Life inside a Computer

Discussion in 'Intelligence & Machines' started by kmguru, Sep 8, 2001.

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  1. iced_earth Anathematized Registered Senior Member

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    well i might not be as smart as some of you but i want to give this one a shot..

    well. as we look at the brain we see it runs basicly on the same princpals of a coputer. as in binary 010101 ,open close open close. of electronic path ways. the human mind computes at only 600 words a minute. pretty damn slow when you think at how many a pc can. also in the uploading process to our alternitive to "heaven" it would scan the mind and simply erase it after the information is trnsefered. and the person would enter the world as them selfs.

    anotehr question or whatever.. in the process of teleportation by computer. it would scan your body and mind then destroy your physical being and then recreate it at anotehr location. i think that would be the same as going into our vr world here.. maybe thats how it would work. scan your body and mind destroy you and boom! your in the vr world..... i don't know seems logical to me
     
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  3. kmguru Staff Member

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    If there is a glitch in the machine....you are dead for sure.

    Why destroy it. One copy can stay on earth, another in alpha centurai and another in the Mimbar.....
     
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  5. iced_earth Anathematized Registered Senior Member

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    no thats what happens in the telaportation process. the computer takes you apart atom by atom and ree constructs you in point b
     
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  7. zira Registered Senior Member

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    Intelligent "computer"

    If an artificial intelligence existed in a computer,

    then I think we can no longer call that machine a "computer"

    "computer" comes from "compute", meaning "calculate", or "do a calculation", all very basic tasks related to a "program" ....

    I think we must then imagine a new name for the machine ...

    Proposal:

    "cognitor" ?
     
  8. Firefly Registered Senior Member

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    Anyone mentioned the Turing... thingy?

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  9. Thor "Pfft, Rebel scum!" Valued Senior Member

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    Life inside a computer? I'm gonna say 'Cramped'
     
  10. kmguru Staff Member

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    Re: Intelligent "computer"

    If we label some humans as "rednecks", we surely can say AIs as Computers until they beat us with a wet noodle and tell us what they should be called - "Master" ?
     
  11. kmguru Staff Member

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    NEWS: When brains meet computer brawn


    By Ed Frauenheim
    Staff Writer, CNET News.com
    August 5, 2002, 10:00 AM PT


    People linking their brains together to form a global collective intelligence. Humans living well beyond 100 years. Computers uploading aspects of our personalities to a network.
    These could all happen this century with the proper investments in technology, according to a recent report from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce.

    Titled "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science," the 405-page report calls for more research into the intersection of these fields. The payoff, the authors claim, isn't just better bodies and more effective minds. Progress in these areas of technology also could play a key role in preventing a societal "catastrophe." The answer to human brutality and new forms of lethal weapons, it suggests, is a kind of tech-triggered unity: "Technological convergence could become the framework for human convergence."



    Published last month, the report could one day be remembered as a seminal road map to the future. But it's not clear whether its recommendations will be followed--or should be.

    Some critics question whether such sci-fi promises can ever become reality, while others doubt world salvation will come through technology. Others worry that advanced technologies such as super-smart robots or genetically modified organisms may cause us more harm than good.

    The "Converging Technologies" report stems from a workshop last December involving tech leaders in government, academia and private industry. Major themes at the seminar ranged from expanding human cognition and communication to improving human health to strengthening national security.

    The final report, edited by Mihail Roco, NSF's senior adviser for nanotechnology, and William Bainbridge, acting director of NSF's Division of Information and Intelligent Systems, includes papers submitted by various participants as well as an overview by Roco and Bainbridge. In the overview, the editors argue that a host of advances can be achieved in the next 20 years alone. Among these are wearable sensors that send health alerts, much more useful robots, invulnerable data networks, and direct broadband interfaces between our minds and machines.

    With research in converging technologies, it's possible some disabilities will be eradicated completely and normal standards of healthiness will soar, Roco and Bainbridge wrote. "The human body will be more durable, healthy, energetic, easier to repair and resistant to many kinds of stress, biological threat and (the) aging process."

