AI - Technological Singularity

 

The emergence of technologies that could fundamentally change humans' role in society, challenge human epistemic agency and ontological status, and trigger unprecedented and unforeseen developments in all aspects of life, whether biological, social, cultural, or technological, is referred to as the Technological Singularity.

The Singularity of Technology is most often connected with artificial intelligence, particularly artificial general intelligence (AGI).

As a result, it's frequently depicted as an intelligence explosion that's pushing advancements in fields like biotechnology, nanotechnology, and information technologies, as well as inventing new innovations.

The Technological Singularity is sometimes referred to as the Singularity, however it should not be confused with a mathematical singularity, since it has only a passing similarity.

This singularity, on the other hand, is a loosely defined term that may be interpreted in a variety of ways, each highlighting distinct elements of the technological advances.

The thoughts and writings of John von Neumann (1903–1957), Irving John Good (1916–2009), and Vernor Vinge (1944–) are commonly connected with the Technological Singularity notion, which dates back to the second half of the twentieth century.

Several universities, as well as governmental and corporate research institutes, have financed current Technological Singularity research in order to better understand the future of technology and society.

Despite the fact that it is the topic of profound philosophical and technical arguments, the Technological Singularity remains a hypothesis, a guess, and a pretty open hypothetical idea.

While numerous scholars think that the Technological Singularity is unavoidable, the date of its occurrence is continuously pushed back.

Nonetheless, many studies agree that the issue is not whether or whether the Technological Singularity will occur, but rather when and how it will occur.

Ray Kurzweil proposed a more exact timeline for the emergence of the Technological Singularity in the mid-twentieth century.

Others have sought to give a date to this event, but there are no well-founded grounds in support of any such proposal.

Furthermore, without applicable measures or signs, mankind would have no way of knowing when the Technological Singularity has occurred.

The history of artificial intelligence's unmet promises exemplifies the dangers of attempting to predict the future of technology.

The themes of superintelligence, acceleration, and discontinuity are often used to describe the Technological Singularity.

The term "superintelligence" refers to a quantitative jump in artificial systems' cognitive abilities, putting them much beyond the capabilities of typical human cognition (as measured by standard IQ tests).

Superintelligence, on the other hand, may not be restricted to AI and computer technology.

Through genetic engineering, biological computing systems, or hybrid artificial–natural systems, it may manifest in human agents.

Superintelligence, according to some academics, has boundless intellectual capabilities.

The curvature of the time curve for the advent of certain key events is referred to as acceleration.

Stone tools, the pottery wheel, the steam engine, electricity, atomic power, computers, and the internet are all examples of technological advancement portrayed as a curve across time emphasizing the discovery of major innovations.

Moore's law, which is more precisely an observation that has been viewed as a law, represents the increase in computer capacity.

"Every two years, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles," it says.

People think that the emergence of key technical advances and new technological and scientific paradigms will follow a super-exponential curve in the event of the Technological Singularity.

One prediction regarding the Technological Singularity, for example, is that superintelligent systems would be able to self-improve (and self-replicate) in previously unimaginable ways at an unprecedented pace, pushing the technological development curve far beyond what has ever been witnessed.

The Technological Singularity discontinuity is referred to as an event horizon, and it is similar to a physical idea linked with black holes.

The analogy to this physical phenomena, on the other hand, should be used with care rather than being used to credit the physical world's regularity and predictability to technological singularity.

The limit of our knowledge about physical occurrences beyond a specific point in time is defined by an event horizon (also known as a prediction horizon).

It signifies that there is no way of knowing what will happen beyond the event horizon.

The discontinuity or event horizon in the context of technological singularity suggests that the technologies that precipitate technological singularity would cause disruptive changes in all areas of human life, developments about which experts cannot even conjecture.

The end of humanity and the end of human civilization are often related with technological singularity.

According to some research, social order will collapse, people will cease to be major actors, and epistemic agency and primacy would be lost.

Humans, it seems, will not be required by superintelligent systems.

These systems will be able to self-replicate, develop, and build their own living places, and humans will be seen as either barriers or unimportant, outdated things, similar to how humans now consider lesser species.

One such situation is represented by Nick Bostrom's Paperclip Maximizer.

AI is included as a possible danger to humanity's existence in the Global Catastrophic Risks Survey, with a reasonably high likelihood of human extinction, placing it on par with global pandemics, nuclear war, and global nanotech catastrophes.

However, the AI-related apocalyptic scenario is not a foregone conclusion of the Technological Singularity.

