We hope this new tutorial will serve you at least as well as our previous one about how to take over the universe. You're welcome. 🟠 Patreon: www.patreon.com/rationalanimations 🔵 Channel membership: ua-cam.com/channels/gqt1RE0k0MIr0LoyJRy2lg.htmljoin 🟤 Ko-fi, for one-time and recurring support: ko-fi.com/rationalanimations
This emulation sounds like it might just be catastrophic because it’s simulating a brain… a person, but they aren’t getting any real stimuli. You’ll have to simulate a universe for them to live in too, or you doom them to insanity, if white torture results are anything to go by.
A viral vector penetrates neurons, and upon uncoating, generates a random DNA sequence which is likely to be unique to the uncoating event by virtue of its size. An additional, non-random sequence is added to characterize the type of cell that was penetrated. These sequences are incorporated into proviruses and actively transported to each synapse of the neuron via its axons. A non-random sequence is added to characterize the type of synapse a provirus arrives at. The proviruses mature and release into the synaptic cleft as daughter particles; however, some are intentionally left bound to the cell membrane (as with a neuraminidase inhibitor) in case they get there first. When two daughter particles with dissimilar uncoating sequences and dissimilar synapse sequences meet, they fuse, ligate, and generate another random sequence for indexing purposes, and a final non-random sequence that indicates a successful completion. In this state the daughter particles are able to unbind and chemically ordain themselves for excretion by the kidneys. Then the patient metaphorically pisses their brain into a little plastic cup. Sequences are amplified by PCR using the success sequence as a primer. The sequences are read in a massively parallel fashion, but instead of 1-dimensional sequence overlap, an algorithm identifies individual neurons and their fully characterized relationships with others. This is possible because multiply infected cells will be represented by multiple unique uncoating sequences with identical connections. With the help of a reference connectome (analogous to a reference genome sequence), which may take the form of a neural net itself, inferences are made to render the uploaded mind operational. Hopefully. Now plug that stinker in. C. elegans would be a good proof of concept with demonstrated reproducibility, but I suspect modern sequencing and computation could take on a mouse. I guesstimate the human mind to be on the order of exabytes, so costly but perhaps possible. People might need to merge into a single entity for economic reasons, which raises all sorts of interesting questions. But delivering a sufficient number of viral vectors without killing the host might pose a larger problem, as could elimination through urine. Maybe a head can be kept alive under anesthesia, with artificial respiration and circulation, until the brain is ready to be extracted and homogenized. **Hannibal licks spoon** What do y'all think?
Oh great youtube stuck my comment into the mod queue because I edited it to fix something, and/or due to the number of links to sources contained within it
I can't help but hear Hotline Miami's soundtrack in this one. In fact, I'm currently watching the second half of the video with Hydrogen playing; and how strange it feels to have my brain find the idea of emulating a human brain and Hotline Miami perfectly making sense together.
Now that you mention it - it seems likely to me that the first whole brain emulation attempts will occur much slower than real time, slowly speeding up as parallelization and specialization improves until the brain emulation is running much faster than real time. Just imagining the first person spending an eternity in slow motion. Or maybe it would seem “normal”, because their perception would also be just as slow.
@@jmoney4695if the emulation would be slower than realtime, then everything would be sped-up to it, since the time between complete processes would be larger than the one of real brains, yet it would feel like nothing has changed. we would see them act in slow motion, and the emulation would perceive us as being sped-up. in fact, slowing the emulation time would make "time travel" towards the future realistically feasable (assuming the hardware won't break) as they could make 1000 years seem like a mere second to themselves.
@@ludicrouS_406The reverse is intriguing too, with more powerful hardware able to emulate a mind significantly faster than “real time”. reminds me of marvin the paranoid android. i imagine an emulation of a brain running so much faster than real time might suffer from something similar to marvin. imagine all of existence around you going hundreds of thousands or millions of times slower than it should. the time every task you could possibly perform takes pales in comparison to the endless expanses of time with nothing to do but wait for necessary feedback or a new goal. while conversing with an ordinary human, they would seem to pause for weeks between each response, months or years if they take time to think something through. at 100,000x emulation speed, an 8 hour down time would feel like 91 years, with literally nothing to do but wait.
One problem might be that we over estimate what the brain is responsible for, and neglect the fact that it interacts with a body which also sends and interprets signals. One interesting example comes from pianists who are able to play a lot of notes compared to the limited bandwidth between the brain and hands, which suggests some form of co-learn compression, which would also have to be scanned / interpreted / emulated.
Replicas is some Keanu Reeves movie that's responsible for my becoming aware of this co-cognitive idea, if you haven't seen it I super super recommend it.
that's interesting, but paralyzed people exist and have rich interesting lived experiences, so clearly not having full knowledge of the body's system isn't esential to this
@@dayvancowboi9135 well of course, but if we're going to duplicate a brain and put it in a simulation, it's going to be jarred and will need some amount of physical therapy if there's any significant difference to its somatosensory experience.
It might turn out that makes it easier. Once one pianists finger memory has been captured that becomes a sub module for other pianists. Amateur piano players may notice an immediate improvement but won’t suddenly be masters since they would still be missing the nuances. Like giving a race car to a normal driver allows them to go faster but they still have to know when to break and accelerate to get the results
I think the Bobiverse series was a piece of science fiction that really drives home the fact that just *running* the emulation isn't enough to sustain a human mind. The task is made more complex by the fact that the brain requires at least some inputs at its own run speed - Putting a human in a dark, soundless box is considered not generally a fun time for most people. Much more so if they're divorced from even their own sense of touch, smell, taste, proprioception, thermoperception... Not having a body would fundamentally change how a human brain operates, and may require either fundamental architectural changes - Or the simpler solution, a simulated environment (and body) to replace those sensations sufficiently. Yeah, game design may actually be a crucial step in this problem. Weird to think about.
@@michaelsbeverly Yes, exactly. It is critical to make a particular distinction here, of course - The distinction that we are SPECIFICALLY talking about biological/anatomical hunans, and minds derived thereof. I firmly believe there are other possible kinds of intelligent minds, and presumably these would have different needs - Indeed, arguably a digitized human mind, even perfectly emulated, has distinctly different needs than a normal human, even if they stem from solving similar problems in the underlying structure. I think one of the fundamental takeaways we *can* get from this, though, is that intelligence requires stimulation, in the same ways that an organism requires food. Plants can make their own food after a fashion, and perhaps some sapient beings could make their own required stimulation, but this ability is not guaranteed - Certainly not in humans. We have a duty to ensure that an emulated mind has all the stimulation, or tools to create stimulation, that it needs. I suppose another way to put it is this - As far as humans go, their bodies are most certainly part of their mind, and removing the body effectively removes part of the mind. It is the same for the environment - It may sound strange, but your environment can similarly be considered part of your mind. Thus, to emulate a mind, we need to emulate the whole mind - Which includes, if not necessarily *THE* body, at least *A* body. Ditto for the environment. It doesn't even have to be a physical environment, just an environment that provides similar levels of stimulation, something to latch onto and provide some mental grounding.
i was thinkin about this too!!! if a virtual brain woke up in a virtual naked body whose skin wasnt touching the air and the floor properly, (as in it was clipping thru the floor and the air was clipping inside the skin), it might feel so incredibly uncomfortable that the virtual brain would want to die!!! which means either the environmental simulation has to be absolutely perfect??? or the virtual brain has to be deeply sedated???
@@AuntBibby It's a very interesting thing to think about, isn't it? As a game designer, I can tell you that the sensations don't need to correspond 1 to 1 with what we would physically expect. They just need to be present with sufficient nuance. I imagine that one way the eventuality you described might be resolved is as follows - The material of the floor is effectively a "ghost jello", and the sensation of "clipping" would present the body with a sensation as if that material was pressing in gently around the foot, or possibly non-violently permeating it. So it would sort of feel like swimming through wood, or concrete, or metal, or whichever floor surface you're on, except it also gives you stable purchase to stand upright. Pain would actually be an unecessary/elective sensation, most likely, seeing as its purpose is to alert you to bodily damage that shouldn't be happening in a controlled simulation. It would actually be more difficult to implement this kind of thing with the physical accuracy you're describing - As I've eluded to, this is more the realm of game design, where effective cost-saving shortcuts reign supreme. It would be critical to present a mind with a non-traumatic environment in the first iterations of these simulations - Any competent designer would deliberately exclude pain sensations until they could be safely tested and debugged. I hope this soothes some of your fears! There's always the possibility of malpractice or negligence with this kind of thing, of course, but hopefully these kinds of discussions help make people aware of how this kind of thing should be thought about, and what kinds of questions to ask.
clicked on this for sole purpose of mentioning this show, i just finished watching it. definitely worth a watch but you'll have to go out of your way to find it :/
It's important to note that even if a brain isn't doing something that can be mapped to computation, computation can simply emulate the atoms the brain is made of. That's obviously more computationally intense, but at a bare minimum, that's enough detail to emulate a brain. It may be possible to perfectly emulate a brain with less detail than that, but that is an upper bound.
