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Why Cyberconsciousness Won’t Take Aeons to Evolve
Humanity is devoting some of its best minds, from a wide diversity of fields, to helping software achieve consciousness. The quest is not especially difficult as it is a capability that can be intelligently designed; there is no need to wait for it to naturally evolve.
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Posted by CygnusX1 on 01/30 at 10:11 AM
@ Martine good show!
A very thought provoking and positive article.
" While the patients will surely miss their bodies, the alternative will be to never have a body. At least with a medically provided cyber-conscious existence, the patient can continue to interact with their family, enjoy electronic media and hope for rapid advances in regenerative medicine and neuroscience."
Just imagine this..
"OK kids, we're off to visit great grandpa today hurry up now"
"Mum, does grandpa need to live and communicate as an ethereal entity inside a star trek styled bio-energy-sphere?"
"Nohe can choose to roam around in his clunky old cyber-robotic body if he wants, but it often needs repair these daze, so he prefers his bio-sphere".
"Geeez grandpa is so lucky I can't wait until I grow old and my body decays enough to qualify for energised longevity!"
"All in good time dear all in good time"
I do like this idea, and the more I contemplate this notion of my consciousness residing in a machine the more it makes so much more sense than even attempting some kind of biological or bodily longevity. Does it really make sense to pursue longevity by constantly and pro-actively repairing one's body?
It would appear the only practicable way of achieving biological longevity success would be to alter genetics from the ground up to finitely achieve a natural longevity of our biology and to achieve bodies that may last a thousand years etc. Yet even this is not sufficient, and resolves to insignificance if compared to the possibility of my consciousness residing perpetually in a "free" energy state, maybe even escaping my restrained "bio-sphere" altogether? And how much more difficult is it to tweak and manipulate biological evolution than to create machine consciousness hosting? Ultimately it sounds much easier to create an artificial habitat for my consciousness?
However, this is all assuming the persistence of my consciousness is maintained, for without it, my identity, my self is lost, and if this fails then longevity means absolutely nothing. All I have to do now is to evolve myself spiritually enough to contemplate and manage my immature cravings and sufferings to achieve higher wisdom and an understanding of these possibilities of living "timelessly".
That is the good news part the goals and ideals driven by the ethics of living and the happiness of long-life existence. However, we all know where the big money is in power and warfare, so it may be readily contemplated that conscious machines will be developed firstly for battles and warfare, under the false guise that human lives will be saved and what nonsense this really is and why!
I guess it all depends in which direction we hope to pursue our ideals, (more ethical discussion required). Where does the greatest influence and monies lie : in military endeavours, or in healthcare and ethics : "where do you want to go today" : you decide!
Our peaceful technological goals and ideals that you describe may need to be wholly driven by the consumer market to become both successful and real, whereas military technologies in consciousness and AI do not, necessarily, require consumer funding.
Yet can we entrust our governments to choose the best ideals for this kind of future investment into artificial and machine consciousness? I feel the human condition and a philosophy of connectedness aimed to overcome fear, irrationality and wars is ultimately required before our future "timeless" long-life ideals may be realised. I guess the real answer resides in these wise words "Freedom ain't free.. There's a hefty friggin' fee.." Yet freedom of thoughts and ideals naturally leads to disagreements and to the pursuit of diverse goals, and conflicts and fear and warfare may never fully be overcome?
My intention is not to play the downside to these ideals, this is an excellent and positive article that reflects only the best of ideals and the highest of achievements. My points are to remind that in our current political and economic environments these ideals can so easily and readily be overthrown and sent into demise, as the world view splinters and splits between the "have's and have not's".
That being said I want my bio-sphere now !
And after reading your points regarding evolution and natural selection, I'm not really sure if I even now place that great an importance of this notion of Self and of being human at all.
Martine! : what have you done to me!!
;0]
Posted by Pamela Bickell on 01/31 at 03:47 AM
When you say 'keeping your consciousness alive,' do you mean the soul?
Posted by Edward on 01/31 at 12:26 PM
I have an ethical question for the author of this article: How does one create a human body without simultaneously creating a human being?
Given, of course, that it possesses a functional brain, would this 'body' not have a consciousness of its own? How ethical is it to cannibalize this person for the benefit of someone's 'cyberconsciousness', one whom has likely experienced a full life, and now seeks extend its own existence at the expense of another?
From my perspective, the focus of this article belies the professed goal of IEET. Creating human body parts, genetically modifying humans, and artificially extending the human lifespan via emerging technology are all ethically sound in my opinion. Assuming that my hunch is correct, I must say that I believe creating human beings for this purpose would be unnecessarily taking the unethical route to address a problem that can be solved ethically and without controversy.
Posted by Giulio Prisco on 01/31 at 12:38 PM
@Pamela: "soul" is not a very precise term, and it has been defined in many different ways.
Many readers of this blog subscribe, to different degrees, to the idea that our personal identity is a computational system currently encoded in our physical brain and, once we develop the capability to "extract" it from the physical brain (in either the nanoscale readout sense or in the softer sense proposed by Martine) and then "upload" it to a different computational substrate (such as an advanced computer), we will be able to preserve it indefinitely.
You can, if you wish, call this identity-as-computational-system "soul" and, indeed, this identification has been proposed by many scientists and philosophers. It is a definition of "soul" in strictly scientific terms, without any mystical or supernatural element, and at the same time it is as awe-inspiring as religious definitions, and more.
Posted by Giulio Prisco on 01/31 at 12:42 PM
@Pamela: I tried to give you a concise answer, but I wish to encourage to read all articles of Martine, which are collected in her blog:
http://mindclones.blogspot.com/
and often re-posted here. I am sure you will find them informative, and inspiring.
Posted by alexxarian on 02/01 at 09:08 AM
Once you guys realize that separate personal identities are an illusion which relies on the present structure of our mental/physical systems I think you might feel like slowing down a bit. I suggest that you read Daniel Kolak's work:
'Room for a view on the metaphysical subject of personal identity':
http://ifile.it/ftjzpdl
'I am You':
http://tiny.cc/mhckU
We've always been within the event horizon so it's not like we can stop the development but getting a better understanding of where this actually is heading may help us prepare emotionally and avoid being caught by surprise once this future materializes. At the moment most of us have absolutely no idea about the true implications of our agency. It is up to us whether we make the upcoming take-off feel pleasant.
Posted by I.A.J. Karass 651 on 02/01 at 06:34 PM
Why are we concentrating on machines becoming conscious when most people haven't achieved consciousness yet? Maybe it's because we thinks it's an easier task.
Posted by Martine Rothblatt on 02/01 at 07:00 PM
Hey Cygnus -- You really speak the truth about the risks of military-government programs in artificial consciousness. I think it will happen. I just hope the certain adverse consequences are not too bad before people start to back away from that abyss. And of course, more than hope, try to do what we can to move the flight control stick away from that direction.
As Edward says, it is all about ethics. Once consciousness creeps into our mindware we cannot ethically be its masters. It is as wrong to suborn the autonomy and conscience of a cyberconscious being as it is to do so of a bioconscious being. Of course governments, and many other authorities, have done that -- and do that -- every day to bioconscious souls. These bad acts are exceptions to the rule of respect for the dignity of everyone that generally prevails. We'll see those bad acts with cyberconsciousness too -- it is up to us ethicists to fight back against that, and insist on extending human rights to those who value them, even if they are softbeings.
Alexxarian -- Kolak is an awesome guy, and his treatise provides a great basis for global ethics. We and our mindclones may exist across a flesh/software border, but it is no boundary to our common identity.
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