In other more utopian scenarios, technology singularity would usher in a new period of endless bliss by opening up new opportunities for humanity's infinite expansion.

Another element of technological singularity that requires serious consideration is how the arrival of superintelligence may imply the emergence of superethical capabilities in an all-knowing ethical agent.

Nobody knows, however, what superethical abilities might entail.

The fundamental problem, however, is that superintelligent entities' higher intellectual abilities do not ensure a high degree of ethical probity, or even any level of ethical probity.

As a result, having a superintelligent machine with almost infinite (but not quite) capacities but no ethics seems to be dangerous to say the least.

A sizable number of scholars are skeptical about the development of the Technological Singularity, notably of superintelligence.

They rule out the possibility of developing artificial systems with superhuman cognitive abilities, either on philosophical or scientific grounds.

Some contend that while artificial intelligence is often at the heart of technological singularity claims, achieving human-level intelligence in artificial systems is impossible, and hence superintelligence, and thus the Technological Singularity, is a dream.

Such barriers, however, do not exclude the development of superhuman brains via the genetic modification of regular people, paving the door for transhumans, human-machine hybrids, and superhuman agents.

More scholars question the validity of the notion of the Technological Singularity, pointing out that such forecasts about future civilizations are based on speculation and guesswork.

Others argue that the promises of unrestrained technological advancement and limitless intellectual capacities made by the Technological Singularity legend are unfounded, since physical and informational processing resources are plainly limited in the cosmos, particularly on Earth.

Any promises of self-replicating, self-improving artificial agents capable of super-exponential technological advancement are false, since such systems will lack the creativity, will, and incentive to drive their own evolution.

Meanwhile, social opponents point out that superintelligence's boundless technological advancement would not alleviate issues like overpopulation, environmental degradation, poverty, and unparalleled inequality.

Indeed, the widespread unemployment projected as a consequence of AI-assisted mass automation of labor, barring significant segments of the population from contributing to society, would result in unparalleled social upheaval, delaying the development of new technologies.

As a result, rather than speeding up, political or societal pressures will stifle technological advancement.

While technological singularity cannot be ruled out on logical grounds, the technical hurdles that it faces, even if limited to those that can presently be determined, are considerable.

Nobody expects the technological singularity to happen with today's computers and other technology, but proponents of the concept consider these obstacles as "technical challenges to be overcome" rather than possible show-stoppers.

However, there is a large list of technological issues to be overcome, and Murray Shanahan's The Technological Singularity (2015) gives a fair overview of some of them.

There are also some significant nontechnical issues, such as the problem of superintelligent system training, the ontology of artificial or machine consciousness and self-aware artificial systems, the embodiment of artificial minds or vicarious embodiment processes, and the rights granted to superintelligent systems, as well as their role in society and any limitations placed on their actions, if this is even possible.

These issues are currently confined to the realms of technological and philosophical discussion.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Find Jai on Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram

You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.

See also: 

Bostrom, Nick; de Garis, Hugo; Diamandis, Peter; Digital Immortality; Goertzel, Ben; Kurzweil, Ray; Moravec, Hans; Post-Scarcity, AI and; Superintelligence.

References And Further Reading

Bostrom, Nick. 2014. Superintelligence: Path, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Chalmers, David. 2010. “The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 17: 7–65.

Eden, Amnon H. 2016. The Singularity Controversy. Sapience Project. Technical Report STR 2016-1. January 2016.

Eden, Amnon H., Eric Steinhart, David Pearce, and James H. Moor. 2012. “Singularity Hypotheses: An Overview.” In Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment, edited by Amnon H. Eden, James H. Moor, Johnny H. Søraker, and Eric Steinhart, 1–12. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.

Good, I. J. 1966. “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine.” Advances in Computers 6: 31–88.

Kurzweil, Ray. 2005. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Viking.

Sandberg, Anders, and Nick Bostrom. 2008. Global Catastrophic Risks Survey. Technical Report #2008/1. Oxford University, Future of Humanity Institute.

Shanahan, Murray. 2015. The Technological Singularity. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Ulam, Stanislaw. 1958. “Tribute to John von Neumann.” Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64, no. 3, pt. 2 (May): 1–49.

Vinge, Vernor. 1993. “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” In Vision 21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace, 11–22. Cleveland, OH: NASA Lewis Research Center.

Artificial Intelligence - Who Is Rudy Rucker?

