Brain downloading proclaimed possible by 2050

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Brain downloading proclaimed possible by 2050

Posted by Aelhswith on Thursday May 26, @07:37PM
from the familiar-song-and-dance dept.
[article] By the middle of the 21st century it will be possible to download one's brain to a supercomputer, according to Ian Pearson, a leading thinker on the future. "If you're rich enough then by 2050 it's feasible. If you're poor you'll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it's routine," he said.

Pearson also predicted that it would be possible to build a fully conscious computer with superhuman levels of intelligence as early as 2020. "We're already looking at how you might structure a computer that could become conscious. Consciousness is just another sense, effectively, and that's what we're trying to design in computer."
Pearson said that computer consciousness would make feasible a whole new sphere of emotional machines, such as airplanes that are afraid of crashing.

By 2020 Pearson also predicted the creation of a "virtual world" of immersive computer-generated environments in which we will spend increasing amounts of time, socializing and doing business. He said: "When technology gives you a life-size 3D image and the links to your nervous system allow you to shake hands, it's like being in the other person's office. It's impossible to believe that won't be the normal way of communicating."

But Pearson admitted that the consequences of advancing technologies needed to be considered carefully. "You need a complete global debate," he said. "Whether we should be building machines as smart as people is a really big one."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1489699,00.html

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Re: Brain downloading proclaimed possible by 2050
by Julian on Thursday June 02, @05:09AM

I've heard many ideas on what consciousness is, but that it's "just another sense" was something completely knew. I can understand the thinking of physicalists, functionalists, old-school dualists and most of the fancy thinkers somewhere in between those, but I can't for life comprehend how you can even think of consciousness as a "sense".

Either the guy is misquoted, or he will be the first to have his mind transferred into a machine, whereafter we will ask the original body if it is still conscious and what it thinks the machine is.

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Re: Brain downloading proclaimed possible by 2050
by Nanomid on Thursday June 02, @10:04AM

Super AI makes nukes look like toys. The flavor of Democracy that we enjoy in the US is hinged, at least in part, on the concept of anonymity.

There is no room for anonymity with Super AI, and all the ramifications thereof.

Complex systems like the brain are dominated minute variations, which requires copy fidelity of many significant digits.
Unfortunately, many of these nuances are really not material, and so much of who we are is probably compressible.

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Re: Brain downloading proclaimed possible by 2050
by Nanomid on Thursday June 02, @10:07AM

Actually, on the compressiblity note, it may be the case that small number of exemplars can roughly approximate a given population (say Exemplars ~ log(Population)

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Re: Brain downloading proclaimed possible by 2050
by Nigel on Monday June 20, @11:59AM

If this guy Pearson is serious then he is an idiot (and it is far from unknown for excellent scientists to be idiots, to at least very naive, when it comes to issues outside their specialism). People were predicting human level or above AI in 10 or 20 years time 50, 40 and 30 years ago. What do we have? Windows XP. For about the last 20 years anyone who really knows anything about the field of AI has had enough sense not to make this sort of reckless and unfounded prediction.

Likewise, anyone who really knows anything about neuroscience or cognitive theory or the science of consciousness (and whose mind is open enough to realize that the theory they happen to favor, out of the many in play in these fields, just might not be the right one) would know that we do not yet know anywhere near enough about any of these areas to know whether it is even possible in principle to download minds or build conscious machines. To give just one example, from the point of view of a reasonably "mainstream" theoretical orientation within cognitive science, "embodied cognition" theory suggests that it is very unlikely that such things will ever be possible. Even if it turns out that "embodied cognition" theory is on the wrong track, and these things are possible in principle, we are certainly nowhere near to knowing enough even to make a sensible prediction as to how long it will be before we know enough to actually be able to do it.

In fact, however, nearly all of Pearson's predictions are so outrageous (to anyone who actually knows anything about the relevant fields) that I strongly suspect the article is really a spoof, a takeoff of the idiocies of even relatively sober attempts at futurology.

Talking yoghurt! Come on!!

Nigel J.T. Thomas WEB SITE: "Imagination, Mental Imagery, Consciousness, and Cognition: Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Approaches."

'Permanent' redirect URL [THE ONE TO BOOKMARK OR LINK TO]:
http://www.members.leeds.ac.uk/n.j.thomas70

Current 'physical' location:
http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/nthomas/

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