Can You Upload Your Mind to a Computer

• The US startup Nectome wants to upload your listen to the cloud
• The 2045 Initiative promises to aid humanity achieve immortality by 2045
• Current prove suggests that mind uploading is theoretically possible
• The practical and ethical issues of mind uploading

Achieving immortality has long been humanity'due south holy grail. Always since we first became enlightened of the fragility of our own existence, we've been looking for means to cheat expiry and prolong our lives indefinitely. Although advancements in medicine accept enabled us to significantly increase our lifespan, true immortality has remained out of reach. Achieving physical immortality may very well prove to be across our capabilities, but what most digital immortality?

The United states of america startup Nectome wants to upload your mind to the deject

A United states startup called Nectome recently unveiled plans to help humanity accomplish digital immortality past preserving the brain – using a revolutionary new embalming technique – and later uploading it to the cloud. The procedure is called vitrifixation, or Aldehyde-Stabilised Cryopreservation. It involves replacing the blood period in the brain with embalming chemicals that preserve its neuronal structure in microscopic detail, basically by turning it into 'frozen glass'. "You lot tin think of what we do as a fancy form of embalming that preserves not just the outer details only the inner details," explains Robert McIntyre, a co-founder of Nectome.

A US startup chosen Nectome recently unveiled plans to assist humanity achieve digital immortality past preserving the brain – using a revolutionary new embalming technique – and later uploading information technology to the deject.

There are a couple of caveats, though. The biggest one is that y'all can't really survive the procedure. Furthermore, in lodge for information technology to work, it needs to be performed on a living brain. If the brain has been expressionless even for a curt corporeality of fourth dimension, it volition get irreparably damaged and the procedure won't exist successful. That means that information technology would essentially exist a course of suicide, which would make it legal only in those The states states that permit euthanasia, such as California. Another major downside is that Nectome notwithstanding isn't even close to developing a method for reviving or uploading the preserved encephalon to the deject.

Withal, this dubiousness didn't stop people from investing in the idea, with 25 people already having joined the waiting list by paying a $ten,000, fully-refundable deposit. One of those people is Sam Altman, the main executive of the successful startup accelerator Y Combinator, which recently welcomed Nectome into its fold. The visitor managed to raise more than $1 million in funding so far and was awarded two prizes by the Brain Preservation Foundation, likewise as a large government grant to collaborate with MIT. However, the widespread public criticism that followed the waiting list announcement resulted in MIT cut all ties with Nectome.

The 2045 Initiative promises to help humanity accomplish immortality by 2045

Nectome isn't the only visitor working on uploading our minds to a computer. In 2011, the Russian man of affairs and billionaire Dmitry Itskov founded the 2045 Initiative, an organisation that aims to help humanity reach immortality past 2045. "Within the adjacent 30 years, I am going to make sure that we can all live forever," claims Itskov. "The ultimate goal of my plan is to transfer someone's personality into a completely new torso".

The 2045 Initiative has laid out its plan in 3 stages. The get-go stage involves building a humanoid robot called the Avatar, and a cutting-edge brain-estimator interface system. The second stage consists of building a life back up system for the human brain, and linking information technology with the Avatar. The third and final stage involves creating an artificial encephalon that would concur the original individual consciousness.

Electric current evidence suggests that mind uploading is theoretically possible

Then, can it actually be done? Is it really possible to upload a mind to a computer? The short answer is: aye, theoretically. "All of the evidence seems to say in theory information technology'south possible – it'south extremely difficult, just information technology'south possible," says neuroscientist Randal Koene, the scientific manager of the 2045 Initiative. The homo brain is an incredibly complex organ, consisting of nearly 86 billion neurons that constantly exchange data with one another. All of the connections between the neurons in a encephalon are called the connectome, and many scientists believe that this connectome actually holds the information that makes us who we are. And mapping it could potentially let us to recreate a person's mind.

Our current assumption is that all brain activity is computable. If that's true and the encephalon does work like a reckoner, and if we could find a way to map that action, scan the brain at the necessary level of detail, interpret the browse in a fashion that would let us to reconstruct the brain'south neural network and create a faithful simulation, and if we had enough calculating power to run such a simulation, then we should be able to recreate the human mind in a computer. That'due south a lot of ifs, simply until we know dissimilar, it remains in the realm of possibility. Nonetheless, it's a very remote possibility at this point. "We are pitifully far abroad from mapping a human connectome," says Dr Ken Hayworth, a neuroscientist at the Janelia Enquiry Campus in Virginia. "To put it in perspective, to image a whole fly encephalon it is going to have the states approximately one to two years. The idea of mapping a whole human brain with the existing engineering science that we have today is simply impossible."

The applied and ethical issues of mind uploading

The chief problem is that at that place are then many things virtually the human encephalon nosotros don't know yet. We don't know how the mind is created. We don't know what consciousness is or how to measure information technology, so even if we were able to create a simulation of the homo encephalon, we wouldn't be able to determine whether that simulation really is witting. We don't even know exactly which encephalon structures and biomolecules demand to be preserved to recreate a person's memory or personality, or if information technology's even possible.

Many scientists are certain it tin can't be washed. "You cannot code intuition; you lot cannot code aesthetic beauty; yous cannot code love or detest," argues Dr Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke Academy. "There is no way you will e'er see a human brain reduced to a digital medium. Information technology's simply impossible to reduce that complexity to the kind of algorithmic process that you volition have to have to practice that."

The main problem is that in that location are then many things about the human brain we don't know yet

The whole idea is also rife with ethical issues, and some experts are suggesting that 'Can we do information technology?' isn't even the correct question to ask. Instead, what nosotros should be asking is 'Should nosotros do information technology?'. Let's say that we've successfully uploaded a human mind onto a computer. Does that mean that personal identity has too transferred forth with memories and that this person is all the same the same? Or is it a new person with a different identity that just happens to share the same memories? What rights would this digital person have? And if you could create one re-create of yourself, why wouldn't you be able to create multiple copies? In that example, which one of those copies would exist the 'real' you? And since you wouldn't have a physical trunk anymore and would essentially be reduced to a stream of data, who would that data belong to? Who would own you? How could you foreclose major corporations from misusing your data?

Heed uploading is a fascinating concept, only we're not sure all the same whether it'due south even possible. Our existing technology and our agreement of the human encephalon aren't advanced enough to answer that question at this fourth dimension. Fifty-fifty if uploading the human mind onto a reckoner eventually turns out to be impossible, the idea is still worth pursuing further, because the technology Nectome and others are working on could have many other useful applications. For example, it could facilitate encephalon cyberbanking for future research into health and disease states, assist united states of america discover new brain disorder drugs, or enhance our basic neuroscience circuit mapping.

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Source: https://blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com/en/in-a-future-of-mind-uploading-will-you-still-be-you-and-who-will-own-your-mind/

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