 

Rudolf von Bitter (German: Rudolf von Bitter) Rucker (1946–) is an American novelist, mathematician, and computer scientist who is the great-great-great-grandson of philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831).

Rucker is most recognized for his sarcastic, mathematics-heavy science fiction, while having written in a variety of fictional and nonfictional genres.

His Ware tetralogy (1982–2000) is regarded as one of the cyberpunk literary movement's fundamental works.

Rucker graduated from Rutgers University with a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1973.

He shifted from teaching mathematics in colleges in the US and Germany to teaching computer science at San José State University, where he ultimately became a professor before retiring in 2004.

Rucker has forty publications to his credit, including science fiction novels, short story collections, and nonfiction works.

His nonfiction works span the disciplines of mathematics, cognitive science, philosophy, and computer science, with topics such as the fourth dimension and the meaning of computation among them.

The popular mathematics book Infinity and the Mind: The Science and Philosophy of the Infinite (1982), which he wrote, is still in print at Princeton University Press.

Rucker established himself in the cyberpunk genre with the Ware series (Software 1982, Wetware 1988, Freeware 1997, and Realware 2000).

Since Dick's death in 1983, the famous American science fiction award has been handed out every year since Software received the inaugural Philip K. Dick Award.

Wetware was also awarded this prize in 1988, in a tie with Paul J. McAuley's Four Hundred Billion Stars.

The Ware Tetralogy, which Rucker has made accessible for free online as an e-book under a Creative Commons license, was reprinted in 2010 as a single volume.

Cobb Anderson, a retired roboticist who has fallen from favor for creating sentient robots with free agency, known as boppers, is the protagonist of the Ware series.

The boppers want to reward him by giving him immortality via mind uploading; unfortunately, this procedure requires the full annihilation of Cobb's brain, which the boppers do not consider necessary hardware.

In Wetware, a bopper named Berenice wants to impregnate Cobb's niece in order to produce a human-machine hybrid.

Humanity retaliates by unleashing a mold that kills boppers, but this chipmould thrives on the cladding that covers the boppers' exteriors, resulting in the creation of an organic-machine hybrid in the end.

Freeware is based on these lifeforms, which are now known as moldies and are generally detested by biological people.

This story also includes extraterrestrial intelligences, who in Realware provide superior technology and the power to change reality to different types of human and artificial entities.

The book Postsingular, published in 2007, was the first of Rucker's works to be distributed under a Creative Commons license.

The book, set in San Francisco, addresses the emergence of nanotechnology, first in a dystopian and later in a utopian scenario.

In the first section, a rogue engineer creates nants, which convert Earth into a virtual replica of itself, destroying the planet in the process, until a youngster is able to reverse their programming.

The narrative then goes on to depict orphids, a new kind of nanotechnology that allows people to become cognitively enhanced, hyperintelligent creatures.

Although the Ware tetralogy and Postsingular have been classified as cyberpunk books, Rucker's literature has been seen as difficult to label, since it combines hard science with humor, graphic sex, and constant drug use.

"Happily, Rucker himself has established a phrase to capture his unusual mix of commonplace reality and outraeous fantasy: transrealism," writes science fiction historian Rob Latham (Latham 2005, 4).

"Transrealism is not so much a form of SF as it is a sort of avant-garde literature," Rucker writes in "A Transrealist Manifesto," published in 1983.  (Rucker 1983, 7).

"This means writing SF about yourself, your friends, and your local surroundings, transmuted in some science-fictional fashion," he noted in a 2002 interview. Using actual life as a basis lends your writing a literary quality and keeps you from using clichés" (Brunsdale 2002, 48).

Rucker worked on the short story collection Transreal Cyberpunk with cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling, which was released in 2016.

Rucker chose to publish his book Nested Scrolls after suffering a brain hemorrhage in 2008.

It won the Emperor Norton Award for "amazing innovation and originality unconstrained by the constraints of petty reason" when it was published in 2011.

Million Mile Road Trip (2019), a science fiction book about a group of human and nonhuman characters on an intergalactic road trip, is his most recent work.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Find Jai on Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram

You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.

See also: 

Digital Immortality; Nonhuman Rights and Personhood; Robot Ethic.

References & Further Reading:

Brunsdale, Mitzi. 2002. “PW talks with Rudy Rucker.” Publishers Weekly 249, no. 17 (April 29): 48. https://archive.publishersweekly.com/?a=d&d=BG20020429.1.82&srpos=1&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN%7ctxRV-%22PW+talks+with+Rudy+Rucker%22---------1.

