeringThe National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...
- The Duplicates Paradox by Ben BestBen BestBen Best is President and CEO of the Cryonics Institute, the world's second largest cryonics organization. Best is a well-known activist in cryonics and life extension advocacy...
; theories about the problem of personal continuity - Joe Strout's Mind Uploading Home Page
- "The Day You Discard Your Body" by Marshall BrainMarshall BrainMarshall David Brain is an American author, public speaker, and entrepreneur. A former college instructor and computer programmer, Brain is the founder of HowStuffWorks.-Background:Marshall Brain was born in Santa Monica, California...
- Winter of our Consciousness, article in The Future FireThe Future FireThe Future Fire is a small press, online science fiction magazine , run by a joint British-US team of editors. The magazine was launched in January 2005 and releases issues four times a year, with stories, articles, and reviews in both HTML and PDF formats...
3 - Reality 3.0: Uploading, Hypermediation & Paradise Engineering by Paul Hughes
- Transhumanist writings on uploading from the Foresight InstituteForesight InstituteThe Foresight Institute is a Palo Alto, California-based nonprofit organization for promoting transformative technologies. They sponsor conferences on molecular nanotechnology, publish reports, and produce a newsletter....
- Society of Neural Prosthetics and Whole Brain Emulation Science
- Carboncopies