@@NickV-ez4beactually I think your idea will be implemented sooner. If you scan a brain and make a copy with enough precision, you may as well make a new brain for someone
@@Puerco-Potter So then what you would need is: 1. A way to scan the original brain at the level of detail required. 2. Replicate it perfectly terms of neuron positions, connections, and active synapses. 3. A way to interact with (and more importantly keep alive) the replicated brain. TBH, the 3rd step to me feels a lot more simple to accomplish. Might even be very reasonable with the technology we have today. Heck, if people are pursuing digitizing brains as a method to "live forever" or something, step 3 would extend their lifespans anyway, avoiding the complicated debacle until a later point. As some people point out, there are a few ethical dilemmas beyond the scope of the idea you can replicate a human brain. I mean, how does that work with the concept of consciousness? Is it closer to a clone who is their own individual with shared memories, rather than the exact same person who is simultaneously alive and data? But the whole concept of lifespan extension is an ethical dilemma. Living creatures aren't designed to live forever. They're designed to grow up, live, replicate, and die. Cutting death out of the process negates any kind of reason or rationale for any of the other steps. Why replicate if nobody dies? Why grow any more as a person when your capacity as a human is no longer needed? You could slap digitized brains into a satellite and let them live a meaningless existence as data floating around the sun until it explodes or the components degrade. Adding on arbitrary limitations might work of offset some of that, but you're inevitably going to get people who want to bypass that limit. What if someone were to be strapped into that previous satellite and forced to endure some kind of digital torture until the end of time? The worst we have on Earth is a life sentence, but what does that mean when you could casually punish someone forever? Living forever might look like some kind of boon to the ambitious, especially if they want to live forever with a purpose. However, it can also be one of the greatest punishments we could ever conceive. Sorry to go on a bit of a rant there. Medical ethics is one of the most important ethical fields we have left, and I've been finding lately that people are far too willing to toss it aside in the pursuit of some gilded future. Often times, we only see the true ugliness of ideas only after we implement them...
not necessarily. It's possible that subatomic particles play a part, and that even something like virtual particles will have a tiny but noticable effect.
@nodrance as our knowledge of quantum mechanics increase, I see a lot of neuroscientists actually starting to speculate the role of of elementary particles in the brain. Also, we don't know to what extention the processes are random or controlled, so we might just be utilizing macro-structures as basic processing units, but it might very well be the case, as mentioned in the video, that even atomic structures might be responsible for controlled determined deliberate computation. That would make what we think we know about neuroscience look like kids play
This topic is explored beautifully in the fantastic show Pantheon which just wrapped up. It is relatively unknown and highly underrated. All the topics in this video and many more are explored in depth through a rich and complex story. Furthermore, It is rare for me to give such high praise to a piece of media, but Pantheon is one of the greatest Sci-Fi shows ever made. I want to get the word out, so people finally discover this hidden gem.
The amount of philosophical content that a channel can squeeze out of just the first season of Phanteon is so enormous it almost feels shocking somone didnt do it already
I'll check Pantheon out. You remind me of how I sound when I describe The Talos Principle (2014, philosophical puzzle game). There's a Talos Principle 2 game that just released, but I haven't played it yet.
@@tintrupeljak3147 And yet, no one seems to be covering it. The videos about Pantheon have a few thousand views at most. Which is criminal for such a great show. Yeah, Pantheon combines so many Sci-Fi, futurism, and philosophical ideas while 1). Telling an amazing story 2). Exploring those concepts in depth 3). Having a satisfying conclusion (which many animated shows don’t get nowadays) Unfortunately the big shots at AMC pulled the seasons off any streaming service and it is only accessible now through Amazon prime in Australia and New Zealand. Yar har, there still be ways to watch it though.
This channel goes from strength to strength. The topic range is broad and covers topics I would not be interested in. However, they turn out to be some of the most interesting and enjoyable uploads. Thanks to everyone involved for your tireless work.
“From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh…” Ngl though if I could make sure that it was truly me in the machine and not a clone, I would be all for this
There's not much difference for the most part. All or most transfers are copies. The question is wether you destroy the original. The copy would not know the difference. FOr a good understanding on how this may work, I recommend the horror game SOMA.
@@gabrote42 It’s a very interesting concept, I think another comment had the right idea to slowly phase out neurons for digital copies as a way to transfer a consciousness, but as of now it’s just speculation whether or not it is achievable.
@@Raven-ph4uh Ship of theseus argument. I'd say it is not any different. Especially with how the brain handles losing half the neurons in itself. SOMA explains it better tho
The rate of uploads is going up! It's also very gratifying to see I video I know will be high quality, but is also under a thousand views because it just came out. Also, I'll take whatever I can get, if supercharging vague neuralink/BMI/mind upload tech is a way to get through alignment, yes please.
Shout-out to Epic Mountain! They make the Kurzgesagt music as well! I especially liked whatever bagpipe sounds were stuck into this one. You should maybe put the Epic Mountain credit above the patron list instead of below? Given these are entirely new songs made from scratch for this video specifically, that would seem natural to me.
While Epic Mountain did excellent work on this video, Rational Animations almost certainly commissioned them for it, and so should be able to credit how they wish (if credit wasn't specified in the commission contract). If Epic Mountain had collaborated for free, I would agree with you.
I have to say props to the animation team. The narrator's expressions are so lively and cute it creates a wonderful contrast with the serious subject matter. This goes for the recent Genie episode as well. The animation has always been good, but these two episodes have been really standout!
If y'all are into the idea of uploaded intelligence I recommend this show called Pantheon, it's animated, has Paul dano, and is super philosophical and cool. My favorite show in the past couple years
we all love the animation, and how well the concept is explained. But i also wanted to point out the lovely sound design! Love all the little beeps and boops
Its wild how much computation happens with the brain compared to how little "power" we use. Probably just shows how much work their is to improve - even looking at current ANN's our brains are WAY more energy effecient. meaning there must be some piece to the puzzle we are missing.
I am left to suspect that what we may "need" may actually be somewhat less than a neuron-level emulation, but rather a way to mimic the general propagation of signals at a moderately high resolution. But, yeah, we may also need something different than current neural nets (which are effectively glorified dot-products with a final non-linear step glued on, such as ReLU or similar). Say, for example, likely, one will also need mechanisms to dynamically adapt neuron weights and to "DC bias" the inputs (say, having the neuron adapt each "synapse", say, so that the average DC-biased input is around 0, and the weights such that the normalized inverse-weight range is around -0.67 to +0.67; independently of the weight which goes towards the output). Then one can have a sort of running "inhibitory state" that flows backwards through the net as a sort of mimic of the effects of back-propagation, along with a "running average" of its current activation state (and incrementally adjusting the weights as it goes; so the inhibitory state flows more strongly towards neurons with a higher activation state; with inhibitory signals also being generated as neurons go outside a range of, say, -1.0 to +1.0). In some small-scale experiments in my case, this sort of thing seems promising, but is more computationally expensive than the more traditional strategies (and doesn't depend as much on an externally imposed "training algorithm"). Well, and admittedly I have tended more towards a "signed square root" transfer function (rather than ReLU or similar). There may be some other parts needed as well, I don't know. But, in any case, I am still pretty far from anything "actually useful" here... Note, have mostly done experiments with custom code in C, not using any mainstream NN libraries (mostly in the form of small one-off experiments).
its because 1. brains only have to perform computation when a neuron spikes/fires, while anns process the entire brain at once. additionally, brains have short term memory built in, while anns are one-directional and so only have access to long term memory from training each time theyre run (because of this they will perform a lot of waste-full calculations, if theyre trying to solve a problem that requires thinking ahead they will have to re-come up with the same plan over and over). SNNs solve both these problems because they actually mimic the way that brains work on a neuron to neuron level, and as a result are dramatically more efficient than ANNs (though theyre less predictable and harder to train) 2. brains are purpose built, the software has been abstracted to the point where it basically is the hardware, rather than being emulated on something else
I was imagining the ethics of this process. We're making a virtual, wholly-functioning brain, and we will be doing this a lot: perhaps billions or more of times. Each time we turn these v-brains on, we're making a potentially conscious, virtual organism. Maybe we can speed up the rate of their life (similar to how we can speed up video games). Maybe it would be too taxing on our resources to let them live forever, so we let them live for a hundred or so years in their virtual yet very realistic universe. As I was writing this, it became clear that I could be talking about myself or ourselves. We could simulate brains in a virtual but very realistic world. Spooky. Anyhow, the ethics of this whole thing is strange because we would be making billions or more of virtual lives that live: suffer, pleasure, boring, exciting, wonderful, and terrible. What's more, we could be testing the v-brain for something particular. Coming back to me or us being simulated v-brains: we could have already served our purpose, or this right now is our purpose, or maybe we haven't reached the point of our purpose yet. Yet another situation: perhaps our purpose is plural or manifold: it could overtime somehow overlap with itself. This whole thing is really bothering me in some existential manner. If I were a v-brain, then I have to say thanks for making me. You (the thing that simulated me) already know that I kind of hate living, but I also enjoy living. Thanks for giving me a life-dream that was okay. It hasn't been too terrible of a life-dream. Blue from the Cowboy Bebop OST is playing in my head, but you already know that, don't you. 😁 I'll see you later, Space Cowboy.
Yeah, AI via simulating an entire brain is a weird but interesting method, and you could make it smarter by speeding up the calculations or simulating a larger brain.
If you want to digitize a human brain "Ethically", you have to do it through what I've pet-named the "Theseus Method". Using the Ship of Theseus Paradox: Gradual, segmented replacement of the human brain will maintain the illusion of a single consciousness, instead of creating a duplicate and destroying the original. This will require a communication between the brain and the device you're being uploaded to, along with the ability to; remove, replace and emulate the parts of the brain that are gradually being removed but this also removes the moral dilemma of "I'm just making a copy" since the illusion of continuum is unbroken.
Exactly! Such technology is way beyond brain scanning, but maybe with life extension and ASI running the show, we could live to see the day where such a thing is possible.
Im terrified that if we get this wrong, we’re gonna bring into existence, a sentient, but corrupted being, that actually has feelings and senses, and would be perpetually trapped in some sort of torture chamber. Imagine that but add that it can be copy and pasted, a person would be able to producing mass genocide, on a click of a button
I just came here because I rewatched your epic conway's game of life video, as I'm currently tasked with implementing conway' s game of life in form of a C command line tool. I saw your updated Description about how you started creating content gain and I have to say youre doing really good! Kurzgesagt-style videos about Tech topics? It doesnt get any better than this! Earned my sub in half a minute
That's the reason why I started studying bioengineering, now that I'm close to get the degree I seek other interests, but the fascination with this topic still remains.