Latham, Rob. 2005. “Long Live Gonzo: An Introduction to Rudy Rucker.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 16, no. 1 (Spring): 3–5.

Rucker, Rudy. 1983. “A Transrealist Manifesto.” The Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America 82 (Winter): 7–8.

Rucker, Rudy. 2007. “Postsingular.” https://manybooks.net/titles/ruckerrother07postsingular.html.

Rucker, Rudy. 2010. The Ware Tetralogy. Gaithersburg, MD: Prime Books, 2010.

Artificial Intelligence - What Is Immortality in the Digital Age?

The act of putting a human's memories, knowledge, and/or personality into a long-lasting digital memory storage device or robot is known as digital immortality.

Human intelligence is therefore displaced by artificial intelligence that resembles the mental pathways or imprint of the brain in certain respects.

The National Academy of Engineering has identified reverse-engineering the brain to attain substrate independence—that is, copying the thinking and feeling mind and reproducing it on a range of physical or virtual media.

Whole Brain Emulation (also known as mind uploading) is a theoretical science that assumes the mind is a dynamic process independent of the physical biology of the brain and its unique sets or patterns of atoms.

Instead, the mind is a collection of information-processing functions that can be computed.

Whole Brain Emulation is presently assumed to be based on the neural networking discipline of computer science, which has as its own ambitious objective the programming of an operating system modeled after the human brain.

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are statistical models built from biological neural networks in artificial intelligence research.

Through connections and weighting, as well as backpropagation and parameter adjustment in algorithms and rules, ANNs may process information in a nonlinear way.

Through his online "Mind Uploading Home Page," Joe Strout, a computational neurobiology enthusiast at the Salk Institute, facilitated debate of full brain emulation in the 1990s.

Strout argued for the material origins of consciousness, claiming that evidence from damage to actual people's brains indicates to neuronal, connectionist, and chemical beginnings.

Strout shared timelines of previous and contemporary technical advancements as well as suggestions for future uploading techniques through his website.

Mind uploading proponents believe that one of two methods will eventually be used: (1) gradual copy-and-transfer of neurons by scanning the brain and simulating its underlying information states, or (2) deliberate replacement of natural neurons with more durable artificial mechanical devices or manufactured biological products.

Strout gathered information on a variety of theoretical ways for achieving the objective of mind uploading.

One is a microtome method, which involves slicing a live brain into tiny slices and scanning it with a sophisticated electron microscope.

The brain is then reconstructed in a synthetic substrate using the picture data.

Nanoreplacement involves injecting small devices into the brain to monitor the input and output of neurons.

When these minuscule robots have a complete understanding of all biological interactions, they will eventually kill the neurons and replace them.

A robot with billions of appendages that delve deep into every section of the brain, as envisioned by Carnegie Mellon University roboticist Hans Moravec, is used in a variation of this process.

In this approach, the robot creates a virtual model of every portion and function of the brain, gradually replacing it.

Everything that the physical brain used to be is eventually replaced by a simulation.

In copy-and-transfer whole brain emulation, scanning or mapping neurons is commonly considered harmful.

The live brain is plasticized or frozen before being divided into parts , scanned and simulated on a computational media.

Philosophically, the technique creates a mental clone of a person, not the person who agrees to participate in the experiment.

Only a duplicate of that individual's personal identity survives the duplicating experiment; the original person dies.

Because, as philosopher John Locke reasoned, someone who recalls thinking about something in the past is the same person as the person who performed the thinking in the first place, the copy may be thought of as the genuine person.

Alternatively, it's possible that the experiment may turn the original and copy into completely different persons, or that they will soon diverge from one another through time and experience as a result of their lack of shared history beyond the experiment.

There have been many nondestructive approaches proposed as alternatives to damaging the brain during the copy-and-transfer process.

It is hypothesized that sophisticated types of gamma-ray holography, x-ray holography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), biphoton interferometry, or correlation mapping using probes might be used to reconstruct function.

With 3D reconstructions of atomic-level detail, the present limit of available technology, in the form of electron microscope tomography, has reached the sub-nanometer scale.

The majority of the remaining challenges are related to the geometry of tissue specimens and tomographic equipment's so-called tilt-range restrictions.

Advanced kinds of picture recognition, as well as neurocomputer manufacturing to recreate scans as information processing components, are in the works.

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Alice Parker leads the BioRC Biomimetic Real-Time Cortex Project at the University of Southern California, which focuses on reverse-engineering the brain.