    Also at stake is the health of the nation's economy, said James Canton, a futurist who helped organize the workshop. If the United States doesn't coordinate research into these four technologies, it risks losing its global tech leadership, Canton said. Technology already lets individuals and nations "leapfrog" others, and the combination of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science is going to create an "entirely different economy," Canton said.

    "It's really a comprehensive change that makes the Internet seem small," said Canton, president of the Institute for Global Futures in San Francisco.

    The report thinks big when it comes to peering beyond the next two decades to the rest of the 21st century. Taking visionaries such as Ray Kurzweil seriously, it imagines robots so advanced they may deserve political rights, building surfaces that automatically change shape and color to adjust to the weather, and the prospect of personality uploads that make death itself ambiguous.

    Merging human consciousness with machines is tied to another mind-boggling concept: brain-to-brain connections. The report discusses the possibility of "local groups of linked enhanced individuals" as well as "a global collective intelligence."

    Creating such a networked society could play a vital role in overcoming today's social and political crises, Roco and Bainbridge suggest. "The 21st century could end in world peace, universal prosperity and evolution to a higher level of compassion and accomplishment," they write. "It is hard to find the right metaphor to see a century into the future, but it may be that humanity would become like a single, transcendent nervous system, an interconnected 'brain' based in new core pathways of society."

    Helpful or harmful?
    Not everyone is likely to sign up for this techno-utopia, however. Some people are skeptical about technology's capabilities and cast doubt on proposals such as capturing consciousness through computers or linking neurons with nanocircuitry. Our minds may not be able to handle the flood of information resulting from a brain-machine interface, suggests Jeremy Rifkin, author of books on biotechnology and globalization. "The human physiology is just not designed for this speed-of-light world," Rifkin said.
    Although he welcomes the report's call for more interdisciplinary research, Rifkin said society ought to pick and choose carefully among emerging technologies given potential downsides. "Some of that harm can be irreversible--especially in biotechnology," he said. Rifkin calls for a ban on transgenic crops and has raised concerns about the prospect of developing fetuses in artificial wombs.

    Sun Microsystems' Bill Joy also has warned that advanced technology could trigger its own catastrophe--such as in the form of self-replicating nanoscale robots that dismantle everything into a "gray goo." A cautionary tale is even suggested by the television show "Star Trek: The Next Generation": The malevolent character of the Borg suggests society may not want to share a single mind.

    Other criticisms of pouring resources into technology research are that political repression and socio-economic divisions ought to be addressed first, and that thorny ethical issues have yet to be worked out completely. These include questions such as what methods--such as cloning, embryonic stem cell research and genetic engineering--are acceptable, what kinds of enhancements are appropriate and who should benefit from them.

    The "Converging Technologies" report concedes debate is needed on the ethics front. And efforts to promote human rights and combat poverty deserve attention along with the technology push, said Phil Kuekes, a researcher at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories who participated in the workshop. "I don't think it's an either-or issue," he said.

    Although new technology is always a sword with a dangerous side, the specter of self-replicating nanobots running amok is science fiction, Kuekes said. "The gray goo stuff is not credible," he said.

    Kuekes acknowledged the consciousness-upload possibility is speculative, but claims the report is generally grounded in hard science. His lab, for example, is experimenting with electronic devices made up of just a few molecules. Since these are 1,000 to 10,000 times smaller than current silicon-based circuits, they could result in a storage device powerful enough to cram the entire Library of Congress into a device that fits on a person's wrist.

    To push this sort of research in the right directions, Canton hopes political leaders will make converging technologies a national initiative, just as Washington did with nanotechnology research two and a half years ago. That helped transform the once-obscure field of the tiny into a big player in science, thanks partly to annual federal funding this year of $604 million.

    Kuekes would like to see the "Converging Technologies" report spark debate among policy makers, the general public and even students, who may be leading the scientific charge a few years from now.