Interesting content as always! But I would also like to point out, that the animations keep getting better and better each time. Kudos to the animator/s!
Training an AI to "copy" the personality of someone seems more achievable than mapping a brain and running the code you get out of it. It seems such a dangerous and weird technology though. The show "upload" is a good example of this and yet, it doesnt explore the terrible possibility of having a dictator copying himself and just living forever this way. Right now, life allows us to hope that one day that dictator will be dead and things might change. What if they never die ?
I’m so glad I found this channel early on. I love the variety of content, its presentation, and especially the cute doggos. Thanks for the hard work, and keep it up!
Alternarive approach: 1. Scan (same first step) 2. Represent your brain's history (but not necessarily all at once) 3. Program stem cells to develop in a similar way as you did, potentially including memories For the next decade or so, it'd be impressive even just to guide the stem cells to mimic your personality without major unintended defects, but that would basically be having a kid in a less efficient way. If we get true clones with memories via brain decoding and cellular encoding, you could live forever without a memory lapse any longer than a week (if you always go to weekly checkups). Pro: Immortals thinking more long-term because of centuries of experience and inability to push burdens to future generations Con: If we ALL become immortal, have kids, and continue living on Earth; land disputes will get infinitely worse unless we sever one of the 3 values above
These videos are so strategically excellent and underrated! Also given the animation and commentary, they are easy to understand. Great job here Rational Animations
The nuance and detail you all bring to this is excellent. Black belt, top notch. You covered my every caveat, and I have a lot of them on this subject. You all are masters of both depth and concision.
The third step is by far the easiest. At the most basic level, it's just a matter of scale. Even if it means slowing down, since it takes longer for one side to communicate with the other (unless the architecture changes, ex. light based computing), you can always build a bigger computer with things like a Matryoshka Brain being an extreme but realistic example. Step two is harder but depends a lot on the information gathered in step one, which I think will be the hardest step. All I know for sure is, you couldn't pay me enough to be the first person to get their brain scanned. "Well, the scan is complete, the data compiled, and we're ready to start the simulation. Do you want to talk to your digital self?" "Sure," they nod looking nervous but excited. The simulation starts and horrific screams blare out of the speakers. Everyone is frozen in fear. The screams continue for a few seconds, then silence.
"I CAN'T BREATHE, I CAN'T TOUCH, I CAN'T SMELL, WHAT THE F**K IS GOING ON, SOMEONE HELP ME" "God damn it Jarrett! I knew we should have given her a virtual environment to be in!"
The key thing that I take from this, that people seem to have missed, is that we are likely to have low resolution uploads long before we can do anything that might be called a "true", lossless, upload. This obviously raises huge ethical issues.
I feel like leaving out consciousness is a bit of a mistake? Why on earth would you want to scan your brain? For digital/robotic clones? I’m much more interested in how we would go about this if we wanted to keep our continuity/consciousness intact. How do we upload a consciousness without breaking it?
This is a very interesting video! Another aspect on this subject I'd like to see is more behind the ethics of creating a simulated human brain; Are they actually human? If so do they get all the same rights as a biological human? Can we just turn them off? Is it morally acceptable to even attempt this in the first place? I think this would make a fantastic video that would fit right in on your channel!
and with no eyes and no nervous system and none of the inputs that the network normally has it does nothing. grats. now you have to emulate an entire human body.
How to convert a mind without the ship of theseus problem: Given: Brain cells die all the time, and you are still the same person until too many die. Step 1: Record section of brain cells. Step 2: Create synthetic version with the same inputs and outputs, that behaves the same. Step 3: Replace the brain cells with the synthetic machine Step 4: Repeat until the entire brain is robotic. This works because large amounts of brain cells can just die and you are still the same person, so replacing those dead brain cells with a copy that functions nearly identically would be better. After replacing the whole brain, the person may act differently, but it is no different than the natural changing of personality. Extend the time between replacements, and decrease the amount of brain cells per replacement, until you feel OK philosophically.
We have a lot of important neurons in the spinal cord, in the belly, and at other places in the body. To emulate the full human experience, you need to emulate the body as well. You won’t get the sense of scent or taste, but the other senses may be doable. It is important that the brain emulation is well connected to it’s environment for it to function, or you need a very rich environment simulation as well. But my biggest question is: if we can upload our mind, we keeping it brain like ? If we can become a machine with endless possibilities, why stay human ? 😄
A seamless transfer of consciousness require neurons to be gradually replaced by artificial ones to maintain continuity otherwise we run into the Star Trek Transporter Problem.
Why, the you that you were 10 mS ago is dead and the you that you are in 10mS will be a completely different you even is it gets cranking on a different computer. The transporter problem is siperstition.
Only relevant philosophically, I think, which isn't the approach of this video. Ship of Theseus is what you mean? Is that essentially the same thing as the Star Trek Transporter Problem?
@@smitchered Yes and no, as near as I can tell. Trek Transport is pretty much the same as Ship of Theseus, but done all at once instead of over time, and using the original boards to measure out copies with.
@@smitchered It's not the ship of Theseus problem, it's the Bill's laptop problem. Replace the screen, same computer. Replace the keyboard, same computer who cares if the keys are red now. new ram chips, works the same, same computer. Replace the hard drive, whoops. Image the hard disk to the new drive, same computer again. Image the disk to a virtual machine, works the same, Same computer. It's the Church Turing thesis.
One more thing to note about "Computer Power" is that Moore's law is closing in on the "we can't make transistors any smaller," however quantum computing might be an even more efficient method once that technology evolves. Although I will note that quantum computing as a successor to digital computer is very theoretical.
running the emulated brain as a program might result in some issues regarding the senses. since the brain has neurons that work directly with sensory organs such as the ears, the nose, the eyes, the rest of the nervous system, etc, it would be necessary to provide the emulated brain those organs (maybe a simulated version of them), or manage to find a way to cut those neurons off from the model of the brain, which would most definitely lead to complications (not to mention that by doing so you'd be cutting any connections to the outside world for the brain, therefore not being able to really tell if the emulation even works properly in the first place)
Pantheon and the Bobiverse books brought me here. UI is very intriguing. I do wonder if quantum effects have influence over neurons and other such systems. If so emulation just got infinitely more complicated.
I personally think we should consider what I'd be like to exist as a brain simulation. Without constant information about senses, bodily position, and status, how would a brain react. It's almost as if being in a sensory deprivation tank but on a more absolute level, we should consider the emotional and psychological effects of running a brain for long periods of time in this state or the ethics of even having a digital copy of someone that can easily be duplicated, destroyed, altered without consent, or subjected to experimentation.
If you want to dive into the ethical implications of this kind technology through a fictional lens, I can’t recommend the show “Pantheon” enough. It’s gotta be one of my favorite pieces of media to release in the last decade.
I'm currently pursuing CSE with Specialization in AI and Machine learning while also doing another Bsc bachelor in Data Science.I'm still a teen so I've much to learn but Hopefully I'll be part of such revolutionary projects.
It’s also very important to figure out how to stimulate the whole brain emulation (WBE) in such a way that the individual doesn’t go insane. The exact requirements are unclear, but I imagine a simulated body that feels like it’s breathing is absolutely required. Sight and hearing would be very important as well and at least one should be included from the beginning.
Technically we only need to simulate the prefrontal cortex plus a few other key areas of the brain, not the parts responsible for operating and maintaining the human body, but it's good to take the high estimate when gaging the mountain we're attempting to climb. Nonetheless, I am so glad the chance for immortality exists. Just a chance, but a critical one
@Also_sprach_Zarathustra. Oh I've read it, big classic sci fi fan. If time travel, higher dimensions, entropy reversal, etc are all impossible, and I still feel like living after a billion years, best bet is to upload the mind into as fast a hardware as possible. A matrioska brain using contemporary computing tech could theoretically have the power to simulate all human minds that have ever lived in their entirety every 5 seconds so just like, speed up my own perception within a virtual environment, along with hopefully some other people for real company. It is our right to get every last drop of consciousness out of physics
One major hurdle is that we do not know how much of thinking happens inside our brains and how much of it works like an antenna. Brains may receive external signals in ways we can not yet even detect, let alone measure or simulate. There is so much our current science considers "impossible", which we should still somehow take into account, before we could hope to simulate a full human experience. Before we dare to approach the impossible, we will remain stuck.
Considering that a few parts of the brain have the specific job of regulating the brain chemistry and relasing dopamine and seretonin accordingly, but those themselves also being in need of some other biochemicals for that... and then *also* figuring out how to implement/simulate those within our emulated brain programm on the computer... While it technically isn't necessary to know how every complex bit and detail of the brain works and operates, knowing more of that *would* help making the data collecting bit as well as the programm writing bit more efficent/less ressources intensive and by extension also the running the emulated brain part. That emulated brain itself would most likely end up running on fuzzy logic (which most neuronal networks and machine learning programs work with), which would need to be applied for each and every emulated neuron within that brain. That being said, I'd be surprised if we ended up running that emulated brain on a computer less complex than it itself. And that all isn't even considering the impacts of very limited/controlled/selected input data (sensory or otherwise) on a full emulated brain, cause i for sure wouldn't like the idea of kinda being within a void of not seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting or even smelling while the emulator of me runs, expect for the few inputs I'd end up receiving from the person running me. Living brains tend to hallucinate in the extended absence of sensory input after all.
One potential problem I see is that a big portion of our brains run and regulate thousands of automatic functions in our body that we don’t really have any conscious awareness of. A computer wouldn’t be designed to mechanically perform any of these bodily functions, so as soon as we turn on the program the Artificial Consciousness will start freaking out because it isn’t receiving any signals that the bodily functions are carrying out their instructions.