Parker is now building and producing a memory and carbon nanotube brain nanocircuit for a future synthetic cortex based on statistical predictions with nanotechnology professor Chongwu Zhou and her students.

Her neuromorphic circuits are designed to mimic the complexities of human neural computations, including glial cell connections (these are nonneuronal cells that form myelin, control homeostasis, and protect and support neurons).

Members of the BioRC Project are developing systems that scale to the size of human brains.

Parker is attempting to include dendritic plasticity into these systems, which will allow them to adapt and expand as they learn.

Carver Mead, a Caltech electrical engineer who has been working on electronic models of human neurological and biological components since the 1980s, is credited with the approach's roots.

The Terasem Movement, which began in 2002, aims to educate and urge the public to embrace technical advancements that advance the science of mind uploading and integrate science, religion, and philosophy.

The Terasem Movement, the Terasem Movement Foundation, and the Terasem Movement Transreligion are all incorporated entities that operate together.

Martine Rothblatt and Bina Aspen Rothblatt, serial entrepreneurs, founded the group.

The Rothblatts are inspired by the religion of Earthseed, which may be found in Octavia Butler's 1993 novel Parable of the Sower.

"Life is intentional, death is voluntary, God is technology, and love is fundamental," according to Rothblatt's trans-religious ideas (Roy 2014).

Terasem's CyBeRev (Cybernetic Beingness Revival) project collects all available data about a person's life—their personal history, recorded memories, photographs, and so on—and stores it in a separate data file in the hopes that their personality and consciousness can be pieced together and reanimated one day by advanced software.

The Terasem Foundation-sponsored Lifenaut research retains mindfiles with biographical information on individuals for free and keeps track of corresponding DNA samples (biofiles).

Bina48, a social robot created by the foundation, demonstrates how a person's consciousness may one day be transplanted into a lifelike android.

Numenta, an artificial intelligence firm based in Silicon Valley, is aiming to reverse-engineer the human neocortex.

Jeff Hawkins (creator of the portable PalmPilot personal digital assistant), Donna Dubinsky, and Dileep George are the company's founders.

Numenta's idea of the neocortex is based on Hawkins' and Sandra Blakeslee's theory of hierarchical temporal memory, which is outlined in their book On Intelligence (2004).

Time-based learning algorithms, which are capable of storing and recalling tiny patterns in data change over time, are at the heart of Numenta's emulation technology.

Grok, a commercial tool that identifies flaws in computer servers, was created by the business.

Other applications, such as detecting anomalies in stock market trading or abnormalities in human behavior, have been provided by the business.

Carboncopies is a non-profit that funds research and cooperation to capture and preserve unique configurations of neurons and synapses carrying human memories.

Computational modeling, neuromorphic hardware, brain imaging, nanotechnology, and philosophy of mind are all areas where the organization supports research.

Randal Koene, a computational neuroscientist educated at McGill University and head scientist at neuroprosthetic company Kernel, is the organization's creator.

Dmitry Itskov, a Russian new media millionaire, donated early funding for Carbon copies.

Itskov is also the founder of the 2045 Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to extreme life extension.

The purpose of the 2045 Initiative is to develop high-tech methods for transferring personalities into a "advanced nonbiological carrier." Global Future 2045, a meeting aimed to developing "a new evolutionary strategy for mankind," is organized by Koene and Itskov.

Proponents of digital immortality see a wide range of practical results as a result of their efforts.

For example, in the case of death by accident or natural causes, a saved backup mind may be used to reawaken into a new body.

(It's reasonable to assume that elderly brains would seek out new bodies long before aging becomes apparent.) This is also the basis of Arthur C.

Clarke's science fiction book City of the Stars (1956), which influenced Koene's decision to pursue a career in science at the age of thirteen.

Alternatively, mankind as a whole may be able to lessen the danger of global catastrophe by uploading their thoughts to virtual reality.

Civilization might be saved on a high-tech hard drive buried deep into the planet's core, safe from hostile extraterrestrials and incredibly strong natural gamma ray bursts.

Another potential benefit is the potential for life extension over lengthy periods of interstellar travel.

For extended travels throughout space, artificial brains might be implanted into metal bodies.

This is a notion that Clarke foreshadowed in the last pages of his science fiction classic Childhood's End (1953).

It's also the response offered by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in their 1960 Astronautics article "Cyborgs and Space," which includes the first mention of astronauts with physical capacities that transcend beyond conventional limitations (zero gravity, space vacuum, cosmic radiation) thanks to mechanical help.

