Friday, December 5, 2014

Transferring Consciousness to a Computer

So, a lot of sci fi, real science, and related shows have dwelt a lot on the possibility of transferring your consciousness into a computer. It seems rather straightforward; our brain is a machine, computers are machines, if we could transfer information from one to the other, we could make the computer a version of us that can outlive our physical bodies, and could potentially live indefinitely. But what are the essential components of "you" that the computer would need to have to be you?
  • Memories. This is pretty straightforward. You experience things, you remember things, although not perfectly. Of course the computer would be able to remember things too, and would have the ability to gain new memories, which would be less prone to being corrupted than human memories.
  • Personality. Personality is basically just the way you respond to stimuli, and so can be reduced to a set of if-then commands, albeit a very long and complex set of commands, with more caveats than the average current program. For example: If child is screaming, then tell them to calm down. Except: If child is screaming IN PAIN, then provide assistance. With time, I'm sure we could reduce every response to stimuli to an if-then command, and develop an algorithm to determine what to do in an unforeseen situation by assessing the aggregate collection of if-then commands that are already available and basing an action on them, which is what we humans do in a new situation.
  • Emotions. This one isn't as straight-forward. Emotions are how we perceive a complex interplay of neurochemicals. Robot You could bungee jump off a bridge, and could respond with "Emotion: excited", but without the rush of adrenaline and dopamine, is it really feeling an emotional response to the stimuli? And if it isn't experiencing your emotions, is it really you? If you could no longer feel love for your partner or your children, or hatred for your worst enemy, or happiness at holding a kitten, or disgust at a criminal act, would you still be you? Take for example a person in the late stages of Alzheimer's. They no longer have emotions towards anyone they ever knew, because they can no longer remember them. They don't know what makes them happy or what makes them sad, and can respond only to stimuli in the present. If nursing home staff abuse them, they will react to the pain, but when the abuser leaves the room, they won't know who hurt them and won't fear them when the person returns. How do their loved ones respond to this? They say "This person isn't the person I knew. The person I knew is dead." And we don't say they're wrong. So if you could transfer your memories and personality to a machine, but the machine could not experience emotions, would the machine really be you, or would it be a clever AI?

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