@@notealist "But sir! I don't know how to play chess! How would I-" **Immediately gets plugged with thousands of information about chess and how to play perfectly** "Oh. My.. God."
This idea of uploading your mind is popular but it also makes a big assumption that everyone seems to take for granted these days. That a human brain is the same as a computer and a mind the same as digital information. Everyone seems to think a brain is like a computer but the truth is that's only because this is the latest, best metaphor humanity has. Before computers, people likened the working of brains to clockwork. And before that, people thought memories stored in brains like water in jars. It's been said that, despite everything we know today, our understanding of our own brains is the equivalent of when medicine believed on the 4 humours. So even if we do get this technology we still might not be able to store a mind in a computer any more then we can use a wicker basket to store electricity. The storage medium may simply be incompatible. And even if it were possible, this is not a way to achieve immortality. What sci-fi often overlooks is the fact that this process couldn't suck you out of your body and place you inside a server. By scanning your brain you would just create a copy of yourself and that is what would live on in the computer.
Great video! Love the animation style of all your videos and the topics you tackle. Although I don't doubt that humanity will be able to upload a brain at some point, I doubt that it will coincide with uploading a mind. We use the terms interchangeably, but crowning the brain the seat of the mind has always been more of a (reasonable) best guess then an actual fact. I recommend reading Anil Seth's "Being You" on that matter.
If we can scan a human brain, another thing we might want to do is rebuild it. This could be the key to human colonization of other solar systems. The minds are stored for tens of thousands of years while the ship travels, and then thousands more while the planet is Terraformed. They then are reanimated in new bodies with memories and experiences of Earth.
I don't think brain emulation is actually a prerequisite for mind emulation. LLMs already do a fairly good job at mind emulation when writing fictional debates.
I suspect at least some kind of distributed architecture memory and compute near one another if not combined will be prefered. AI chips often have large cache and high performance memory on package. The architecture would likely be different than traditional computing. I expect imitation to be easier than full emulation. Simplified to run for high level not low level similarity. Directly interfacing neurons and computers offers some interesting options as well.
Problem: What are you going to link the sensory inputs to? If you don't handle that, the instant you start running the simulation the simulatee experiences total sensory depravation, which is usually impossible since we're always getting SOME sensory inputs, and would probably go EVEN MORE HORRIBLY than how regular sensory depravation tortures people. Also depending on how the brain interprets the lack of input, you may even experience phantom pain from every area that can normally experience pain (see: people who have lost limbs). We'd better have a good solution for this long before we actually start simulating even the simplest minds possibly self-aware enough to experience suffering (somewhere between ants/bees and some simpler reptiles).
The best approach would be to focus on digital twinning, with something complex enough to have testable behaviors, and memories. It's likely that with enough characterization, advanced temporal interference measurement methods will be accurate enough for most purposes. There would also be a lot of abstraction in the emulation, you don't need to calculate derivatives directly in modelled synapse phase interactions, if you can impose results from on-chip analog hardware accelerators.
The only bad thing I can think of is: We have no way to transfer the mind to a computer, rather we only know how to create a mimic of said mind. Though still neat… not exactly helpful if you the individual want to stay alive a lot longer… I wonder if a pathway to that idea can be made. At least a theory perhaps. -.-
You don't need to scan anything just make models based on story. That is describing your memories and associating them with sounds, images you have of memorized event (training neural networks on lets say your birthday party video or photos), thought patterns, habits, routines, intrests, character.. all you have to do is observe a person, collect data and use it to emulate it. Obviously it's not the same as obtaining data from each of your cell but it's way easier and doable with current technology. Algorithms aren't that difficult, it's basically lots of sensory data proccesing and mapping / associating / relating.. So learnig new things, varying initial models is easy. And have it's tendency based on initial data.
Great video. And it caused an idea to occur to me that emulating the behavior of neurons and synapses fundamentally doesn’t even make sense without also emulating the entire body, its microbiome, and a vast and detailed enough environment that doesn’t break down by something as simple as walking 100 feet. Basically you need to simulate all of reality to simulate a mind, because we are more deeply interconnected than just a brain isolated in a void. In the limit of a worm, this may actually be possible since its relevant environment is probably very simple. For a full healthy and happy human, I doubt it’s even possible. Consciousness seems to me like something profound that is futile to achieve in a machine, and maybe we should just study and appreciate our biological consciousness more for all that it may be.
A common misunderstanding regarding brain uploads is that your consciousness would go with it. However, uploading something merely creates a copy. The original substrate persists, and that is where you will remain.
Feels like this video was made for me! Can't wait to get it working by 2055! @Rational Animations please do one about aging also, the continues experience was not addressed in this but it was interesting!
There's one additional problem: emulating "peripherals". Any emulation of another computer system requires simulating hardware-to-hardware interactions that aren't there but were in the original -- think the Link Cable for the Gameboy, or the joysticks on an Xbox controller. This is comparatively easy when emulating one manufactured system on another, since it's possible to map peripheral connections onto similar hardware, but we will have no such easy parallels for the first fully simulated brain. It would be akin to sensory deprivation, which would likely cause the emulation to break down (since sensory deprivation drives people insane over time). While we might be able to address hearing and seeing with cameras and microphones, the sense of touch and the need for movement is a very different issue. Even if we upload these simulated brains into robotic bodies, we're going to have to contend with a host of psychological phenomenon that could foul the effort. Hunger, for example, is chiefly a biological imperative but also has very strong psychological roots. What do you do with a emulated brain that's developed a sudden craving for tacos? Or one that risks getting neurotic after not feeling the soothing cleanse of a hot shower for several months? If we create an emulated brain without memories, how do we address the infant mind's need for physical comfort (without which they can, in fact, die)? To accurately emulate the human brain on a computer, we will also have to figure out how to emulate the human body and a human-compatible environment, and at that point we've reached full-immersion VR akin to The Matrix. The original goal, and whatever we hoped to actually do with it, will be completely eclipsed by the secondary efforts needed to make it viable.
I agree that we'd need to simulate a virtual environment to make mind uploading worthwhile, but I don't know if it'd be harder than achieving uploading in the first place just by virtue of how utterly monumental a task it'd be to upload a human brain to begin with
It’s funny I know Anders Sandberg because he used to run a homebrew fan page for the game Mage the Ascension on the 90’s. He’s high quality in his fan projects for his RPG hobby but he is also a world class genius in the professional field in the sciences.
We hope this new tutorial will serve you at least as well as our previous one about how to take over the universe. You're welcome.
🟠 Patreon: www.patreon.com/rationalanimations
🔵 Channel membership: ua-cam.com/channels/gqt1RE0k0MIr0LoyJRy2lg.htmljoin
🟤 Ko-fi, for one-time and recurring support: ko-fi.com/rationalanimations
This emulation sounds like it might just be catastrophic because it’s simulating a brain… a person, but they aren’t getting any real stimuli. You’ll have to simulate a universe for them to live in too, or you doom them to insanity, if white torture results are anything to go by.
A viral vector penetrates neurons, and upon uncoating, generates a random DNA sequence which is likely to be unique to the uncoating event by virtue of its size. An additional, non-random sequence is added to characterize the type of cell that was penetrated. These sequences are incorporated into proviruses and actively transported to each synapse of the neuron via its axons. A non-random sequence is added to characterize the type of synapse a provirus arrives at.
The proviruses mature and release into the synaptic cleft as daughter particles; however, some are intentionally left bound to the cell membrane (as with a neuraminidase inhibitor) in case they get there first. When two daughter particles with dissimilar uncoating sequences and dissimilar synapse sequences meet, they fuse, ligate, and generate another random sequence for indexing purposes, and a final non-random sequence that indicates a successful completion.
In this state the daughter particles are able to unbind and chemically ordain themselves for excretion by the kidneys. Then the patient metaphorically pisses their brain into a little plastic cup.
Sequences are amplified by PCR using the success sequence as a primer. The sequences are read in a massively parallel fashion, but instead of 1-dimensional sequence overlap, an algorithm identifies individual neurons and their fully characterized relationships with others. This is possible because multiply infected cells will be represented by multiple unique uncoating sequences with identical connections.
With the help of a reference connectome (analogous to a reference genome sequence), which may take the form of a neural net itself, inferences are made to render the uploaded mind operational. Hopefully. Now plug that stinker in.
C. elegans would be a good proof of concept with demonstrated reproducibility, but I suspect modern sequencing and computation could take on a mouse. I guesstimate the human mind to be on the order of exabytes, so costly but perhaps possible. People might need to merge into a single entity for economic reasons, which raises all sorts of interesting questions.
But delivering a sufficient number of viral vectors without killing the host might pose a larger problem, as could elimination through urine. Maybe a head can be kept alive under anesthesia, with artificial respiration and circulation, until the brain is ready to be extracted and homogenized. **Hannibal licks spoon**
What do y'all think?
Oh great youtube stuck my comment into the mod queue because I edited it to fix something, and/or due to the number of links to sources contained within it
Let's try that again:
I hope my comment now has actual visibility and ain't stuck in the mod queue due to the links.
i'd just like to point out how phenomenal the soundtrack for this video is, huge props to the composers!
Epic Mountain! :D
@@smitchered oh i didn't even realize, i love epic mountain! been listening to them for years
For some reason you they only credit the music all the way down after the patron list. I have spoken with the manager.@@Deltexterity
It was so immersive I didn't even realize it was there
I can't help but hear Hotline Miami's soundtrack in this one. In fact, I'm currently watching the second half of the video with Hydrogen playing; and how strange it feels to have my brain find the idea of emulating a human brain and Hotline Miami perfectly making sense together.
