I recently was treated to another Philosophers take on AI and Consciousness. It was David Chalmers youtube presentation of "Simulation and The singularity" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FafHdF_D8gA&list=PLFn5PxU0BZSSLJNYT0rU0Z6L5kjvSlW6c&index=5&t=2s) and the part about uploading has intrigued me a great deal. I have spent some time now, thinking through this area of our possible future due to an essay assignment for my collegiate studies. The lecture is about 42 minutes long and is worth every minute if you are following along with this blog with any amount of interest. As David Chalmers has laid out in his lecture and because I like the language, I will adapt his preposition with all credit due to him.
AI = Algorithmic Intelligence that is at the same level of intelligence as humans currently can express.
AI+ = Algorithmic Intelligence some level slightly above human intelligence.
AI++ = Algorithmic Intelligence far advanced from human intelligence and quite possibly an exponentially higher level that has no limitation to how much more advanced it is.
(Chalmers)
Uploading
The goal here is to explore what life is like that once a stable AI+ is reached, and once the technology is created, should or would you upload your neurological self to the digital world? There are unknowns on many levels and I will try to explore some of them with you in this post. The first premise is that there will be a stable AI+ at some point. I think this is inevitable because it is the baseline point to even bother creating AI. The point being that we want solutions smarter than we are so we can reap the benefits through automation of processed data. AI++ is hypothetical but reasonable to keep in the equation in that AI+ will also have some algorithmic quality that constantly strives to create a better solution from the data given. Algorithms don't stop at the simple or immediate solution like organic beings tend to do. The algorithm continually processes to provide more data and more solutions to the solution itself.
Now that we have established some base lines to work from, we will go into the theory box and pull out 'the matrix'. Not the movie but a similar concept, a digital world where AI++ is the ruler (presumably). No voting, no debates over politics, just a digital framework for now. A docking station for you or I to plug up and upload your consciousness to the framework and 'be' in a digital state. I believe that this process will have to involve a separation of your current physical for integration into the digital state. There cannot be 2 instances of "you" being 1 digital and 1 physical. Once you go digital, you are then digital for good. The hardest part of this question is can you let go of the physical world in trade for a digital life that could possibly span all of eternity?
The only way this will be mentally possible is top let go of your materialistic and selfish belief system and your materialistic perception of your location. this may sound harsh but it is truth in all of us. You think the body is a vessel you own much like your car. But what of this body do "you" really own? What of it as you grow old or after you pass on? We are not in control of disease, dementia or even of life itself. Life is not guaranteed. This provides ground work for uploading being a viable solution to escape the inevitable collapse of society and provides a new place where hunger, disease, homelessness and other societal problems may already be solved.
Location, Location, Location
So what will this new location look like? I will hope that this new location will be devoid of borders, finances, politics and ideologies taken from the physical world. We will not know until it is reality (oxymoron right?). Questions like, will we have the ability to fabricate our own digital world? Will we be constrained by the creator to what our digital world looks like? We are as likely to know these answers as we are to know what the physical afterlife is like after death. In the effort of saving humanity to some degree of the term, I believe it will have to be close to those parameters to make it at all worth organic beings doing this. Why would we program a digital world to act exactly like the current reality? the whole point is to create a place where we have a chance of getting it right. It will require extremely well thought AI ethics to preserve this notion.
Some Scenarios and Problems with Uploading
The first Ethical question that comes to me is what happens to the physical bodies left behind after uploading? That is maybe another reason to favor uploading I suppose. Until neuroscience reaches the answer to what happens to the body and brain once all data is uploaded, we can only speculate. I imagine a couple different scenarios (equally horrifying) playing out.
Scenario #1: The first is the simple one, after upload is completed, the physical body dies as normal and time moves forward digitally.
Scenario #2: the body doesn't 'die' as we understand it now, but is left in a comatose like state which will mean the meat bags will have to be finished off. This is a gruesome end to the organic world but maybe not as gruesome as it already is in some places. And what of the last organic beings body?
Scenario #3: A weak cognitive signal remains in the body / brain and the body left behind turns into an emotionless, non sentient creature and creates what would look like a zombie apocalypse.
In scenario #1, the bodies left behind could be provided to scientists for continued research for those left in organic consciousness. Not everyone will go digital. And at least there will be more space to roam about in the organic world provided that there is no nuclear war of mass disease to make it worse in the physical world. All scenarios have a real problem with the question of what does the organic world look like? If turns into some desolate, evil ridden wasteland then I think uploading will be inevitable unless it is only available on a financially based acceptance. If it is available to all, and the current organic state is still a healthy environment, then I don't see many taking the leap to digital because we simply can't let go.
Thank you for taking this journey with me,
Organic Quentin
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