https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Gene#Applications Probably very soon the supercomputer(s) will be able to simulate all 100 percent of a human cerebral cortex (or entire brain). Could you please tell me what does it mean? Does it mean that computer will be able to simulate our consciousness? To directly read our mind? Or maybe I misunderstood something? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Depends on what you mean by "consciousness". If it's a demonstration of awareness in terms of outward behavior or understanding and responding to processed information, then that's already been "simulated" in at least basic / minor ways by programs and robotics. But if you mean the introspection of one's neural activity, that corresponds to thoughts and sensations, being manifested internally as anything at all (as opposed to the usual nothingness or absence of everything for rocks, trees, moons, etc)... Then such requires either relational structure and activity alone to be responsible for yielding those experiences (IOW, type of substrate is irrelevant, whether biological or technological) or the systematic manipulation of electrical properties in that context (as that's what actual brains and the simulated brains riding on electronic circuitry would have in common). Both would seemingly require a crazyish add-on of pan-protopsychism or pan-protophenomenalism precursors in chemistry and physics circumstances, to avoid the appearance of brute or magical emergence. As everything else about the origin and function of biological bodies can fall out of the known properties of the atoms and particles which compose them. [IOW, more complex organizations of objects in space and more complex motions from such in space is not really introducing a wholly new category to the universe -- it's just more of what was transpiring beforehand.]
Not very soon, hundreds or thousands of years maybe. It means you would be able to create a conscious being in computer form, an artificial mind. If you could also scan a brain perfectly, maybe you could copy one. But it's still science fiction.
I think it would take a computer organized as a neural net to simulate consciousness in real time. Even without the real time requirement it seems like a formidable task for a standard Von Neuman organized computer. An array-organized group of computers controlled by a master computer might do the job, but I doubt it. The human brain is an amazingly complex object, especially considering its size & weight. The computer which beat a chess grand master managed it because somebody devised an effective position evaluation algorithm, which allowed the number crunching capabilities of of a computer to be useful for the job. An analogous algorithm for consciousness does not seem possible.
We have computers that can render holographic representations of what it observes. If we could devise a computer which creates a holographic representation internally, would that not be a rudimentary form of thought, somewhat on the level of an insect which just responds without emotion. Similar to a little computer programmed to perform just a few very specific tasks. IMO, the greatest problem lies in devising some form of emotion, in response to the holographic representation. Humans have this ability in the form of the Mirror Neural System, which seems to be instrumental for the emotion of *empathy* and it's opposite of *indifference*.
