From: Bryan Moss (bryan.moss@dial.pipex.com)
Date: Sat Jul 24 1999 - 17:36:38 MDT
Billy Brown wrote:
> As I've pointed out before, uploading is much, much more difficult than
> most of its proponents seem to realize. You are better off concentrating
> on neural interfaces and cybernetic brain enhancments. [...]
I can imagine an argument between a software engineer and a neuroscientist,
the software engineer claiming that simulating a brain would be much more
difficult than neural interfaces, the neuroscientist responding that we know
so little about the brain that neural interfaces would be far more difficult
than a mere simulation. Then you have the AI-researcher claiming he just
programmed a brain in LISP - it counts the usage of words in a piece of
text, compares them to a database, and tells you the subject of the text -
it shouldn't take more than a weeks work to program a fully-functional art
critic.
den Otter replied:
> I wasn't claiming that uploading would somehow be "simple" though, quite
> on the contrary: exactly because it's (presumably) harder than creating a
> conscious AI, we should put extra effort into it, while at the same time
> strongly discouraging attempts to make conscious machines.
An upload would be a simulation of a brain. In this sense some
connectionist systems could be seen as very primitive uploads since they're
(apparently) based on actual brain structure. The field of research that is
AI (rather than the all-encompassing science fiction concept that is AI)
seeks to model thought processes using computers. Thus we have two
approaches, simulation of brain structure and the creation of programs that
model thought processes. The latter suffers from ambiguity unbound in both
the definition of 'thought process' (or mental model, or what have you) and
it's ultimate goal. I personally don't buy the idea of a computer scientist
sitting down and creating a 'mental model' while paying little or no
attention to brain structure; it reminds me of monkeys and typewriters. An
unhealthy majority of AI-research is pseudo-science plain and simple. Don't
get me wrong, we've seen a few useful algorithms come out of this, but if
AI-researchers do find the Holy Grail of intelligent-thought it will be
coincidence, like the monkeys and Shakespeare.
> By "uploading technology" I meant the entire spectrum of neural
> interfaces/enhancements etc. which could make our brains more efficient
> and less organic, btw, not (just) a single, "instantaneous" procedure
> that would transfer one's thought into a computer. I'm strongly in favor
> of the gradual approach, as opposed to the scanning method where
> essentially a "copy" is being uploaded.
In my opinion the technology will happen in the following order, with some
overlap:
Neural Interfaces
Uploading
Artificial Intelligence
First we start simulating brains, not for uploading but for research
purposes. The simulations get increasingly more detailed until at some
point we can run them in real time. There are many software and hardware
bottlenecks to overcome before this is possible; we're not just waiting on
Moore's Law. This is still a long way off uploading. For the brain to
communicate with the outside world we need neural interface technology, you
can't just hook speech output into a speaker. It may be possible to do a
non-destructive brain scan and simulate a particular brain although this
would not be as simple as it sounds. All this time we'd be learning how and
if we can quantize the brains into more flexible software, so eventually it
may be possible to write a 'brain' from scratch although I pity the fool who
tries. Making pure uploading feasible will involve putting many brains
inside a simulated world, this will take time, and it will move us into the
realm of less rigorous fields like psychology. Eventually we'll be able to
see if brains can be made smarter, made to run faster, et cetera, but this
won't happen anytime soon. Smarter and faster have problems, the first
requires a detailed understanding of the brain and the second warrants a
discussion on how brains interact. It may turn out that smarter brains are
easy and nature simply hit a bottleneck (or a pelvis) but I doubt we should
be so lucky.
BM
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