Under real mind uploading circumstances, it may be able to simply encode and send the human mind as a signal to a neighboring exoplanet that is the greatest possibility for alien life discovery.

The hazards to humans are negligible in each situation when compared to the present threats to astronauts, which include exploding rockets, high-speed impacts with micrometeorites, and faulty suits and oxygen tanks.

Another potential benefit of digital immortality is real restorative justice and rehabilitation through criminal mind retraining.

Or, alternatively, mind uploading might enable for penalties to be administered well beyond the normal life spans of those who have committed heinous crimes.

Digital immortality has far-reaching social, philosophical, and legal ramifications.

The concept of digital immortality has long been a hallmark of science fiction.

The short story "The Tunnel Under the World" (1955) by Frederik Pohl is a widely reprinted story about chemical plant workers who are killed in a chemical plant explosion, only to be rebuilt as miniature robots and subjected to advertising campaigns and jingles over the course of a long Truman Show-like repeating day.

The Silicon Man (1991) by Charles Platt relates the tale of an FBI agent who finds a hidden operation named LifeScan.

The project has found a technique to transfer human thought patterns to a computer dubbed MAPHIS, which is headed by an old millionaire and a mutinous crew of government experts (Memory Array and Processors for Human Intelligence Storage).

MAPHIS is capable of delivering any standard stimuli, including pseudomorphs, which are simulations of other persons.

The Autoverse is introduced in Greg Egan's hard science fiction Permutation City (1994), which mimics complex miniature biospheres and virtual worlds populated by artificial living forms.

Egan refers to human consciousnesses scanned into the Autoverse as copies.

The story is inspired by John Conway's Game of Life's cellular automata, quantum ontology (the link between the quantum universe and human perceptions of reality), and what Egan refers to as dust theory.

The premise that physics and arithmetic are same, and that individuals residing in whatever mathematical, physical, and spacetime systems (and all are feasible) are essentially data, processes, and interactions, is at the core of dust theory.

This claim is similar to MIT physicist Max Tegmark's Theory of Everything, which states that "all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically," meaning that "all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically," meaning that "all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically, by which we mean that in those complex enough to contain self-aware substructures (SASs), these SASs will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically'real' world" (Tegmark 1998, 1).

Hans Moravec, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University, makes similar assertions in his article "Simulation, Consciousness, Existence" (1998).

Tron (1982), Freejack (1992), and The 6th Day are examples of mind uploading and digital immortality in movies (2000).

Kenneth D. Miller, a theoretical neurologist at Columbia University, is a notable skeptic.

While rebuilding an active, functional mind may be achievable, connectomics researchers (those working on a wiring schematic of the whole brain and nervous system) remain millennia away from finishing their job, according to Miller.

And, he claims, connectomics is just concerned with the first layer of brain activities that must be comprehended in order to replicate the complexity of the human brain.

Others have wondered what happens to personhood in situations where individuals are no longer constrained as physical organisms.

Is identity just a series of connections between neurons in the brain? What is going to happen to markets and economic forces? Is a body required for immortality? Professor Robin Hanson of George Mason University's nonfiction publication The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth provides an economic and social viewpoint on digital immortality (2016).

Hanson's hypothetical ems are scanned emulations of genuine humans who exist in both virtual reality environments and robot bodies.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.

See also: 

Technological Singularity.

Further Reading:

Clynes, Manfred E., and Nathan S. Kline. 1960. “Cyborgs and Space.” Astronautics 14, no. 9 (September): 26–27, 74–76.

Farnell, Ross. 2000. “Attempting Immortality: AI, A-Life, and the Posthuman in Greg Egan’s ‘Permutation City.’” Science Fiction Studies 27, no. 1: 69–91.

Global Future 2045. http://gf2045.com/.

Hanson, Robin. 2016. The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Miller, Kenneth D. 2015. “Will You Ever Be Able to Upload Your Brain?” New York Times, October 10, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/will-you-ever-be-able-to-upload-your-brain.html.

Moravec, Hans. 1999. “Simulation, Consciousness, Existence.” Intercommunication 28 (Spring): 98–112.

Roy, Jessica. 2014. “The Rapture of the Nerds.” Time, April 17, 2014. https://time.com/66536/terasem-trascendence-religion-technology/.

Tegmark, Max. 1998. “Is ‘the Theory of Everything’ Merely the Ultimate Ensemble The￾ory?” Annals of Physics 270, no. 1 (November): 1–51.

2045 Initiative. http://2045.com/.