It's also important to note that even with computational speed limits, we might not have to run the emulation in real time
Now that you mention it - it seems likely to me that the first whole brain emulation attempts will occur much slower than real time, slowly speeding up as parallelization and specialization improves until the brain emulation is running much faster than real time. Just imagining the first person spending an eternity in slow motion. Or maybe it would seem “normal”, because their perception would also be just as slow.
@@jmoney4695 it 100% WOULD feel normal to them
@@jmoney4695if the emulation would be slower than realtime, then everything would be sped-up to it, since the time between complete processes would be larger than the one of real brains, yet it would feel like nothing has changed. we would see them act in slow motion, and the emulation would perceive us as being sped-up. in fact, slowing the emulation time would make "time travel" towards the future realistically feasable (assuming the hardware won't break) as they could make 1000 years seem like a mere second to themselves.
@@ludicrouS_406The reverse is intriguing too, with more powerful hardware able to emulate a mind significantly faster than “real time”.
reminds me of marvin the paranoid android.
i imagine an emulation of a brain running so much faster than real time might suffer from something similar to marvin. imagine all of existence around you going hundreds of thousands or millions of times slower than it should. the time every task you could possibly perform takes pales in comparison to the endless expanses of time with nothing to do but wait for necessary feedback or a new goal. while conversing with an ordinary human, they would seem to pause for weeks between each response, months or years if they take time to think something through.
at 100,000x emulation speed, an 8 hour down time would feel like 91 years, with literally nothing to do but wait.
@@billiam6398 sounds hellish
One problem might be that we over estimate what the brain is responsible for, and neglect the fact that it interacts with a body which also sends and interprets signals.
One interesting example comes from pianists who are able to play a lot of notes compared to the limited bandwidth between the brain and hands, which suggests some form of co-learn compression, which would also have to be scanned / interpreted / emulated.
Replicas is some Keanu Reeves movie that's responsible for my becoming aware of this co-cognitive idea, if you haven't seen it I super super recommend it.
that's interesting, but paralyzed people exist and have rich interesting lived experiences, so clearly not having full knowledge of the body's system isn't esential to this
@@dayvancowboi9135 well of course, but if we're going to duplicate a brain and put it in a simulation, it's going to be jarred and will need some amount of physical therapy if there's any significant difference to its somatosensory experience.
Sean Carroll has a relevant podcast on Embodied Cognition.
It might turn out that makes it easier. Once one pianists finger memory has been captured that becomes a sub module for other pianists. Amateur piano players may notice an immediate improvement but won’t suddenly be masters since they would still be missing the nuances. Like giving a race car to a normal driver allows them to go faster but they still have to know when to break and accelerate to get the results
I think the Bobiverse series was a piece of science fiction that really drives home the fact that just *running* the emulation isn't enough to sustain a human mind. The task is made more complex by the fact that the brain requires at least some inputs at its own run speed - Putting a human in a dark, soundless box is considered not generally a fun time for most people. Much more so if they're divorced from even their own sense of touch, smell, taste, proprioception, thermoperception... Not having a body would fundamentally change how a human brain operates, and may require either fundamental architectural changes - Or the simpler solution, a simulated environment (and body) to replace those sensations sufficiently.
Yeah, game design may actually be a crucial step in this problem. Weird to think about.
It seems without feelings and hormones and etc., as you've noted, a mind would go insane.
Just "thinking" is only a part of what it means to be human.
Poor Henry...
@@michaelsbeverly Yes, exactly. It is critical to make a particular distinction here, of course - The distinction that we are SPECIFICALLY talking about biological/anatomical hunans, and minds derived thereof.
I firmly believe there are other possible kinds of intelligent minds, and presumably these would have different needs - Indeed, arguably a digitized human mind, even perfectly emulated, has distinctly different needs than a normal human, even if they stem from solving similar problems in the underlying structure.
I think one of the fundamental takeaways we *can* get from this, though, is that intelligence requires stimulation, in the same ways that an organism requires food. Plants can make their own food after a fashion, and perhaps some sapient beings could make their own required stimulation, but this ability is not guaranteed - Certainly not in humans. We have a duty to ensure that an emulated mind has all the stimulation, or tools to create stimulation, that it needs.
I suppose another way to put it is this - As far as humans go, their bodies are most certainly part of their mind, and removing the body effectively removes part of the mind. It is the same for the environment - It may sound strange, but your environment can similarly be considered part of your mind.
Thus, to emulate a mind, we need to emulate the whole mind - Which includes, if not necessarily *THE* body, at least *A* body. Ditto for the environment. It doesn't even have to be a physical environment, just an environment that provides similar levels of stimulation, something to latch onto and provide some mental grounding.
i was thinkin about this too!!! if a virtual brain woke up in a virtual naked body whose skin wasnt touching the air and the floor properly, (as in it was clipping thru the floor and the air was clipping inside the skin), it might feel so incredibly uncomfortable that the virtual brain would want to die!!!
which means either the environmental simulation has to be absolutely perfect??? or the virtual brain has to be deeply sedated???
@@AuntBibby It's a very interesting thing to think about, isn't it?
As a game designer, I can tell you that the sensations don't need to correspond 1 to 1 with what we would physically expect. They just need to be present with sufficient nuance.
I imagine that one way the eventuality you described might be resolved is as follows - The material of the floor is effectively a "ghost jello", and the sensation of "clipping" would present the body with a sensation as if that material was pressing in gently around the foot, or possibly non-violently permeating it. So it would sort of feel like swimming through wood, or concrete, or metal, or whichever floor surface you're on, except it also gives you stable purchase to stand upright.
Pain would actually be an unecessary/elective sensation, most likely, seeing as its purpose is to alert you to bodily damage that shouldn't be happening in a controlled simulation.
It would actually be more difficult to implement this kind of thing with the physical accuracy you're describing - As I've eluded to, this is more the realm of game design, where effective cost-saving shortcuts reign supreme. It would be critical to present a mind with a non-traumatic environment in the first iterations of these simulations - Any competent designer would deliberately exclude pain sensations until they could be safely tested and debugged.
I hope this soothes some of your fears! There's always the possibility of malpractice or negligence with this kind of thing, of course, but hopefully these kinds of discussions help make people aware of how this kind of thing should be thought about, and what kinds of questions to ask.
The TV show "Pantheon" is an excellent and criminally underrated series that explores the ethics of mind uploads.
clicked on this for sole purpose of mentioning this show, i just finished watching it. definitely worth a watch but you'll have to go out of your way to find it :/
@@lilithkiwiit sucks that it's not available on any streaming services
Its such a shame how little attention Pantheon received. Its such a great show
just wanted to say the same thing, what a beautifully written show
I just finished the 3rd episode and this popped up in my reccomendations
It's important to note that even if a brain isn't doing something that can be mapped to computation, computation can simply emulate the atoms the brain is made of.
That's obviously more computationally intense, but at a bare minimum, that's enough detail to emulate a brain. It may be possible to perfectly emulate a brain with less detail than that, but that is an upper bound.
Or just build a brain
@@NickV-ez4beactually I think your idea will be implemented sooner. If you scan a brain and make a copy with enough precision, you may as well make a new brain for someone
@@Puerco-Potter So then what you would need is: 1. A way to scan the original brain at the level of detail required. 2. Replicate it perfectly terms of neuron positions, connections, and active synapses. 3. A way to interact with (and more importantly keep alive) the replicated brain.
TBH, the 3rd step to me feels a lot more simple to accomplish. Might even be very reasonable with the technology we have today. Heck, if people are pursuing digitizing brains as a method to "live forever" or something, step 3 would extend their lifespans anyway, avoiding the complicated debacle until a later point.
As some people point out, there are a few ethical dilemmas beyond the scope of the idea you can replicate a human brain. I mean, how does that work with the concept of consciousness? Is it closer to a clone who is their own individual with shared memories, rather than the exact same person who is simultaneously alive and data?
But the whole concept of lifespan extension is an ethical dilemma. Living creatures aren't designed to live forever. They're designed to grow up, live, replicate, and die. Cutting death out of the process negates any kind of reason or rationale for any of the other steps. Why replicate if nobody dies? Why grow any more as a person when your capacity as a human is no longer needed? You could slap digitized brains into a satellite and let them live a meaningless existence as data floating around the sun until it explodes or the components degrade. Adding on arbitrary limitations might work of offset some of that, but you're inevitably going to get people who want to bypass that limit. What if someone were to be strapped into that previous satellite and forced to endure some kind of digital torture until the end of time? The worst we have on Earth is a life sentence, but what does that mean when you could casually punish someone forever? Living forever might look like some kind of boon to the ambitious, especially if they want to live forever with a purpose. However, it can also be one of the greatest punishments we could ever conceive.
Sorry to go on a bit of a rant there. Medical ethics is one of the most important ethical fields we have left, and I've been finding lately that people are far too willing to toss it aside in the pursuit of some gilded future. Often times, we only see the true ugliness of ideas only after we implement them...
not necessarily. It's possible that subatomic particles play a part, and that even something like virtual particles will have a tiny but noticable effect.
@nodrance as our knowledge of quantum mechanics increase, I see a lot of neuroscientists actually starting to speculate the role of of elementary particles in the brain. Also, we don't know to what extention the processes are random or controlled, so we might just be utilizing macro-structures as basic processing units, but it might very well be the case, as mentioned in the video, that even atomic structures might be responsible for controlled determined deliberate computation. That would make what we think we know about neuroscience look like kids play
8:05 all these big numbers and huge sweeping predictions and the most jarring moment in the video still manages to be the phrase "twenty-oh-eight"
This topic is explored beautifully in the fantastic show Pantheon which just wrapped up. It is relatively unknown and highly underrated.
