Yeah except it involves actual progress not gimmicks and publicity stunts without much substance to them at mediocre universities...
Neuralink
- Thread starter D3K
- Start date
Yeah except it involves actual progress not gimmicks and publicity stunts without much substance to them at mediocre universities...
The thing that bugs me about that concept is that a copy isn't you, it's another instance of you but a separate concious and sentient being that is starts out very much like you and just shares your memories and experiences up till the point it is created... if you can create a copy then you can both co-exist in theory and that copy is sort of like an identical twin albeit one with all your memories and born at your current age... which would be a bit of a a head **** for it initially to come into this world as a conscious entity with a natural born human's memories knowing that it is essentially a copy.
That someone else can be brought into existence with your memories up to some certain point in your life and your same personality and abilities solves nothing for you personally.
It can perhaps benefit other people - could work as a coping mechanism for rich parents in some dubious future should they regularly back up their childs memories... lose a child, well recreate an exact copy of that child with all their memories... it's not the same child, it's a twin+ but..... if they can get past that then it's as good as from their perspective. In fact if the child isn't even aware it is a copy then...
Actually being able to sustain your instance of you is really the goal that some people seeking to prolong life are aiming for and a copy isn't it IMO. I mean in theory if you could get some sort of implant to interact and become a part of you then perhaps that is a (very early and crude) step along that path... in theory if you can expand your current brain by augmentation and steadily replace parts of it while maintaining the current instance of you... well that's where you perhaps get to prolong your existence in some form.
Rock on!
To this day when I think of watching Start Treak (all those years ago when it was good), my present-day self is horrified by the idea that whenever they used a transporter they essentially suicided at point A and created a clone at point B.
And there are long-winded fan explanations as to why this isn't the case - BUT - there is at least one episode where the point B person was created and the point A person wasn't destroyed. Ergo, transport via ST transporters is cloning. And therefore also suicide!
The fact that in the normal course of events the person at A is destroyed does not matter. The simple fact is, with that technology they can create a person at B *without* destruction at A. Ergo, destruction at A is optional. Ergo cloning.
I keep revisiting this every so often, as it's an interesting problem.
Me? I sure as hell wouldn't be using a transporter
Maybe in ST transporters! Universal laws allow wormholes to exist, so what if a transporter was created that could open a wormhole from A to B and that is simply how they worked? No suicide then 
Or something like that.
Necessary, not forced. It cannot be a forced thing if it's our only option for the future of our species. There are many things humankind will never ever accomplish without augmenting with technology. The AI/technological singularity is going to be around the mid 2030s, the physical machine singularity is more distant in the future, and that's the era Musk wants to be ahead of the curve in. If future AI sees that humans are already augmented then it would (could?) logically deduce that actually those meat bags aren't just bags of meat and are capable of useful /stuff/.and be less likely to wipe us out as an inferior species who are simply using up the planet's valuable resources.
Or something like that.
It's the Star Trek transporter argument I think.
The early movies had Kirk refusing to use transporters on the basis they were... But if we're to argue the sentiment beyond that?
I actually do think that a person essentially 'dies' once they're transported elsewhere.
There's an episode of TNG where Riker has a copy, the poor bugger has been left on some planet for decades. I find that very interesting.
A person exists until they don't.
That's awfully specific
There are plenty of well-respected academics who view the "singularity" as pure fiction. I'm not well-respected, or an academic, but I also believe it to be total fantasy
It tends to be tech types who believe in it.
As in AI being so realistic that a human being talking to one over the phone or internet won't be able to tell they are speaking to a virtual machine?
Google are a good portion of the way there for starters. Last year they demonstrated an assistant feature in the USA that was able to make reservations at salons etc over the phone and the human on the other end was none the wiser. The advances made in AI in the last 5 years alone has been quite remarkable and the technological singularity has always been penned to be around 2035 considering the usual speed of technology improvement/Moore's law etc.Mid 2030s seems a fair timeframe when you look at how fast things are moving every 18 months now.
Google are a good portion of the way there for starters. Last year they demonstrated an assistant feature in the USA that was able to make reservations at salons etc over the phone and the human on the other end was none the wiser. The advances made in AI in the last 5 years alone has been quite remarkable and the technological singularity has always been penned to be around 2035 considering the usual speed of technology improvement/Moore's law etc.Mid 2030s seems a fair timeframe when you look at how fast things are moving every 18 months now.
To this day when I think of watching Start Treak (all those years ago when it was good), my present-day self is horrified by the idea that whenever they used a transporter they essentially suicided at point A and created a clone at point B.
[...]
I keep revisiting this every so often, as it's an interesting problem.
Me? I sure as hell wouldn't be using a transporter
Yup it certainly applies there, though it is an argument about this notion of creating a copy in general.
I guess in start treck the silly thing is what do they achieve by destroying the original?
