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It’s too early to talk about longevity, but the day will break.
Author | Otter Editor | Azusa
Source: Silicon Rabbit Race
On July 19, Dogecoin founder Billy Marcus tweeted, “Would you be friends if you could upload your brain to the cloud and talk to a virtual version of yourself?”. Musk replied, “It’s already done.” Musk uploaded his consciousness to the cloud, and the latest developments in realizing “digital immortality” made fans instantly crazy, and stocks with the concept of brain-computer interface soared after the market.
Despite Musk’s ambitions, Neuralink has yet to be tested on humans. The digital storage of human consciousness to achieve theoretical “digital immortality” is not completely equivalent to the brain-computer interface that Neuralink is doing.
01
Musk and Neuralink, what is the current level of technology in the industry?
So far, Neuralink, which filed with the U.S. Federal Drug Administration last year, has not received approval to implant its technology in humans. Neuralink’s rival Synchron, however, has implanted its first device in a US patient.
On July 6, the New York-based biotech company Synchron implanted their BCI device (stentrode) into a patient with ALS, Bloomberg reported. ALS (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease that affects people’s ability to move and speak. Synchron’s BCI device, on the other hand, translates a patient’s thoughts into actions through commands sent to a computer, which enables patients to browse the web and communicate with the outside world through email and chat software.
The device is much less invasive than traditional BCIs and does not need to pass through the patient’s skull or damage their tissue, just make an incision in the patient’s neck and, with the help of a catheter, place the stent into the motor cortex in the blood vessels. The device will also connect to a computing device implanted in the patient’s chest, and the stent reads the signals produced by neurons in the brain and sends the signal to the computing device, which sends the signal to a computer or mobile phone via Bluetooth.
More interestingly, Max Hodak, the investor behind the company, is actually one of the co-founders of Neuralink. It is reported that Hodak left Neuralink in 2021 and has since competed for multiple BCIs of Neuralink including Synchron The counterparty provides funds.
But whether it is Neuralink or Synchron, the current application of BCI technology is mainly concentrated in the medical and health field, including the treatment of various neurological and psychiatric diseases, and the use of brain-computer interfaces to decode brain states and functions other than motor functions is still in the relatively early stage.
02
Is it possible to upload consciousness to the cloud?
The idea of Mind Uploading is to capture every piece of data in your mind and transfer it into a digital simulation. The whole process will contain different steps such as mind replication, mind transfer, mind preservation and whole brain emulation (WBE). Each step currently faces obstacles to its realization.
Step 1: Get information from the brain
The brain has about 100 billion neurons that communicate with each other through 1,000 trillion connections, sending signals to each other 1,000 times per second. That’s the equivalent of a thousand trillion events happening in our brains every second. However, so far, the limit scientists have been able to obtain to restore an entire network of neurons is 302 neurons and about 7,000 synaptic connections, far less than human nerves.
In addition, the brain is affected by different parts of the body, from the nerves of the heart to the bacteria in the gut, and this level of complexity increases as we learn more about the brain. This has also led scientists to not fully understand where the “you” part of the brain is stored.
Step 2: Rebuild the artificial brain
Once all the neural activity has been mapped and the connectome is ready, the next step is to digitize it. According to a rough estimate by Scientific American, the memory storage capacity of the human brain may be around 2.5 petabytes (2,500 terabytes). In addition to storage, we also need to reconstruct the neural network of the brain on a computer architecture. There are still some major differences between artificial neural networks (ANNs) that have been created so far and the human brain:
1. All neurons compute one after the other instead of working simultaneously.
2. All simulated neurons are similar, like simple boxes that can only hold one value, whereas our brain’s neuron regions are more complex tree-like structures.
3. In addition, the human brain uses about 300 times more parameters (neurons combined with synapses) than GPT3, the largest artificial neural network ever built.
At present, the memory chip with the performance closest to the brain is developed by the Samsung Advanced Technology Research Institute. Samsung’s research team claims that the accuracy rate of the chip in writing and number classification has reached 98%, and the accuracy rate in face detection has reached 93%. , but Dr. Seung chul Jung, the core staff member of the study, admitted that “there is still a considerable gap between the calculation performed by the MRAM chip and the calculation performed by the brain.”
Step 3: Realize consciousness upload
Once all requirements are met and the artificial brain is ready, the “consciousness” can now be uploaded into the virtual world, however, if the consciousness is uploaded as a Matrix Independent Mind (SIM), and if the SIM is to be considered conscious, then it also needs to be Being somewhere and being able to interact with things will require a highly simulated virtual world, but also more storage capacity, signal bandwidth and power.
03
The paradox of digital immortality and AI self-awareness
“Am I still me?”
With the realization of every step of consciousness uploading, the paradox of digital immortality will also appear.
Humans are inherently social animals, and our gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice have subtle effects on interpersonal communication and social relationships, and social communication and our understanding of others are also conditioned by our bodies. A “digital immortality” that cannot demonstrate these fine-grained expressions will fail to truly understand the social dimension of human existence. It can be said that the complex psychological life of human beings grows out of our physical structure and is basically shaped by it, and the “digital immortality” without the physical body is also likely to mark the end of “me”.
It is true that consciousness uploading has the potential to change human life forever, but it also has the potential to spark many conflicts around its ethical and social impact on humanity. Steve Jobs once said, “Death is quite possibly the best invention in life. It is the agent of change in life. It clears out the old and makes way for the new.” If this is true, then by “digital The victory over death of immortality may actually be self-defeating.
A digitally immortal me vs a self-aware AI
Even if humans upload their self-awareness to the cloud, they may face the challenge of super-AI with self-awareness in the future.
Computer scientist Owen Goode said as early as 1951 that artificial intelligence will “transcend the weak human ability”, and then “control human beings”, and artificial intelligence will be the “last invention” that human beings need to create. His colleague Alan Turing is known as the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. Theoretical physicist Steve Hawking also expressed his view that “this may lead to the demise of mankind”.
When artificial intelligence becomes complex and intelligent enough to take over, perhaps the singularity will come, and where the human world will go at that time, we do not know, but in the interval between our conversations, thousands of Thousands of programmers are upgrading the scope and capabilities of machine learning.
The answer to this question may be found in Mr. Li Kaifu’s book “AI Future Progress”. If we are passive observers, then as “weak humans”, we will become a “useless class” controlled by machines. If we see AI as an ally that helps us maximize our potential and free ourselves from repetitive mundane tasks, then AI and humans will work together to produce a 1+1 far greater than 2 effect.
Maybe one day in the future, the virtual you and the real you will be able to join forces to fight against AI?
Reference source:
Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain computer startup is beat again. This time a competitor implanted its device into its first US patient (Fortune)
When will I be able to upload my brain to a computer? (The Conversation)
Will We Ever Cheat Death and Become Immortal With Mind Uploading? (interestingengineering)
Samsung Demonstrates MRAM Based In-Memory Computing (BISinfotech)
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