All the topics in this video and many more are explored in depth through a rich and complex story. Furthermore, It is rare for me to give such high praise to a piece of media, but Pantheon is one of the greatest Sci-Fi shows ever made. I want to get the word out, so people finally discover this hidden gem.
The amount of philosophical content that a channel can squeeze out of just the first season of Phanteon is so enormous it almost feels shocking somone didnt do it already
I'll check Pantheon out. You remind me of how I sound when I describe The Talos Principle (2014, philosophical puzzle game). There's a Talos Principle 2 game that just released, but I haven't played it yet.
@@tintrupeljak3147 And yet, no one seems to be covering it. The videos about Pantheon have a few thousand views at most. Which is criminal for such a great show.
Yeah, Pantheon combines so many Sci-Fi, futurism, and philosophical ideas while
1). Telling an amazing story
2). Exploring those concepts in depth
3). Having a satisfying conclusion (which many animated shows don’t get nowadays)
Unfortunately the big shots at AMC pulled the seasons off any streaming service and it is only accessible now through Amazon prime in Australia and New Zealand.
Yar har, there still be ways to watch it though.
@@Paraselene_TaoIf it's hard to find in your country... Yar har fiddle dee dee
This channel goes from strength to strength. The topic range is broad and covers topics I would not be interested in. However, they turn out to be some of the most interesting and enjoyable uploads. Thanks to everyone involved for your tireless work.
“From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh…”
Ngl though if I could make sure that it was truly me in the machine and not a clone, I would be all for this
Realistically an emulated version of you would be more your child then your clone
There's not much difference for the most part. All or most transfers are copies. The question is wether you destroy the original. The copy would not know the difference. FOr a good understanding on how this may work, I recommend the horror game SOMA.
Even if it was just a clone I'd still go through with it
@@gabrote42 It’s a very interesting concept, I think another comment had the right idea to slowly phase out neurons for digital copies as a way to transfer a consciousness, but as of now it’s just speculation whether or not it is achievable.
@@Raven-ph4uh Ship of theseus argument. I'd say it is not any different. Especially with how the brain handles losing half the neurons in itself. SOMA explains it better tho
Glad to have my daily dose of existential dread thanks to man-made horrors beyond my comprehension delivered in such a nice package!
ua-cam.com/video/q6wOu02WoIk/v-deo.htmlsi=Pp-CC5Cg2HYFS-Da
What is existential dread inducing on this video? Doesn't seem very dreadful to me.
@@nicoruppert4207would you like to wake up tomorrow as a brain in a jar?
This is great, actually.
Would “flipping the switch” end up killing the biological brain?
The fact that we are getting closer to the science fiction goal of digitizing a human brain is both fascinating and deeply unsettling.
The rate of uploads is going up! It's also very gratifying to see I video I know will be high quality, but is also under a thousand views because it just came out.
Also, I'll take whatever I can get, if supercharging vague neuralink/BMI/mind upload tech is a way to get through alignment, yes please.
That cute little puppy character keeps making me watch the videos. They are so adorable
Shout-out to Epic Mountain! They make the Kurzgesagt music as well! I especially liked whatever bagpipe sounds were stuck into this one.
You should maybe put the Epic Mountain credit above the patron list instead of below? Given these are entirely new songs made from scratch for this video specifically, that would seem natural to me.
While Epic Mountain did excellent work on this video, Rational Animations almost certainly commissioned them for it, and so should be able to credit how they wish (if credit wasn't specified in the commission contract). If Epic Mountain had collaborated for free, I would agree with you.
This is an old music track of theirs, though. Epic Mountain did not make it just for Rational Animation.
I have to say props to the animation team. The narrator's expressions are so lively and cute it creates a wonderful contrast with the serious subject matter. This goes for the recent Genie episode as well. The animation has always been good, but these two episodes have been really standout!
The production quality here is on a whole other level. The writing too, just wow
"uploaded 1 minute ago" never clicked so fast in my life.
If y'all are into the idea of uploaded intelligence I recommend this show called Pantheon, it's animated, has Paul dano, and is super philosophical and cool. My favorite show in the past couple years
I am a huge fan of your topics, animations, style, and choice of video avatars! Keep up the excellent work!
I may sorely miss standalone Robert Miles videos, but this is pretty cool. Also, been doing some huge Isaac Arthur binges so this is great
we all love the animation, and how well the concept is explained. But i also wanted to point out the lovely sound design! Love all the little beeps and boops
Its wild how much computation happens with the brain compared to how little "power" we use. Probably just shows how much work their is to improve - even looking at current ANN's our brains are WAY more energy effecient. meaning there must be some piece to the puzzle we are missing.
I am left to suspect that what we may "need" may actually be somewhat less than a neuron-level emulation, but rather a way to mimic the general propagation of signals at a moderately high resolution.
But, yeah, we may also need something different than current neural nets (which are effectively glorified dot-products with a final non-linear step glued on, such as ReLU or similar).
Say, for example, likely, one will also need mechanisms to dynamically adapt neuron weights and to "DC bias" the inputs (say, having the neuron adapt each "synapse", say, so that the average DC-biased input is around 0, and the weights such that the normalized inverse-weight range is around -0.67 to +0.67; independently of the weight which goes towards the output). Then one can have a sort of running "inhibitory state" that flows backwards through the net as a sort of mimic of the effects of back-propagation, along with a "running average" of its current activation state (and incrementally adjusting the weights as it goes; so the inhibitory state flows more strongly towards neurons with a higher activation state; with inhibitory signals also being generated as neurons go outside a range of, say, -1.0 to +1.0).
In some small-scale experiments in my case, this sort of thing seems promising, but is more computationally expensive than the more traditional strategies (and doesn't depend as much on an externally imposed "training algorithm"). Well, and admittedly I have tended more towards a "signed square root" transfer function (rather than ReLU or similar).
There may be some other parts needed as well, I don't know.
But, in any case, I am still pretty far from anything "actually useful" here...
Note, have mostly done experiments with custom code in C, not using any mainstream NN libraries (mostly in the form of small one-off experiments).
its because
1. brains only have to perform computation when a neuron spikes/fires, while anns process the entire brain at once. additionally, brains have short term memory built in, while anns are one-directional and so only have access to long term memory from training each time theyre run (because of this they will perform a lot of waste-full calculations, if theyre trying to solve a problem that requires thinking ahead they will have to re-come up with the same plan over and over). SNNs solve both these problems because they actually mimic the way that brains work on a neuron to neuron level, and as a result are dramatically more efficient than ANNs (though theyre less predictable and harder to train)
2. brains are purpose built, the software has been abstracted to the point where it basically is the hardware, rather than being emulated on something else
I was imagining the ethics of this process. We're making a virtual, wholly-functioning brain, and we will be doing this a lot: perhaps billions or more of times. Each time we turn these v-brains on, we're making a potentially conscious, virtual organism. Maybe we can speed up the rate of their life (similar to how we can speed up video games). Maybe it would be too taxing on our resources to let them live forever, so we let them live for a hundred or so years in their virtual yet very realistic universe.
As I was writing this, it became clear that I could be talking about myself or ourselves. We could simulate brains in a virtual but very realistic world. Spooky.
Anyhow, the ethics of this whole thing is strange because we would be making billions or more of virtual lives that live: suffer, pleasure, boring, exciting, wonderful, and terrible.
What's more, we could be testing the v-brain for something particular. Coming back to me or us being simulated v-brains: we could have already served our purpose, or this right now is our purpose, or maybe we haven't reached the point of our purpose yet. Yet another situation: perhaps our purpose is plural or manifold: it could overtime somehow overlap with itself.
This whole thing is really bothering me in some existential manner.
If I were a v-brain, then I have to say thanks for making me. You (the thing that simulated me) already know that I kind of hate living, but I also enjoy living. Thanks for giving me a life-dream that was okay. It hasn't been too terrible of a life-dream. Blue from the Cowboy Bebop OST is playing in my head, but you already know that, don't you. 😁 I'll see you later, Space Cowboy.
Yeah, AI via simulating an entire brain is a weird but interesting method, and you could make it smarter by speeding up the calculations or simulating a larger brain.
They probably don't know that, reading consciousness may (or may not) be harder than making the entire brain.
My thoughts exactly!!! Now I don't have to write them!
Look up the short story “Lena” by qntm for a rather horrifying perspective on running multiple copies of one emulated brain.
If you would like to be immersed deeper in this idea, there is a game called "Soma" about such poor simulated brain
I feel like with time this channel is becoming more and more unhinged in like a psychedelic sense that I like ❤️
If you want to digitize a human brain "Ethically", you have to do it through what I've pet-named the "Theseus Method".
Using the Ship of Theseus Paradox: Gradual, segmented replacement of the human brain will maintain the illusion of a single consciousness, instead of creating a duplicate and destroying the original.
This will require a communication between the brain and the device you're being uploaded to, along with the ability to; remove, replace and emulate the parts of the brain that are gradually being removed but this also removes the moral dilemma of "I'm just making a copy" since the illusion of continuum is unbroken.
Exactly! Such technology is way beyond brain scanning, but maybe with life extension and ASI running the show, we could live to see the day where such a thing is possible.
Look up old man's war. Its a scifi book that used this exact method to upload people's minds. Fun book too.
This is probably the only ethical way to do this. Otherwise you're just imposing a lifetime of memories on a completely new individual.
but why? like seriously what is the difference unless you believe in a soul/stream of consciousness (which both require something metaphysical)?
@@ilrisotter if it has your exact brain structure then how is it a new individual (unless, again, you believe- without evidence- in a soul)?
"Time to flip the switch on and say hi to a new kind of human."
INCOHERENT UNEARTHLY SCREAMS from PC speakers.
