Downloading Consciousness .. Immortality?

wegs said:
Didn't read through the entire thread, but I'm wondering - would I basically just be a conscious machine, at that point or would I still be considered human?
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That would be for the law to decide. There are many spec-fiction stories written on the very dilemma.
 
wegs said:
My consciousness, my choice.
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You could certainly identify as human, but that doesn't help much in the real world. It would be the law were you would run into problems. And you might not get to make that choice without a fight.

For just one example, if you had kids, they might fight you for their right to their inheritance. While your consciousness may live on, it may not pass the test of personhood when it came to property. Lots of other organizations might fight your desire to enjoy human rights.
 
Would writing an artificial intelligence program be a way of downloading your self? YOU are writing it! That is you doing it! The moment the program is run and becomes living, could be the moment you pass into the machine.
 
TheFrogger said:
Would writing an artificial intelligence program be a way of downloading your self? YOU are writing it! That is you doing it! The moment the program is run and becomes living, could be the moment you pass into the machine.
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And when done so you become electronic .

Electronics what it is based on , is not Life .

Electronics is based on the periodic table .
 
river said:
The latest theory of our Universe is that it is computer generated .
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That is not a theory; it's a conjecture.
It is not testable, so it's not science; its metaphysics.

So don't worry. Nobody else thinks it's true either.
 
river said: ↑
The latest theory of our Universe is that it is computer generated .
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DaveC426913 said:
That is not a theory; it's a conjecture.
It is not testable, so it's not science; its metaphysics.

So don't worry. Nobody else thinks it's true either.
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Good

Meta-mathematical physics . Based on computer mathematics . Which can not form , physically exist , create an electronic form , without Life .
 
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I don't think you can download consciousness. Consciousness is the sum of parts and without the parts one cannot experience consciousness. It's a product of the hardware, not the information, although the processing of information may lead to a form of elctronic consciousness as chemicals and bacteria experience a form of chemical consciousness named "quorum sensing".

We may be able to download knowledge, but that is what we have now on the internet, lots of knowledge. However the internet is not yet conscious as far as I know.

But following the artificial evolution of AI search engines, AIs are getting pretty intuitive and are beginning to display perhaps a form of proto-consciousness.

I try to keep in mind that everything in the universe seems to impart and exchange information of many kinds. And if we set the standard of consciousness as ability to "understand" and "react" to some of this information, then consciousness may well exist at quantum level .
 
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river said:
What process is life ?
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Growing and multiplying is the fundamental process of living in its simplest form, IMO.
The Paramecium is a living organism and it seems to be conscious at a very low level.
paramec.GIF
Paramecia are single-celled microorganisms that live in freshwater and marine environments. They belong to the phylum Ciliophora, the ciliated protozoa. A cilium is a short, hair-like structure that protrudes from an organism’s cell membrane. A paramecium has thousands of cilia that rhythmically beat, providing a way for it to move around and to sweep food into its oral groove. Scientists have discovered that different biochemical motors power the cilia function in the paramecium.
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My Little Paramecium
Paramecia come in many species and range in length between 50 and 330 micrometers -- roughly one-thousandth to one-hundredth of an inch. The cell membrane, or pellicle, is covered throughout with cilia. Paramecia eat bacteria, algae and other tiny creatures by ingesting them via a cilia-covered oral groove that runs from the front of the cell to the midpoint. The paramecium swims around by beating its cilia in unison, but the cilia surrounding the oral groove beat to a different rhythm.
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https://sciencing.com/two-types-cilia-paramecium-18998.html

A Paramecium being a single celled organism would suggest that this form of biological organization is one of the lowest forms of life. Can't be less than a single cell and be an organism...:).....:rolleyes:
 
Write4U said:
I don't think you can download consciousness. Consciousness is the sum of parts and without the parts one cannot experience consciousness.
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Why do you assume the parts are missing?
The processor that stores the consciousness would certainly have to be up to the task. It would have all its parts analogous to a biological brain.
In fact, taken to the extreme, the artificial brain could be a biological brain - with organic neurons and synapses, exactly mirroring an organic brain. It just happens that we can build one, in hours, in a lab, rather than grow one, in years, in a body.
 
DaveC426913 said:
Why do you assume the parts are missing?
The processor that stores the consciousness would certainly have to be up to the task. It would have all its parts analogous to a biological brain.
In fact, taken to the extreme, the artificial brain could be a biological brain - with organic neurons and synapses, exactly mirroring an organic brain. It just happens that we can build one, in hours, in a lab, rather than grow one, in years, in a body.
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I agree . But are we not speaking of "software" (codified physical messages)

I was speaking of downloading a consciousness code, not the physical machinery that does the processing. As I said there are many universal forms of sensory abilities. But very few are able to make "intentional" decisions. That does seem to be reserved for biological systems. We may only be able to create bionic organisms.

At what point does consciousness become intelligence? That is not a hardware problem. It's a software program.
The term "biomimetic" is preferred when the reference is made to chemical reactions.[citation needed] In that domain, biomimetic chemistry refers to reactions that, in nature, involve biological macromolecules (e.g. enzymes or nucleic acids) whose chemistry can be replicated in vitro using much smaller molecules.
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Examples of bionics in engineering include the hulls of boats imitating the thick skin of dolphins; sonar, radar, and medical ultrasound imaging imitating animal echolocation.
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In the field of computer science, the study of bionics has produced artificial neurons, artificial neural networks,[3] and swarm intelligence. Evolutionary computation was also motivated by bionics ideas but it took the idea further by simulating evolution in silico and producing well-optimized solutions that had never appeared in nature.[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bionics
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There is an underlying assumption in the question.
That - consciousness is a downloadable entity.

This assumption is very much questionable - especially if we are talking about (modern) Turing computers.

I think a lot of people are fooled by the gimmicks of modern AI. Earlier computers were already very good at linear step-by-step (arithmetical-logical) computations.
Modern computers have become better at non-linear (statistical-probabilistic) computing. The increasing processing speed and memory has helped. And this is allowing modern AI to distinguish between patterns, often at around human levels of accuracy. This does not mean though that these AI are conscious. These AI may be able to distinguish between patterns, but it does not mean that they experience or understand them. Human beings do. We have meanings attached to those patterns.

A camera may be able to distinguish between red and blue, but it does not mean that it experiences or perceives red or blue. We humans do.(And I suspect most creatures in the animal kingdom do, but individual experience of colours may vary.)

"Qualia", subjective experience, perception, understanding, feelings or emotions - these are some of the keywords. Unless an entity has these, it cannot be called conscious, no matter how well it mimics another conscious entity.

A very life-like sculpture of Obama is still a sculpture of Obama, it is not Obama.
Most people understand that mimicking the form pattern of a living entity does not recreate the living entity.
However, let us now say that we put a chip in a very life-like puppet or robotic-body of Obama so that it can mimic some of the behaviors of Obama.
Let us say it now moves and walks like Obama.
Is it now a recreation of Obama? Some will be fooled to say yes.
Let us say we mimic more behavioral features. Say we give the robot Obama's speech pattern(voice, pronunciation etc).
Is it now a recreation of Obama? Some more will be fooled to say yes.

But I think none of those are genuine copies of Obama. Just like a sculpture of Obama is not a genuine copy of Obama. We have just mimicked some behavioral patterns.
The real question is does the entity have the same feeling, emotional memories, desires etc of Obama? Only then we can say it is a genuine copy of Obama.

One should see books by and lectures of Roger Penrose. He makes some excellent points. Consciousness probably can't be replicated in a turing machine. There are probably Quantum related phenomenons in our biology that allows us to be conscious.
 
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