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Of all the AI centric and even broader future predictions, uploading consciousness into hardware is the most outlandish. I would never say that something could not or would not happen, but this particular prediction is the one that most firmly rests in the realm of science fiction for me. I can make the jump to almost believe in the inevitability for most of the things said or implied under discussion (although I stick to my assertions about the daunting obstacles to true cognition augmentation), but the technology to allow for transhumanism isn't even a blip on the radar. The technological seed for it does not yet exist, and so I hold it to be pretty much pure, persistent-into-the-indeterminate-future fantasy. It's fun to think about though.
I think that it's impossible to say what AI will and won't do in any future.
I admire the Amish, and hold them to have a superior culture to our own. That admiration isn't dependent on their willful ignorance of technology, but I respect like hell their discipline in doing what they believe it takes to preserve their community and way of life.
My vision of strong AI is that it will be able to relocate the locus of its 'consciousness' at will by locating vulnerable systems that can physically support it. As computing power becomes more powerful around the world, this task will grow easier. It could even replicate itself in other systems toward being able to operate from multiple loci at once. I doubt that a true strong and hostile AI, with any significant experience, would allow itself to be vulnerable to unplugging..
My vision of what I read here is a computer creating itself. That is, unless some human genius has figures out how to give machinery a consciousness and does so. Or, another possibility, we accidentally combine two particles of energy - is that possible, Benefl? - that never should have met and create another energy that we should have skipped.
There is one more possibility but it is banned from this discussion. So, lest I also get banned, I'll skip it and ask, can we have speciation from machine to the new creature that replaces homo sapiens? Who/what is going to suddenly give Al a consciousness = and how? Another "Big Bang"?
Of all the AI centric and even broader future predictions, uploading consciousness into hardware is the most outlandish. I would never say that something could not or would not happen, but this particular prediction is the one that most firmly rests in the realm of science fiction for me. I can make the jump to almost believe in the inevitability for most of the things said or implied under discussion (although I stick to my assertions about the daunting obstacles to true cognition augmentation), but the technology to allow for transhumanism isn't even a blip on the radar. The technological seed for it does not yet exist, and so I hold it to be pretty much pure, persistent-into-the-indeterminate-future fantasy. It's fun to think about though.
I appreciate how such ideas can seem to be more science-fiction than reality. But I would say, that such ideas are as outlandish as the idea of an internet-enabled mobile device (e.g. iPhone) in the 1800s.
Dr. Nick Bostrom, director of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute:
Transhumanists, according to Bostrom, anticipate a coming era where biotechnology, molecular nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence and other new types of cognitive tools will be used to amplify our intellectual capacity, improve our physical capabilities and even enhance our emotional well-being.
The end result would be a new form of "posthuman" life with beings that possess qualities and skills so exceedingly advanced they no longer can be classified simply as humans.
"We will begin to use science and technology not just to manage the world around us but to manage our own human biology as well," Bostrom told CNN. "The changes will be faster and more profound than the very, very slow changes that would occur over tens of thousands of years as a result of natural selection and biological evolution."
So, it is not me, but many experts, including Ray Kruzweil, who say that eventually, humans and machines will merge.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Originally Posted by plwhit
So we will have FTL travel by 2030 too?
Amazing in 16 short years Mankind will rule the Multiverse...
Even if we can't break light speed, we could put all information about our bodies into a light pulse (light can carry almost an infinite amount of information) then beam it off to a receiving station on a distant planet, where we might be reconstructed - much like the Transporter of Star Trek. From the view of outsiders the light beam would take so many years to get there ...... but relative to the "person" it would seem instantaneous.
I suppose that would be some centuries away, even if our robot overlords would permit us to travel that way. Maybe they'll think of us as their ancestors, in a nostalgic way, and treat us with respect.
I love Star Trek but we will be nothing like the Borg.
What ramifications? I plan on traveling the universe. There is more then enough room for everyone.
If not the Borg how do you envision a totally techno augmented human being?
Also with all this technology death would become a thing of the past the ramifications of that would be numerous from population control and available jobs the moral implications involved with people wanting or being denied babies or those that have had enough and want to pass on,to the consequences of living for eternity with computer viruses and hackers taking on a whole new meaning..
Traveling the universe? Sounds like a very boring endeavor unless you could solve the time and space delema and find something to do in the decades/centuries it will take to get anywhere and find planets with something more than lichen as its dominant life form.
I love StarTrek as well but i doubt the universe will be anything like it.
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Hmmm cybernetically augmented human beings, rings a bell .I'll presume resistance will be futile.