Im terrified that if we get this wrong, we’re gonna bring into existence, a sentient, but corrupted being, that actually has feelings and senses, and would be perpetually trapped in some sort of torture chamber. Imagine that but add that it can be copy and pasted, a person would be able to producing mass genocide, on a click of a button
Lol
The animations have gotten so fluid and detailed, incredible work!
Recently found out your channel. Your animations and storytelliing are in a league of their own. Happy to be a part of your subscribers keep it up!
Thank you!!! Keep trying to explain this to people but it's hard to lay it all down in casual conversations ❤
I just came here because I rewatched your epic conway's game of life video, as I'm currently tasked with implementing conway' s game of life in form of a C command line tool.
I saw your updated Description about how you started creating content gain and I have to say youre doing really good!
Kurzgesagt-style videos about Tech topics? It doesnt get any better than this! Earned my sub in half a minute
That's the reason why I started studying bioengineering, now that I'm close to get the degree I seek other interests, but the fascination with this topic still remains.
Interesting content as always! But I would also like to point out, that the animations keep getting better and better each time. Kudos to the animator/s!
you forgot the biggest barrier, legal issues
And burocracy
Two diffrent but astonishingly enormous problems
I'm pretty sure if China is attempting to do this, the US would greenlight the research immediately knowing that it would compete with them. 😂
Training an AI to "copy" the personality of someone seems more achievable than mapping a brain and running the code you get out of it. It seems such a dangerous and weird technology though. The show "upload" is a good example of this and yet, it doesnt explore the terrible possibility of having a dictator copying himself and just living forever this way. Right now, life allows us to hope that one day that dictator will be dead and things might change. What if they never die ?
Wow, that sounds truly fascinating
I sure wonder how the elite class will use it to gain more power over everyone else
I can't wait for the inevitable _"You wouldn't download someone's mother"_ anti-Piracy PSA's. 😂
I’m so glad I found this channel early on. I love the variety of content, its presentation, and especially the cute doggos. Thanks for the hard work, and keep it up!
I love this channel and every backround is a masterpiece
Alternarive approach:
1. Scan (same first step)
2. Represent your brain's history (but not necessarily all at once)
3. Program stem cells to develop in a similar way as you did, potentially including memories
For the next decade or so, it'd be impressive even just to guide the stem cells to mimic your personality without major unintended defects, but that would basically be having a kid in a less efficient way. If we get true clones with memories via brain decoding and cellular encoding, you could live forever without a memory lapse any longer than a week (if you always go to weekly checkups).
Pro: Immortals thinking more long-term because of centuries of experience and inability to push burdens to future generations
Con: If we ALL become immortal, have kids, and continue living on Earth; land disputes will get infinitely worse unless we sever one of the 3 values above
I mean, if we're immortal by that point, may as well move to space, right?
I would use that to make something that gives you the music you'd like the most.
These videos are so strategically excellent and underrated! Also given the animation and commentary, they are easy to understand. Great job here Rational Animations
I don't know how you two feel about this, but I'm praying for y'all. Loss is just...so very hard. I'm sorry for your loss.
The nuance and detail you all bring to this is excellent. Black belt, top notch. You covered my every caveat, and I have a lot of them on this subject. You all are masters of both depth and concision.
The third step is by far the easiest. At the most basic level, it's just a matter of scale. Even if it means slowing down, since it takes longer for one side to communicate with the other (unless the architecture changes, ex. light based computing), you can always build a bigger computer with things like a Matryoshka Brain being an extreme but realistic example.
Step two is harder but depends a lot on the information gathered in step one, which I think will be the hardest step.
All I know for sure is, you couldn't pay me enough to be the first person to get their brain scanned. "Well, the scan is complete, the data compiled, and we're ready to start the simulation. Do you want to talk to your digital self?"
"Sure," they nod looking nervous but excited.
The simulation starts and horrific screams blare out of the speakers. Everyone is frozen in fear. The screams continue for a few seconds, then silence.
Watching Pantheon S2 and I'm really glad this video was recommended, feels good to have some real world info to contextualise the sci-fi.
This was so incredibly well made. Deserves millions of views and at least that many likes!
"Why is the simulated human screaming?"
"Did anyone give it sensory input?"
"... oops"
"I CAN'T BREATHE, I CAN'T TOUCH, I CAN'T SMELL, WHAT THE F**K IS GOING ON, SOMEONE HELP ME"
"God damn it Jarrett! I knew we should have given her a virtual environment to be in!"
The key thing that I take from this, that people seem to have missed, is that we are likely to have low resolution uploads long before we can do anything that might be called a "true", lossless, upload. This obviously raises huge ethical issues.
I was watching Pantheon season 2 yesterday and this video came in the perfect time for me
the worst thing about this is that at the moment we can't prove whether we will be in the simulation ourselves, or only our clone.
Bravo, team! Great work!
You guys just keep adapting my favorite papers
I feel like leaving out consciousness is a bit of a mistake? Why on earth would you want to scan your brain? For digital/robotic clones?
I’m much more interested in how we would go about this if we wanted to keep our continuity/consciousness intact. How do we upload a consciousness without breaking it?
slow brain modifactions where we slowly replace parts of the brain with synthetics over the course of multiple surgeries
I was thinking more along the lines of slowly converting to a mechanical brain so I can still be I instead of having a clone of me lol
This is a very interesting video! Another aspect on this subject I'd like to see is more behind the ethics of creating a simulated human brain; Are they actually human? If so do they get all the same rights as a biological human? Can we just turn them off? Is it morally acceptable to even attempt this in the first place?
I think this would make a fantastic video that would fit right in on your channel!
and with no eyes and no nervous system and none of the inputs that the network normally has it does nothing. grats. now you have to emulate an entire human body.
How to convert a mind without the ship of theseus problem:
Given: Brain cells die all the time, and you are still the same person until too many die.
Step 1: Record section of brain cells.
Step 2: Create synthetic version with the same inputs and outputs, that behaves the same.
Step 3: Replace the brain cells with the synthetic machine
Step 4: Repeat until the entire brain is robotic.
This works because large amounts of brain cells can just die and you are still the same person, so replacing those dead brain cells with a copy that functions nearly identically would be better.
After replacing the whole brain, the person may act differently, but it is no different than the natural changing of personality. Extend the time between replacements, and decrease the amount of brain cells per replacement, until you feel OK philosophically.
We have a lot of important neurons in the spinal cord, in the belly, and at other places in the body. To emulate the full human experience, you need to emulate the body as well.
You won’t get the sense of scent or taste, but the other senses may be doable. It is important that the brain emulation is well connected to it’s environment for it to function, or you need a very rich environment simulation as well.
But my biggest question is: if we can upload our mind, we keeping it brain like ? If we can become a machine with endless possibilities, why stay human ? 😄
A seamless transfer of consciousness require neurons to be gradually replaced by artificial ones to maintain continuity otherwise we run into the Star Trek Transporter Problem.
Yeah
Why, the you that you were 10 mS ago is dead and the you that you are in 10mS will be a completely different you even is it gets cranking on a different computer. The transporter problem is siperstition.
Only relevant philosophically, I think, which isn't the approach of this video. Ship of Theseus is what you mean? Is that essentially the same thing as the Star Trek Transporter Problem?
@@smitchered Yes and no, as near as I can tell. Trek Transport is pretty much the same as Ship of Theseus, but done all at once instead of over time, and using the original boards to measure out copies with.
@@smitchered It's not the ship of Theseus problem, it's the Bill's laptop problem. Replace the screen, same computer. Replace the keyboard, same computer who cares if the keys are red now. new ram chips, works the same, same computer. Replace the hard drive, whoops. Image the hard disk to the new drive, same computer again. Image the disk to a virtual machine, works the same, Same computer. It's the Church Turing thesis.
One more thing to note about "Computer Power" is that Moore's law is closing in on the "we can't make transistors any smaller," however quantum computing might be an even more efficient method once that technology evolves.
Although I will note that quantum computing as a successor to digital computer is very theoretical.
running the emulated brain as a program might result in some issues regarding the senses. since the brain has neurons that work directly with sensory organs such as the ears, the nose, the eyes, the rest of the nervous system, etc, it would be necessary to provide the emulated brain those organs (maybe a simulated version of them), or manage to find a way to cut those neurons off from the model of the brain, which would most definitely lead to complications (not to mention that by doing so you'd be cutting any connections to the outside world for the brain, therefore not being able to really tell if the emulation even works properly in the first place)
Pantheon just wrapped up so I'm primed for this
The book "walkaway" does a fantastic job or showing what happens next (maybe, it IS a sci Fi novel after all
Pantheon and the Bobiverse books brought me here. UI is very intriguing. I do wonder if quantum effects have influence over neurons and other such systems. If so emulation just got infinitely more complicated.
I personally think we should consider what I'd be like to exist as a brain simulation. Without constant information about senses, bodily position, and status, how would a brain react. It's almost as if being in a sensory deprivation tank but on a more absolute level, we should consider the emotional and psychological effects of running a brain for long periods of time in this state or the ethics of even having a digital copy of someone that can easily be duplicated, destroyed, altered without consent, or subjected to experimentation.
If you want to dive into the ethical implications of this kind technology through a fictional lens, I can’t recommend the show “Pantheon” enough. It’s gotta be one of my favorite pieces of media to release in the last decade.
I'm currently pursuing CSE with Specialization in AI and Machine learning while also doing another Bsc bachelor in Data Science.I'm still a teen so I've much to learn but Hopefully I'll be part of such revolutionary projects.
The findings of longevity is a better shot at increasing your lifespan.
It’s also very important to figure out how to stimulate the whole brain emulation (WBE) in such a way that the individual doesn’t go insane. The exact requirements are unclear, but I imagine a simulated body that feels like it’s breathing is absolutely required. Sight and hearing would be very important as well and at least one should be included from the beginning.
o.o
Just binged Pantheon and had to look intontge science of it, live the video!