    That's partly why the tech leaders behind the report gazed as far as they did into the future, Kuekes said, risking ridicule and rebuke in the process. "It is very forward looking," he said. "The group that issued this report kind of stuck their neck out."

    Complete report at: http://itri.loyola.edu/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_pre_publication.pdf

    Anyone like to read the report and want to discuss - you are welcome.
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2002
  12. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    An excerpt from page 150


    Now the Really Crazy Ones

    Download Yourself into New Hardware

    Imagine that the brain is fully understood, and therefore the mechanisms and data structures for knowledge, personality, character traits, habits, and so on are known. Imagine further that, for an individual, the data describing that person‘s knowledge, personality, and so forth, could be extracted from his brain. In that case, his mind could be “run“ on different hardware, just as old video games are today run in emulation on faster processors. This, of course, raises lots of questions. What is it that makes you you? (Is it more than your knowledge and personality?) Is having the traditional body necessary to being human? Nevertheless, if you accept the above premises, it could be done. Having made the leap to new hardware for yourself, many staggering options open up:

    •_No death. You back yourself up. You get new hardware as needed.
    •_Turn up the clock speed. Goodbye, millisecond-speed neurons; hello, nanosecond-speed
    electronics.
    •_Choose space-friendly hardware. Goodbye, Earth; hello, galaxy.

    Instant Learning

    If the structure of knowledge were fully understood, and if we controlled the “hardware and software environment“ of the mind, then presumably we would understand how new knowledge gets integrated with old knowledge. The quaint old-fashioned techniques of “books“ and “school“ would be reenacted sometimes for fun, but the efficient way would be to just get the knowledge file and run the integrate procedure. Get a PhD in Mathematics with “one click.“

    Hive Mind

    If we can easily exchange large chunks of knowledge and are connected by high-bandwidth communication paths, the function and purpose served by individuals becomes unclear. Individuals have served to keep the gene pool stirred up and healthy via sexual reproduction, but this data-handling process would no longer necessarily be linked to individuals. With knowledge no longer encapsulated in individuals, the distinction between individuals and the entirety of humanity would blur. Think Vulcan mind-meld. We would perhaps become more of a hive mind — an enormous, single, intelligent entity.

    Speed-of-Light Travel

    If a mind is data that runs on a processor (and its sensors and actuators), then that data — that mind — can travel at the speed of light as bits in a communication path. Thus, Mars is less than an hour awayat light speed. (We needed a rocket to get the first receiver there.) You could go there, have experiences (in a body you reserved), and then bring the experience-data back with you on return.

    Self-Directed Evolution

    If mind is program and data, and we control the hardware and the software, then we can make changes as we see fit. What will human-like intelligence evolve into if it is freed from the limits of the human meat-machine, and humans can change and improve their own hardware? It‘s hard to say. The changes would perhaps be goal-directed, but what goals would be chosen for self-directed evolution?

    What does a human become when freed from pain, hunger, lust, and pride? (If we knew the answer to this, we might be able to guess why we haven‘t detected any sign of other intelligences in the 100 billion stars of our galaxy!)
     
  13. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    Problem: is "download" another word for "copy" and, if so, what "rights" does the copy have indepedent of you?

    Problem: is it a "backup" or another "copy"?

    Problem: who gets to go first and take over the world (how could you stop someone who thinks many orders of magnitude faster than you)?

    Why choose? Can you say "clone"?

    "Resistance is futile."

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    Where's the fun in that?

    Here come the Borg.

    How much would the beam spread that we travel as bits on? What if there is a "parity error"?

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    Do we know what we want to evolve into?

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    Ummm -- boring?

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  14. Rick Valued Senior Member

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    These:
    =============================
    1.)Pain

    2.)Hunger

    3.)Lust

    4.)Pride


    are the basic charracters of the Human brain that enables survival.When a Human is freed from this,he"ll no longer be able to survive in the real world.

    And now for the big question Kmguru(i think i have asked this before.did i?