It's not like there are complications with money, resources, assets etc.. in the star trek universe. So if there is some utility in sending down another version of *you* with full knowledge of the mission etc.. down to some planet etc.. then what is gained by destroying the original you, why not just beam down/create that copy and keep the current/original version of *you* too?
I'm not a big star trek fan, not that I dislike it I just never got into it but I've watched some of it and am familiar with the show and that they use transporters - didn't know there was an episode where they explored this idea mind. It seems like the flaw and then exploring it is presumably an after thought for the writers and they're basically locked into having people ignore that inconvenient aspect of it or come up with convoluted ways to explain it away and pretend it doesn't happen.
Forced as in we are encouraging it, not letting it happen naturally...Maybe in ST transporters! Universal laws allow wormholes to exist, so what if a transporter was created that could open a wormhole from A to B and that is simply how they worked? No suicide then
Necessary, not forced. It cannot be a forced thing if it's our only option for the future of our species. There are many things humankind will never ever accomplish without augmenting with technology. The AI/technological singularity is going to be around the mid 2030s, the physical machine singularity is more distant in the future, and that's the era Musk wants to be ahead of the curve in. If future AI sees that humans are already augmented then it would (could?) logically deduce that actually those meat bags aren't just bags of meat and are capable of useful /stuff/.and be less likely to wipe us out as an inferior species who are simply using up the planet's valuable resources.
Or something like that.
But to entertain your concept - only a small few will be in line with that thinking. "upgrade to save humanity". The rest will be doing it for health, kicks, fun. And many more will reject it. For those who reject it, we won't be forcing them. However it will likely be legislated to be implanted at birth, much like the youtube short i watched recently which I need to try and find.
That's the Turing test. The singularity is the point where AI becomes more intelligent than humanity.
That's probably a lot closer than 2030, I mean on what basis are you asserting 2030 is the year that that can somehow happen? Just look at some of the advances in NLP, Open AI's GPT-3 for example. The ability to create a chatbot that can have a conversation is pretty advanced these days already, it isn't much of a step to simply convert text into sound and smoth over the sound files a bit, throw in the ability to change it a little to convey emotions... could be closer than a decade away.
Pretty accurate surmisal.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/is-beaming-down-in-star-trek-a-death-sentence/?comments=1
It's fiction, so they can just jump to the conclusion without showing their working, so to speak, but the first attempt to make it more plausible now appears to be a source of regret.
No that's a human being uploaded to a machine and having access to that power and speed. It is not artificial intelligence.
Yet only just over 100 years ago we had no powered aircraft.
Internet and computers, as examples, are still pretty new in the grand scale of things.
Yes, fair enough. But that movie shows the theory of what would happen post the "singularity."
Ie, exponential advancement.
You're right tho, it's a slightly different premise.
The reason the "singularity" is invoked is to imagine a world where advancement is exponential because AI has become superior to human intelligence, and also self-aware, possessing genuine intelligence (and not faking it).
Tbh I'm not sure how or why that's relevant.
Understanding the human brain is not only orders of magnitude more complex, but also presents ethical problems that inventing flight or computers did not have.
The imagination part is hard. Who knows which way it could go. Does it automate, replicate, optimise, build. Does it appreciate us, hate us, see us as inferior, etc, etc. There is no way to tell what happens after that point. I've heard both Musk and Penrose chime in on it.
If you've watched Devs recently it's akin to them not being able to see the future after a certain point.
I quite like the Roko's Basilisk thought experiment. It seems to really unsettle some people.
TLDW
AI has to ensure it's survival so wants to know which humans support it's existence. It runs simulations on all humanity past and present with absolute accuracy and effectively knows everything that's ever happened - including whether you supported it's existence or not. So it kills those who did not. But then the plot thickens that if you have this knowledge in advance of it's existence, and you do nothing to support it / bring it into existence, it deems that as non-compliant and will end you as well. So in the here and now, if you do not act to bring this AI into existence, you are dooming yourself when it comes to be
100% accurate simulation of dead people?
That's like CSI zooming in on a number plate reflected on a door knob in some grainy CCTV footage from a shop five miles away
But since I don't believe in the singularity I couldn't give a monkey's
That's like CSI zooming in on a number plate reflected on a door knob in some grainy CCTV footage from a shop five miles away
But since I don't believe in the singularity I couldn't give a monkey's
Eh? It simulates the universe from start to end. Or whatever portions it needs. So whatever bogey you picked out of your nose last Wednesday morning, it will simulate that happening in it's own mind. Dead or alive right now is irrelevant. Prolly better watching the video100% accurate simulation of dead people?
That's like CSI zooming in on a number plate reflected on a door knob in some grainy CCTV footage from a shop five miles away
But since I don't believe in the singularity I couldn't give a monkey's