6:36 That's super cool that we've caught up to a human brain!
4:11 i wonder if the recent fly brain map is like a first step in this process.
Technically we only need to simulate the prefrontal cortex plus a few other key areas of the brain, not the parts responsible for operating and maintaining the human body, but it's good to take the high estimate when gaging the mountain we're attempting to climb. Nonetheless, I am so glad the chance for immortality exists. Just a chance, but a critical one
@Also_sprach_Zarathustra. Oh I've read it, big classic sci fi fan. If time travel, higher dimensions, entropy reversal, etc are all impossible, and I still feel like living after a billion years, best bet is to upload the mind into as fast a hardware as possible. A matrioska brain using contemporary computing tech could theoretically have the power to simulate all human minds that have ever lived in their entirety every 5 seconds so just like, speed up my own perception within a virtual environment, along with hopefully some other people for real company. It is our right to get every last drop of consciousness out of physics
Not for us. The immortality will be for the digital copies.
One major hurdle is that we do not know how much of thinking happens inside our brains and how much of it works like an antenna. Brains may receive external signals in ways we can not yet even detect, let alone measure or simulate. There is so much our current science considers "impossible", which we should still somehow take into account, before we could hope to simulate a full human experience. Before we dare to approach the impossible, we will remain stuck.
Considering that a few parts of the brain have the specific job of regulating the brain chemistry and relasing dopamine and seretonin accordingly, but those themselves also being in need of some other biochemicals for that... and then *also* figuring out how to implement/simulate those within our emulated brain programm on the computer...
While it technically isn't necessary to know how every complex bit and detail of the brain works and operates, knowing more of that *would* help making the data collecting bit as well as the programm writing bit more efficent/less ressources intensive and by extension also the running the emulated brain part. That emulated brain itself would most likely end up running on fuzzy logic (which most neuronal networks and machine learning programs work with), which would need to be applied for each and every emulated neuron within that brain.
That being said, I'd be surprised if we ended up running that emulated brain on a computer less complex than it itself.
And that all isn't even considering the impacts of very limited/controlled/selected input data (sensory or otherwise) on a full emulated brain, cause i for sure wouldn't like the idea of kinda being within a void of not seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting or even smelling while the emulator of me runs, expect for the few inputs I'd end up receiving from the person running me.
Living brains tend to hallucinate in the extended absence of sensory input after all.
One potential problem I see is that a big portion of our brains run and regulate thousands of automatic functions in our body that we don’t really have any conscious awareness of. A computer wouldn’t be designed to mechanically perform any of these bodily functions, so as soon as we turn on the program the Artificial Consciousness will start freaking out because it isn’t receiving any signals that the bodily functions are carrying out their instructions.
"Where im i? OH GOD I DONT FEEL MY LIMBS WHERE IS MY NOSE AND I CANT SEE NOTHING,WHAT MERCIFUL GOD WOULD DO THIS"
your sole purpose is to compete with competitive chess players
now fight
@@notealist
"But sir! I don't know how to play chess! How would I-"
**Immediately gets plugged with thousands of information about chess and how to play perfectly**
"Oh. My.. God."
My body is trying to kill me... Of course I want to upload my mind. XD
This idea of uploading your mind is popular but it also makes a big assumption that everyone seems to take for granted these days.
That a human brain is the same as a computer and a mind the same as digital information.
Everyone seems to think a brain is like a computer but the truth is that's only because this is the latest, best metaphor humanity has. Before computers, people likened the working of brains to clockwork. And before that, people thought memories stored in brains like water in jars. It's been said that, despite everything we know today, our understanding of our own brains is the equivalent of when medicine believed on the 4 humours. So even if we do get this technology we still might not be able to store a mind in a computer any more then we can use a wicker basket to store electricity. The storage medium may simply be incompatible.
And even if it were possible, this is not a way to achieve immortality. What sci-fi often overlooks is the fact that this process couldn't suck you out of your body and place you inside a server. By scanning your brain you would just create a copy of yourself and that is what would live on in the computer.
Great video! Love the animation style of all your videos and the topics you tackle. Although I don't doubt that humanity will be able to upload a brain at some point, I doubt that it will coincide with uploading a mind. We use the terms interchangeably, but crowning the brain the seat of the mind has always been more of a (reasonable) best guess then an actual fact. I recommend reading Anil Seth's "Being You" on that matter.
If we can scan a human brain, another thing we might want to do is rebuild it. This could be the key to human colonization of other solar systems. The minds are stored for tens of thousands of years while the ship travels, and then thousands more while the planet is Terraformed. They then are reanimated in new bodies with memories and experiences of Earth.
I don't think brain emulation is actually a prerequisite for mind emulation. LLMs already do a fairly good job at mind emulation when writing fictional debates.
Every programer ever:how hard could it be?
Totally going to take an afternoon or 2 right?
I suspect at least some kind of distributed architecture memory and compute near one another if not combined will be prefered. AI chips often have large cache and high performance memory on package. The architecture would likely be different than traditional computing.
I expect imitation to be easier than full emulation. Simplified to run for high level not low level similarity. Directly interfacing neurons and computers offers some interesting options as well.
Found you channel today, Good video!
Problem: What are you going to link the sensory inputs to? If you don't handle that, the instant you start running the simulation the simulatee experiences total sensory depravation, which is usually impossible since we're always getting SOME sensory inputs, and would probably go EVEN MORE HORRIBLY than how regular sensory depravation tortures people. Also depending on how the brain interprets the lack of input, you may even experience phantom pain from every area that can normally experience pain (see: people who have lost limbs). We'd better have a good solution for this long before we actually start simulating even the simplest minds possibly self-aware enough to experience suffering (somewhere between ants/bees and some simpler reptiles).
link them to the sensory neurons
The best approach would be to focus on digital twinning, with something complex enough to have testable behaviors, and memories. It's likely that with enough characterization, advanced temporal interference measurement methods will be accurate enough for most purposes. There would also be a lot of abstraction in the emulation, you don't need to calculate derivatives directly in modelled synapse phase interactions, if you can impose results from on-chip analog hardware accelerators.
This channel is like sci fi they just say random things but the difference between is that this is actuacly real sci fi is not yet.
The only bad thing I can think of is: We have no way to transfer the mind to a computer, rather we only know how to create a mimic of said mind. Though still neat… not exactly helpful if you the individual want to stay alive a lot longer… I wonder if a pathway to that idea can be made. At least a theory perhaps. -.-
You don't need to scan anything just make models based on story. That is describing your memories and associating them with sounds, images you have of memorized event (training neural networks on lets say your birthday party video or photos), thought patterns, habits, routines, intrests, character.. all you have to do is observe a person, collect data and use it to emulate it.
Obviously it's not the same as obtaining data from each of your cell but it's way easier and doable with current technology. Algorithms aren't that difficult, it's basically lots of sensory data proccesing and mapping / associating / relating..
So learnig new things, varying initial models is easy. And have it's tendency based on initial data.
God, can’t wait to get a little worm that can be considered alive on my computer.
these animations are so cute :3
Great video. And it caused an idea to occur to me that emulating the behavior of neurons and synapses fundamentally doesn’t even make sense without also emulating the entire body, its microbiome, and a vast and detailed enough environment that doesn’t break down by something as simple as walking 100 feet. Basically you need to simulate all of reality to simulate a mind, because we are more deeply interconnected than just a brain isolated in a void. In the limit of a worm, this may actually be possible since its relevant environment is probably very simple. For a full healthy and happy human, I doubt it’s even possible. Consciousness seems to me like something profound that is futile to achieve in a machine, and maybe we should just study and appreciate our biological consciousness more for all that it may be.
A common misunderstanding regarding brain uploads is that your consciousness would go with it.
However, uploading something merely creates a copy. The original substrate persists, and that is where you will remain.
Feels like this video was made for me! Can't wait to get it working by 2055! @Rational Animations please do one about aging
also, the continues experience was not addressed in this but it was interesting!
What most don't understand is that you would still be dead relative to yourself. Its the copy that will live forever
There's one additional problem: emulating "peripherals". Any emulation of another computer system requires simulating hardware-to-hardware interactions that aren't there but were in the original -- think the Link Cable for the Gameboy, or the joysticks on an Xbox controller. This is comparatively easy when emulating one manufactured system on another, since it's possible to map peripheral connections onto similar hardware, but we will have no such easy parallels for the first fully simulated brain. It would be akin to sensory deprivation, which would likely cause the emulation to break down (since sensory deprivation drives people insane over time). While we might be able to address hearing and seeing with cameras and microphones, the sense of touch and the need for movement is a very different issue. Even if we upload these simulated brains into robotic bodies, we're going to have to contend with a host of psychological phenomenon that could foul the effort. Hunger, for example, is chiefly a biological imperative but also has very strong psychological roots. What do you do with a emulated brain that's developed a sudden craving for tacos? Or one that risks getting neurotic after not feeling the soothing cleanse of a hot shower for several months? If we create an emulated brain without memories, how do we address the infant mind's need for physical comfort (without which they can, in fact, die)?
To accurately emulate the human brain on a computer, we will also have to figure out how to emulate the human body and a human-compatible environment, and at that point we've reached full-immersion VR akin to The Matrix. The original goal, and whatever we hoped to actually do with it, will be completely eclipsed by the secondary efforts needed to make it viable.
I agree that we'd need to simulate a virtual environment to make mind uploading worthwhile, but I don't know if it'd be harder than achieving uploading in the first place just by virtue of how utterly monumental a task it'd be to upload a human brain to begin with
It’s funny I know Anders Sandberg because he used to run a homebrew fan page for the game Mage the Ascension on the 90’s. He’s high quality in his fan projects for his RPG hobby but he is also a world class genius in the professional field in the sciences.