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    ):
    ===================================
    would a mind accept such a world? wouldnt be reject it as a dream and wake up continuously to the real world as we might find everything too good to be true?



    bye!
     
  15. Clockwood You Forgot Poland Registered Senior Member

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    4,467
    I think the term for being freed from all worldly wants is called Nirvana.

    They may lust for information though.
     
  16. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    13,105
    The way I see this topi now, I don't see a persons mind being uploaded to a network, but more likely a network of machines allowing a cybernetic network to be created.

    Either you could have an implant attached, or put on a sensor visor (Or if your really unlucky get picked on by the bigwigs that almost wipe you out through a radiology array). One a formulated connection to your brain is made you'll be able to:

    dictate memo's.

    Send vast quantities of work to the office (Just don't think out loud "The boss is a jerk").

    Design things with the news form of CAD, where a moment of thought can actualate any pattern or three dimensional object that can be parsed to a super-computer of your choice.

    Spend hours messaging your friends from the back of your head, (This includes taking pictures, sending voice and text messages and even video memory)

    Have full interactivity with any appliances in your area.

    But what of the down sides?:
    A hacker infiltrates the network, and unleashes a virus that causes a repetative string to constantly drone in the back of your head. Results: Multiple suicides.

    You text your boss while thinking of what a jerk he is.

    If you think of any invention's or designs, an espionage agent steals them all and sells them to the highest bider.

    Your in bed with your wife/husband, when you start to hear some dirty old man making panting noises in your head, because your heads been plugged into an illegal porn site set up by hackers.

    Footage appears across the networks of people dieing in their blaze of glory, due to snuff merchandisers. (Notibly the people dieing, were in fact "Murdered")

    A common statement in trials at a court of law is "Oops, I didn't mean to think 'What would it be like to hack a bank?'"
     
  17. kmguru Staff Member

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    The bottom line is, the objectives of a child is somewhat different from the objectives of a grownup. Even each grownup have different needs and wants above and beyond sustainence of body. So, I think - the goals may change and enlarge to encompass the world or the universe. Even for a mind with a 10,000 point IQ, the universe will present a lot of challenge...
     
  18. KrissKTK Registered Member

    Messages:
    8
    I didn't read all posts but ...

    There is a move about a virtual world inside a computer.
    I think it's called "The Thirteenth Floor".
    Nice movie about this topic and it's complications.
     
  19. kmguru Staff Member

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    The bad parts about movies are that they are from a novice point of view where assumptions are fantasies too.
     
  20. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    9,199
    I liked the 13th floor.

    The major flaw of course is that while we can envisage the upload process from brain to machine, it really cannot be an instant process going in the other direction.

    If the download has a different personality and memory then the download would involve the growth of new brain cells or at least the physical reconnection of neurons with others. This is massively different to moving data from one place to another.
     
  21. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    That is a very good observation Cris. Which means that even downloading will be extremely difficult too. Simply because, there is a big difference between data and application. One could have all the data in a database but the applications and i/o interfaces have to be downloaded too that provides the actions one takes from the same set of data that differentiates individuals.

    In order to make downloading functional, we have to design the counterpart items such as triggers and metadata and data locations within memory and application as well as I/O to sensory and motor functions. The outside world can be created in a virtual environment to interface those processes. If we can do that, it stands to reason that to develop the neural network, one can add a hyper growth hormone while the program is up loading. Neural adjustments can be done on the fly by a feedback machanism, since the final neural map is already known. By selectively inhibiting and allowing specific neurons to grow and connect, the final neural pattern can be accomplished.

    That will not be easy, nor the downloading process. But with right technology both are possible. One may take only 15 minutes to download, while the other about 24 to 48 hours to upload.
     
  22. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    Name that quote

    "Brain and brain -- what is brain! ... It is controller??"

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  23. GRO$$ Registered Senior Member

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    KrissKTK: i love that movie (13th floor).

    it came out a lil too late after the matrix, but has an amazing philosophical idea... mmm... i think its true

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    why not?
     
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